Army has completed list of potential anomalies under CR

Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said today the service has identified the programs for which it may eventually seek waivers from Congress under the ongoing continuing resolution.

"We have a list of anomalies; I'm pretty sure we have not released it yet," McCarthy told reporters after a Senate hearing on military housing this morning. "Because when you release a list of anomalies, it takes the pressure off getting a deal done. We need an appropriations bill."

Congress has already extended a stopgap spending measure through Dec. 20 to avoid shutting down the government before reaching an agreement on fiscal year 2020 spending.

McCarthy today restated that senior leaders told commands in October to cut their spending by "north of 2%," affecting training time, and said the service is getting ready for another reduction before Christmas.

The Army previously announced the potential effects of both a six-month and a yearlong CR, pointing out that all of the service's modernization priorities would stall and upgrades to current systems would be delayed.

The Synthetic Training Environment cross-functional team in particular would consider seeking an anomaly to enable several projects: One World Terrain, the Reconfigurable Virtual Collective Trainers and the Common Synthetic Environment, its director said this week.

"So, we are feeling the effects in readiness, modernization, and as you heard for the last two and a half hours here in the housing [area], there's about $1.1 billion sitting idle that's in the request also," McCarthy said. "So, we need a bill done before Christmas."