WASHINGTON — Defense Department acquisition chief Frank Kendall said Friday a yearlong continuing resolution to fund the government "would be a devastating thing" for the Pentagon, as he hoped for a bipartisan deal to fund defense at the president's requested levels.

Before passing federal budget legislation, Congress has for years passed short-term funding measures in lieu of approving a budget which set spending at the previous year's levels, and — without further legislation — bar production jumps and new start acquisition programs.

"A full-year CR would be devastating," Kendall said. "We also have a number of things that we need to get on with in terms of rates of production increase in terms of moving to the next phases of program life-cycles. All of that will be put into question under a yearlong CR. It would be a devastating thing for the department. I understand that it is an easier route in some ways politically, but the consequences of that are very severe."

Kendall declined to provide specific examples of programs a yearlong CR would impact. However, the Pentagon sent Congress a 12-page list of programs in August that would require congressional approval to fund under a short-term continuing resolution. These include new start programs for weapons, vehicles, advanced sensors and construction.

Analyst Todd Harrison, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies recently predicted the final appropriations number for defense will not be known until December or later as Congress debates the Iran nuclear deal and tackles the National Defense Authorization Act. It's likely, he said, Congress will end up passing a short-term continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown, as it has in recent years.

Kendall on Friday said he would like to see Congress approve the president's budget, which he called the "right level of spending for national security," though the Pentagon has "some data in the storehouse," to reluctantly prepare to work under budget caps.

"We are going to everything we can to avoid that," Kendall said.

The Budget Control Act of 2011 caps the total national defense budget in fiscal 2016 at $499 billion, but the Obama administration requested $534 billion for the Pentagon in its base budget, or $35 billion more than the budget cap allows.

The administration asked for $51 billion in war-related funding, which does not count toward the budget cap, for a total DoD budget of $585 billion.

Republicans in Congress rejected the administration's approach and instead passed a budget resolution earlier this year that calls for a base defense budget at the budget cap level and Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding that is $38 billion more than requested.

This, Harrison notes, effectively gives the administration what it requested in total DoD funding, but it does so by moving funding from the base budget to the war budget to avoid triggering a sequester. The Obama administration has threatened a veto over this approach.

Kendall on Friday called it a "gimmick."

"If they proceed with the bills that are currently structured with what we call the OCO gimmick, those are not going to go anywhere as far as I can tell," Kendall said, "and then we have will have to sit down and hopefully come to some kind of agreement about a more sensible path."

Email: jgould@defensenews.com

Twitter: @reporterjoe

Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.

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