The Office of the Secretary of Defense is considering adding tens of billions of dollars to the Army's base budget in the Pentagon's new six-year spending plan in order to address funding shortfalls that service officials say could threaten the viability of U.S. ground forces, according to Defense Department officials.

Pentagon officials say an Army request for an additional $23 billion to its fiscal year 2008 budget -- and further additions on that order each year through 2013 -- are being seriously weighed in a round of highly unusual midsummer budget negotiations.

“The talks are being treated as very, very close hold,” said one Pentagon official.

These discussions, which involve senior leaders from the White House, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the service, come as the Army missed an Aug. 15 deadline to submit its proposed spending plan -- called the program objective memorandum (POM) for FY-08/13 -- to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

“The reason why the Army has not submitted its POM is because we believe the only option is to submit an unbalanced POM and that is not acceptable,” said a service official.

The POM, constructed once every two years, is produced by each of the services over many months with policy and fiscal guidance from the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Army officials say that the service was not provided adequate resources to execute the array of tasks it was directed to fulfill between 2008 and 2013. Accordingly, the service elected to withhold submitting an “unbalanced” plan that left important accounts without adequate resources.

“We have a QDR strategy and resource mismatch,” said a second service official, noting the expectations of the Army required by the Quadrennial Defense Review, from being ready to carry out conventional operations, irregular warfare and homeland defense. “So the many things the Army is being asked to do in the strategy is not affordable with the topline [fiscal] guidance we were given.”

A Pentagon consultant involved in the effort to secure more money for the Army said service officials have argued it cannot execute what it has been asked to do. “The global war on terror, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan -- you cannot execute that, much less the training and readiness of your equipment, there's not enough money to do it all,” said the consultant. “That's the fact.”

The classified fiscal guidance for FY-08/13, issued in April, slashed Army spending by more than $20 billion across the six-year period.

Since then, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker has been outspoken about his service's need for additional resources.

At a June 27 hearing before the House Armed Services Committee Schoomaker said the Army required a larger base budget, $17.1 billion in supplemental funding for fiscal year 2007 and as much as $13 billion a year to reset the force for at least two to three years after U.S. troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Only through a fully funded reset program can we extend the life of the operational fleet and remain ready for protracted conflicts,” Schoomaker said.

For the past couple of weeks, Army officials say they have been meeting with representatives of the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense to work through the costs associated not only with a “fully funded reset” program, but the broader costs of operating the Army.

“There is a better understanding of what it really costs to resource the Army to meet those needs and those capability requirements based on the [national defense] strategy,” said a third service official involved in the effort.

Service officials believe that if the base budget is hiked and a fund is established to pay for resetting units that return from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army will be in good shape.

“If both of those things take place then the Army is probably going to be OK. It will be able to fulfill its wartime obligations, take care of its equipment and provide the kind of training that is necessary, and take care of its people,” said the consultant.

Another official involved in the budget discussions compared this effort to the round of budget maneuvers in December 2004 that produced program budget decision No. 753 which slashed $55 billion from largely Air Force and Navy programs and delivered a $25 billion windfall to the Army.

“This is almost as big as 753,” said the official.

While Army officials believe that they are persuading key officials of their need for more money, no commitment to new funds has yet been proffered. Nor is it clear where additional funds might come from, they say.

Budget experts, however, say there are essentially two options for finding money to add to the Army's baseline budget -- increasing the overall size of the Pentagon budget, an action that would likely require presidential direction, or cutting Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps programs.