"Everything from basic research, all the way up—how is that lining into where we're actually taking the Army, from a modernization perspective?" Brent Ingraham asked, summarizing the question driving the service's revived round of program-by-program reviews.
Night court returns as a top-to-bottom spending review
The Army has resurrected a practice it first used in 2018: intensive, end-of-day reviews of program documents that officials call “night court.” The original effort, led at the time by then-Army Secretary Mark Esper and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, produced large-scale reprogramming of funds. This summer, senior leaders relaunched the process to examine current spending across the service’s programs, with the aim of aligning dollars to modernization priorities, according to the Army’s civilian acquisition chief, Brent Ingraham.
Science and technology programs were reviewed first — and shifted funds
The initial focus of the summer effort was science and technology (S&T) work, examined to ensure the Army’s basic research aligned with the new Portfolio Acquisition Executive (PAE) offices and their trajectories. "We roughly found, I'll say, a little over $100 million of S&T funds that could better be realigned to match where the portfolios were headed," Ingraham told reporters, describing tangible savings identified during the review.
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Get a security leadForeign military sales reviews targeted delivery to allies and partners
After S&T, the night-court review turned to foreign military sales (FMS) contracts. The effort is framed around delivery: "How can we improve on delivery of those capabilities?" Ingraham asked, signaling a focus on making the Army a better partner on capability delivery for allies and partners rather than only trimming contract spending.
Sustainment added as PAEs scope lifecycle costs
The most recent additions to the review process were sustainment activities. The PAEs are examining what it will cost to sustain current and planned programs, what can be cancelled, and where savings might be found by bringing maintenance in-house. That shift follows a broader internal budgeting change the Army has enacted: PAEs now have visibility across entire portfolios, not only traditional procurement and RDT&E dollars. "And so now the PAEs get to see the whole portfolio, not just traditional procurement and [research, development, testing and evaluation] dollars, but they see the [operations and maintenance] and the S&T dollars, so they can understand how it fits across the whole portfolio," Ingraham said.
What this means for Portfolio Acquisition Executives, allies, and sustainment teams
- Portfolio Acquisition Executives: With lifecycle responsibility, PAEs will be positioned to reallocate S&T, procurement, and O&M funding across programs to steer portfolios toward declared modernization goals.
- Allies and partners: The FMS review is explicitly focused on improving the delivery of capabilities, a signal that contract execution and timelines for partners will be priorities in any reprogramming or reform.
- Sustainment teams and program managers: Ongoing reviews will reexamine sustainment costs, cancellations, and possibilities for restoring maintenance work in-house, changing long-term budget and maintenance planning.
The revived night-court process is deliberate and sequential: begin with the science that seeds future capability, audit how foreign sales are executed, then fold sustainment into lifecycle planning under PAEs. The exercise has already produced concrete reallocations — a little over $100 million from S&T — and reflects an internal, structural change in how the Army budgets and oversees programs. Whether the cascade of portfolio-level decisions will accelerate modernization where leaders intend remains to be seen as the reviews continue.
