NO MYSTERIES, PLEASE


ON THE HILL


Lt. Gen. Charles D. Luckey, chief of Army Reserve and commanding general, U.S. Army Reserve Command, testifies in April before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. Generals testify before authorization and appropriations panels to explain their annual funding requests and to justify their budget proposals. (U.S. Army Reserve photo by Sgt. Stephanie Ramirez, U.S. Army Reserve Command)


been assigned to synchronizing the budget process and execut- ing expenditures.


Programs are categorized according to expense, with acquisition category (ACAT) I being the most expensive and ACAT IV being the least. But it doesn’t matter whether a program is ACAT I or ACAT IV, Miller said; all acquisition programs go through the exact same process to get funding.


“Each system has its own place in the Army and in the requirements,” explained Lt. Col. Anthony Passero, financial synchronization officer for the DASA PPR. “Just because you’re in an ACAT III or an ACAT IV program doesn’t mean you’re at risk of not being funded. So it’s all about how well you do your staff work and how well you write your justification.”


THE PLAYBOOK It helps at this point to understand who the major players in the process are, and their order of appearance.


Te program management offices develop J-books for the PEOs, who then submit them to ASA(ALT) and the Army Budget Office, where the staff compiles them. Te Office of the Secretary of Defense reviews the J-books, then sends them back to the budget office and then to ASA(ALT) for revisions before submitting the


54 Army AL&T Magazine Summer 2019


Army’s request as part of DOD’s budget submission to the pres- ident’s budget request.


Simultaneous with this process, senior defense leaders are testi- fying at formal hearings on Capitol Hill about Army budget priorities, as well as discussing them in informal meetings with legislators and staffers. And, within the Pentagon, the PEOs are meeting with ASA(ALT) leadership to brief them on their programs’ plans and progress.


Two primary groups allocate resources within the Army acqui- sition enterprise: the Equipping Program Executive Group and the Sustaining Program Executive Group. As their names imply, they each focus on a particular phase of a program’s life cycle. Te Army acquisition executive (AAE) has approval authority over each.


Equipping is for new programs, and the AAE shares that author- ity with the other co-chair, the U.S. Army Futures Command. Te sustaining group is co-chaired by the U.S. Army Materiel Command, which manages sustainment programs.


Until last year, the deputy chief of staff, G-8 (programs) and the AAE co-chaired the equipping group, and the G-4 (logistics) and AAE co-chaired the sustaining group. Ten-Army Chief of


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