Ryan McCarthy, secretary of the U.S. Army and a 2020 Wash100 Award winner, said the service intends to find $10 billion more in savings in 2022 through a “night court” process as it seeks to free up funds for modernization priorities and expects to make harder decisions in 2023, Federal News Network reported Thursday.
“In 2023, if even if assumptions are the same that they are today, we’re looking at ourselves and saying ‘How can you look at all of the big knobs where the funding for readiness and modernization and training and manning?’ We have hard choices in front of us,” McCarthy told reporters Thursday. “We’re watching very closely, it’s a challenging fiscal situation we face in the country.”
He noted that the service will need to make more cuts to its legacy systems in 2023 and 2024 as some major acquisition programs enter into the production phase in 2022 and 2023.
“We’re going to really hold the line on quality of life issues because people are our number one priority,” McCarthy said. “We we’re also looking at where there are ways to cut out costs and really focusing in on where the programs that can meet cost, schedule and performance.”
The Army found $10 billion in savings in 2021 through the night court process, which seeks to generate $25 billion in savings over five years.
