Why shutdowns are a concern for the Air Force, Wright-Patterson

Stopgap funding at last year’s level slows progress on technology development, Air Force leaders have said.
The Capitol at sunrise in Washington, Oct. 1, 2025. The government shut down on Wednesday morning at 12:01 a.m., amid a bitter spending deadlock between President Trump and Democrats in Congress that will disrupt federal services and leave many federal workers furloughed. (Alex Kent/The New York Times)

Credit: NYT

Credit: NYT

The Capitol at sunrise in Washington, Oct. 1, 2025. The government shut down on Wednesday morning at 12:01 a.m., amid a bitter spending deadlock between President Trump and Democrats in Congress that will disrupt federal services and leave many federal workers furloughed. (Alex Kent/The New York Times)

Government funding lapses and stopgap funding measures, sometimes called “continuing resolutions” or “CRs,” hurt every military branch, observers say.

But for the technology-focused Air and Space forces, they represent a “double-whammy,” said Michael Gessel, vice president of federal government programs for the Dayton Development Coalition.

“The Air and Space Forces view a critical part of their mission developing and getting into the field new weapons before our military adversaries,” Gessel said. “Speed often defines mission success.”

CRs slow that down, he said.

“A CR of any length impacts DAF (Department of the Air Force) readiness, hinders acceleration of the Space Force, delays military construction (MILCON) projects, reduces aircraft availability, and curbs modernization in our race for technological superiority,” Frank Kendall, former secretary of the Air Force, wrote to the Senate Committee on Appropriations on Sept. 18, 2024, the Air Force’s 77th birthday.

Discussing the prospect of a year-long continuing resolution, Kristyn Jones, then performing the duties of Air Force under-secretary, estimated in early 2024 that the Air Force could lose up to $13 billion in buying power before adjusting for inflation.

“I don’t think there’s been enough discussion about some of those impacts,” Jones told a Center for Strategic and International Studies panel at the time.

On Wednesday, most federal government operations shuddered to a halt after a lapse in federal appropriations. Some 750,000 federal workers were expected to be furloughed, some potentially fired by the Trump administration, the Associated Press reported.

“A lapse in appropriation, depending on its length, can significantly impact our readiness, modernization efforts, and overall ability to maintain technological superiority,” Wright-Patterson’s 88th Air Base Wing said in a statement Wednesday.

CRs and shutdowns both represent a failure by Congress to do its job, Gessel said.

But they are different problems.

A CR is a temporary, usually brief funding measure that locks in funding at a certain level, keeping the government open. Air Force leaders have long despised CRs because they don’t allow agility in keeping pace with evolving threats.

The main drawback to CRs is that they set funding at the previous year’s level, Gessel said.

For the Air Force, staying with the old funding level is seen as a “cut” of projected programs, he said.

The Air Force funds projects through multiple accounts and the funding level shifts among those accounts from year to year, he said.

In what he called a typical pattern, new weapons are first funded through “science and research” accounts, Gessel said. When the new weapon or tool is developed, it is funded at higher levels through procurement accounts.

Said Gessel: “Locking funding at the previous levels, account by account, slows that development.”

Shutdowns, of course, force members of the military to report to their duties without pay.

“Continuing resolutions are devastating to the long-term strategic planning of national security, and I’ve fought against them every year. They prevent us from being able to implement new strategies, planning, weapons systems, and responding to the emerging and immediate needs of our nation,” said U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee.

With the help of New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler, Turner has re-introduced his “It’s About Time” Act, which would do away with a federal fiscal calendar that begins on Oct. 1.

Instead, the bill would have the government’s fiscal year start on Jan. 1. The idea is to get more time to review and pass spending bills, as Turner and allies see it.

“It’s pretty difficult to get anyone to understand this is a self-created problem,” Turner said in an interview. “Congress sets the time period and agenda, and that we can fix this statutorily at any time. It’s a game of chicken that gets played every year, and it needs to stop because it wastes taxpayers’ dollars and hurts our national defense.”

The bill has been introduced multiple times without passage.

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