Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker last week hinted that he does not expect to receive the full $23 billion increase to his service's fiscal year 2008 budget that is the focus of a highly unusual round of spending negotiations between Pentagon leaders and the White House.

Schoomaker, in an interview with reporters at the Pentagon, added that while he has not threatened to resign over the shortfalls facing the service's budget, he also has not ruled that possibility out.

The chief of staff said that if the Army does not receive from the White House Office of Management and Budget the entire $138.8 billion in fiscal year 2008 -- a sum service officials and the Office of the Secretary of Defense believe is needed to execute the Army's portion of the strategy laid out in the Quadrennial Defense Review -- the service will be forced to consider a number of actions, including slowing down the rate of modernizing the force.

“And we're probably going to have to do some of that,” Schoomaker said, suggesting that the service is bracing for less than the full amount of its requested increase.

To absorb a funding shortfall, the service would slow the pace of converting the force from its division structure to modular brigades and delay the acquisition of portions of its marquee modernization effort, the $125 billion Future Combat System, the chief of staff said.

“We will have to do the things we have to do when we get down to what the decision is on the level we'll be resourced,” Schoomaker said.

Army officials -- along with Navy and Air Force brass -- are awaiting a verdict from the White House Office of Management and Budget on their collective requests for more money. Army officials are confident that their service, which is shouldering the bulk of the work in Iraq and Afghanistan, will receive more money; the question is how much.

Some Army officials, granted anonymity because they were discussing internal service deliberations, say Schoomaker has in private suggested that he might resign if the Army is severely under-resourced.

Asked directly if he has discussed leaving his post before the end of his four-year term with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Schoomaker said: “I've never discussed early departure with anybody. I serve at their pleasure. If what I do at some point in time is unsatisfactory to the leadership, they have the option to tell me to it's time to get into my truck. It's not useful to walk around here threatening anything. I'm trying to do the best I can do and I'm doing it with the best advice I can get from a great team of people who are around me, and we're doing it in an open dialogue.”

Still, in another exchange with a reporter who asked if he would consider resigning if the Army is not adequately funded between fiscal years 2008 to 2013, the general said, “Look,” then paused before continuing: “When I came here I didn't know whether I'd last one day, one year or all four years. And I have approached every day that way. I don't walk around here looking for a reason to resign.”

He added that everyone has an internal threshold at which they might consider quitting.

“I won't know it ‘till I get there,” he said of his own standard. “But I know right now we are dealing with open books on this issue. I believe the leadership is engaged. I believe that what we are having is real discussions that are necessary. And I would suggest that the way we've gone about this would be the way we go about it in the future, not some arbitrary division of the pie but looking at reality and saying where we are and where we're going to be -- are we putting together the kind of force the nation needs?”

The Army's portion of the total Pentagon budget has in recent years hovered around 24 percent. Some service officials believe that needs to be increased to as much as 32 percent.

When the Defense Department faced a budget crunch two years ago, the Army received a $25 billion windfall that came at the expense of Air Force, Navy and missile defense programs that collectively were cut back by $55 billion.

Still, Schoomaker said the Army is not looking to raid the accounts of its sister services to pay for its needs.

“I don't see this as some sort of a competition at a poker table with other services or anybody else,” he said.

Schoomaker said the Army is seeking $138.8 billion in fiscal year 2008, nearly $23 billion more than the $114 billion guidance the service was issued this spring by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. InsideDefense.com first reported the Army's $23 billion shortfall, as well as a need for roughly $100 billion more over the following five years, on Aug. 24.

At issue, Schoomaker said, is determining how much of the strategy outlined earlier this year in the Quadrennial Defense Review the White House is willing to pay for. The strategy, which called for more focus on irregular warfare and less on preparations for traditional military threats, requires the Army to field 18 brigades to 19 brigades on a rotational basis.

“To fully resource that is $138.8 [billion]. That's the facts,” he said. The question before decision makers -- at OMB -- is where in the service budget to take risk if the full increase is not provided. “That is not my call,” Schoomaker said.

Additional requirements taking shape could drive Army costs even further, he added, citing “new missions in the global war on terrorism” and the possible establishment of a U.S. Africa Command.

The $138.8 billion sum was generated by an analysis prepared this spring by the Army's financial management and comptroller's office, which attempted to identify the full cost of running the Army. Army leaders first brought their concerns about the service's share of the defense budget to the Office of the Secretary of Defense in April. A month later, the leadership laid out its case to Gordon England, the deputy defense secretary, and Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the high-ranking members of the Deputies Advisory Working Group.

The following month Rumsfeld was briefed. In July, the Army made its pitch to Vice President Dick Cheney; in August, Schoomaker met with the president, according to service officials.

Schoomaker declined to discuss any discussions he has had with the president, saying only that he has briefed all the appropriate national leaders on the state of the Army's budget.

The Army chief is seeking to reframe the debate regarding the Army's needs from a discussion over affordability to a matter of national priorities. He and other service leaders in recent days have repeatedly compared current defense spending levels -- less than four percent of the gross domestic product -- to other fiscal commitments during past conflicts: 38 percent during World War II, 14 percent during the Korean War and 10 percent during the Vietnam conflict.

“Failure to underwrite this commitment with sustained investment will increase risk for the Army, the joint team and the nation,” the chief said in an Oct. 10 speech yesterday at the annual meeting of the Association of the U.S. Army.

The chief added in his discussion with reporters that while he believes the American public supports the Army -- he cited Gallup polls that rate the U.S. military as one of the institutions most trusted by the public -- the general public may not understand the complexity of the threats the nation faces or the need to fully resource the Army to combat them.

Echoing other Army leaders speaking at the AUSA convention last week, Schoomaker noted that the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been allocated through emergency supplemental spending bills pay only for the cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. These funds are not paying for the more than $56 billion modernization shortfall service officials say the Army faced at the start of operations in Afghanistan in 2001.