By Michael Marrow, Ashley Roque, Diana Stancy, Carley Welch, Theresa Hitchens and Valerie Insinna, breakingdefense.com
WASHINGTON — The federal government rang in a new fiscal year on Thursday, and, as has been the norm for years, the government will now be operating under a continuing resolution (CR).
And if there’s one thing military leaders like to remind everyone about, at every opportunity, it’s that a CR means the Pentagon cannot begin funding new programs, also known as “new starts,” at a time when the department is pursuing novel technologies.
Breaking Defense reached out to the Pentagon and the services to ask for details on new starts that will be impacted by the CR, but a list was not provided by press time. However, new starts are listed as such in the fiscal 2027 budget request, and a search under that phrase of both procurement and research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) budget documents turned up over 150 results.
While imperfect, given that Pentagon budget documents have been known to include errors, the method provides a sense of the quantity and quality of items affected by the CR — including billions of dollars for new drones, the Golden Fleet program and hypersonic weapons.
“It’s gonna slow us down, and the threat is not slowing down, so we have to continue to get after that,” Space Force Gen. Douglass Schiess, the newly minted Chief of Space Operations, said in a briefing with reporters Sept. 15. “So I just urge our congressional colleagues and folks to get after getting us the budget.”