The continuing resolution may make it difficult to award the long-awaited KC-X tanker contract. But outside budget experts say there’s a small chance a loophole may exist. “There is something known as the Feed and Forage Act [that] allows the Defense Department to spend money in the advance of an appropriation,” said Stan Collender of Qorvis during the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments’ briefing on the forthcoming Fiscal 2012 budget Thursday in Washington, D.C. However, Todd Harrison, CSBA senior fellow, said “it would be tough to justify” using Feed and Forage for tanker procurement since the first new tanker won’t come online for at least several years. “It’s not directly related to the wars that we are in right now” and it wouldn’t immediately be “supporting the troops on the battlefield,” he explained. The department has invoked the obscure act only once in the past decade or so. That was immediately following 9/11.
When acting Air Force Secretary Gary A. Ashworth rescinded service-wide “Family Days” last week citing the need to build readiness, he left it up to commanders, directors, and supervisors to decide if they would still permit extra days off. Here’s how Air Force major commands are taking that guidance.