74OA said:
While Congress disappears on yet another break, the Pentagon is searching everywhere for any loose change to fund Ukraine aid.
DESPERATION
They will continue to find money in the couch cushions through "reprogramming." When a program like the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft is cancelled there is funding already "programmed" into not only the current fiscal year budget but also planned amounts across the four fiscal years to follow. These five years are referred to as the Future Years Defense Program or FYDP. In the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution System (PPBES) the amounts of funding in the out-years does not just disappear from the future years budgets, it gets reprogrammed to use on other programs or, offering it up as funding for Ukraine.
The DoD is allowed to reprogram small amounts of $20 million or less without notifying Congress because that is "decimal-dust" in an $800 billion annual budget. This is called below threshold reprogramming or BTR. Amounts over $20million from any single program customarily require prior notification of Congress and are called above threshold reprogramming. The $300M of found-money was probably a combination of BTRs and ATRs from across the service components and OSD.
The cancellation of the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) left $5 billion to be reprogrammed over the coming years.
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/02/08/us-army-spent-billions-on-a-new-helicopter-that-now-will-never-fly/There are lots of program cancellations and "re-baselining" where a new less expensive design or a smaller quantity of procurement is authorized.