‘Hard choices’ afoot if Army unable to grow its annual budget, Wormuth warns

Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth visiting the ASC Headquarters on Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, in June 2022.  (Linda Lambiotte/ASC Public Affairs)

AUSA 2024 — Over the past several years, the US Army’s annual budget has remained relatively flat. If that trend continues, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth warned that the service will need to take a hard look at what weapons program to cut. 

“[We are] constantly looking at the different programs and again, trying to make decisions that are data driven, so that we don’t inadvertently allow the resources we’re spending on soldiers and families to crowd out the modernization that we have to continue with,” Wormuth told reporters today at the Association of the US Army’s annual conference.

“If our budgets remain flat as they have in the last few years, we’re going to continue to have to make really hard choices,” she later added. For context, the service discretionary spending request for fiscal 2025 came in at $185.9 billion and included $14.1 billion for research and development (R&D) efforts and $24.4 billion for weapon procurement.

While neither Wormuth nor Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George identified a tipping point for when the service would need to start terminating weapon programs en masse. Earlier this year, the service unveiled a massive aviation overhaul that included saying goodbye to Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) development and phasing out the Shadow and Raven unmanned aerial systems.

But as service leaders like Wormuth and George craft budget and weapons plans, part of their calculus includes testing out new technologies with soldiers, in part, under the newer “transformation in contact” initiative.

That newer transformation in contact initiative is a pet project for George. The four-star general’s push has included sending developmental high-energy lasers to the Middle East for testing against drone threats, and selecting units to test out new tech and weapons for feedback on how they would be used inside the formation as well as tweaks to the very formations themselves.

“There is risk in testing new systems in challenging environments and getting soldiers hands-on experience with new technology in the field, but we do not have the luxury of time to wait for perfection: We must field to learn,” Wormuth said during her opening ceremony speech.

The push is expected to remain a hot topic during the conference, with George teasing a new “transformation in contact” 2.0 announcement coming later this week but declining to disclose just what it will entail.