Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown said Monday that no matter what the topline defense spending figure is for the next fiscal year, “we’ve got tough decisions to make.” He was speaking at a Brookings Institution event that is now streaming online.

Brown praised advances in the National Defense Authorization Act to modernize the service and said future budgets will focus on how to implement those changes. But to do that, he said, Congress must pass a full-year defense appropriations bill on time instead of relying on continuing resolutions that hamper the start of planned innovations.

Keeping defense spending at the same level through a continuing resolution would give “our adversaries a year to move forward,” he said, according to CQ.

House Republicans are still discussing how much money they want to propose allocating to the defense budget for fiscal year 2024, as On Base has reported, with a former Trump DOD official even suggesting the defense budget should be cut in half, as we reported yesterday. The Heritage Foundation has suggested a BRAC round, as we also reported.

Air Force photo by Andy Morataya