Unpredictable funding is threatening the Army’s 15-year plan to modernize its organic industrial base, the senior officer in charge of Army sustainment said.

Gen. Ed Daly, commander of Army Materiel Command, described the current base as a “20th century capability to support a 21st century Army and joint force.”

Delaying the implementation of Materiel Command’s modernization initiatives, he said, “would have very significant consequences as it applies to the organic industrial base, which is my portfolio” in the Army’s broader modernization strategy.

“Obviously, we wouldn’t be able to start any new work … and then there’s implications beyond that to the modernization signature programs in terms of certain decisions that can and can’t be made [about] money and funding that can be applied,” Daly said Feb. 1 during a virtual meeting with media hosted by the Defense Writers Group, part of the Project for Media and National Security at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Daly pointed to testimony by Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Joseph Martin during a Jan. 12 hearing before a House appropriations subcommittee as “very, very specific in terms of the effects” of a continuing resolution.

The military has operated since the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year under a funding resolution that allows no increases and no new starts in programs.

“From my portfolio as the senior logistician in the Army, I would just tell you that a continuing resolution does have significant effects, and with every day that passes by, it demonstrates more and more effects to our Army,” Daly said. “With a continuing resolution, we can execute to the prior year’s budget, but we can’t execute any new [spending].”

The organic industrial base comprises 23 depots, arsenals and ammunition plants in the continental United States, and a work force of about 30,000, Daly said. He explained that the purpose of the Army’s organic industrial base is to support peacetime capabilities and be able to surge during wartime.

This means that during peacetime, he said, the industrial base must maintain core capabilities and a foundational skill set. The base must also keep up with investments in things like infrastructure and robotics, as well as ensuring that the organic processes can support current equipment and future capabilities in the Army and the joint force.

“Whether it’s making gun tubes up at Watervliet Arsenal [in New York], or it’s rebuilding aircraft in Corpus Christi, Texas, or it’s making bombs to support the Air Force in McAlester, Oklahoma, it’s updating not only the facility, the processes, the technologies, the robotics, but also really retraining the workforce and realigning the workforce so that they can remain relevant and essential and critical to the process,” Daly said.