WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Dan Allyn said the service's budget for force readiness in 2017 will run out by mid-summer should a continuing resolution extend farther out.

"We are going to run out of money in mid-July on the current spending and when that happens all the readiness gains that we've been building for two-and-a-half years are going to start that tip down," Allyn said at the McAleese and Associates and Credit Suisse defense conference in Washington on Wednesday.

"That is a significant near-term problem," he said. The Army had a $4 billion budget in 2017 for "direct readiness deliverables" that it won't get as long as the continuing resolution continues, Allyn added.

The current CR is scheduled to expire on April 28, but there is buzz on Capitol Hill that the mechanism to fund the government at 2016 levels could extend beyond that date, potentially to the end of the fiscal year.

Allyn said a longer-term problem is also the inability to start hundreds of new programs. This would mean delays to modernization, and after the service has taken a long appetite suppressant on modernizing the force in order to keep up with readiness, what is budgeted in 2017 in the modernization category is already "very prioritized," he said.

"We have prioritized that money so when it doesn't come, it's like a double hit," Allyn said. "It's like a punch to the belly and a roundhouse to the face."

At the Association of the U.S. Army's Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Ala., last week, Karl Schneider, the senior official performing duties of the under secretary of the Army, said the CR has caused the service so far to have to delay 120 programs that would enhance modernization and provide additional weapons and platforms, and it has prevented the service from starting 50 "critical" new programs.

Allyn said modernization is critical for going up against near-peer adversaries.

The force, after 15 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not designed to go up against such adversaries in large-scale land warfare, officials claim, and the Army is having to urgently refocus efforts to go up against emerging threats without the freedom of movement to which it’s grown accustomed.

Of the 14 armored brigade combat teams across the total force -- which will be vital when fighting near-peer adversaries in contested environments -- Allyn said there are five that still have Desert Storm-era tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

Allyn said the Army has to move as quickly as it can to modernize the ABCTs with the most capable and up-to-date variants. "We must have the best we can on the battlefield."

The vice chief added that without timely appropriations and predictable funding the Army will not be able to deliver mobility, lethality and protection across the current combat platforms in the BCTs, including current efforts such as Stryker lethality upgrades.

Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

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