As the financial pressures facing the Army mount, its chief of staff remains steadfast in the position that he will cut the size of the force so that the troops it has are fully equipped and ready.

“Whatever the government gives us to do it will be the size of the Army,” Gen. Peter Schoomaker told reporters at an April 26 Defense Writers Group breakfast. “If we get cut, we’re going to cut the size of the Army. . . . Or they’ll get somebody with a different idea.”

Last month, InsideDefense.com reported that Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England issued draft fiscal guidance directing budget cuts for the future years defense plan that could cut $25 billion from the Army’s outyear budget. The cuts may strike $17 billion from the Army’s budget in fiscal years 2012 and 2013 -- at a time when the service is trying to increase the amount of its budget to pay for major initiatives such as modularity and the Future Combat System.

Pentagon program budget decision 753, issued in 2004, allowed the Army to increase its overall budget by $25 billion to fund modularity between FY-07 and FY-11. And for more than one year, the service has staked its plans for the outyears on the assumption that the Army will continue to receive that increased level of funding after FY-11.

In light of the the recent Penatgon fiscal guidance, the service may be forced to scale back procurement plans or slip the schedule for FCS, an Army official told ITA.

While Schoomaker acknowledged fiscal pressures, he said the service is still trying to boost its budget, adding that he is “not just accepting $25 billion in cuts” and will fight for support in Congress and within the administration.

“We’re trying to grow the topline of the Army. We have the authority to grow that out to 2011, 2013,” Schoomaker said.

Schoomaker has framed the war as a “window of opportunity” for the service to make up for what he calls a “procurement holiday” during the 1990s, which he says has left the current Army struggling to equip itself.

“I’m talking about the window of opportunity. I’m talking about the fiscal resources needed to get ourselves, number one, back up on step to overcome the past; and number two, getting ourselves projected forward in a way that is sustainable for the nation in the future at a lower level of resourcing,” he said.

Catching up from the procurement holiday, modernizing and transforming all at the same time would be “more expensive and probably impossible” without the war, he said.

The war has allowed the Army to do things that it could not in the past, he said. For example, before 2004, procurement money did not appear in supplemental budget requests, but the service included it in 2004.

That “tasted pretty good to people,” Schoomaker said, so the service continued to do so and will request procurement money through supplementals again in FY-07.

“It spends just as good as base money,” said the chief.

Within the Army, officials are watching to see what will happen with potential Pentagon-directed cuts in FY-12 and FY-13.

If FCS or modularity plans are delayed, the National Guard could feel the aftershocks, indicated Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn, the director of the Army National Guard.

“It can’t help but affect us,” Vaughn told ITA April 26. “Every time you delay the Army, you delay the Guard.”

In addition, budget cuts could bring another round of force structure deliberations, Vaughn said.

The first test of Schoomaker’s plan to cut force structure to match the budget came last fall during the Quadrennial Defense Review process, when the Army and the Pentagon opted to reduce the Guard’s end strength from 350,000 to 333,000, the level at which the Guard was manned at the time.

Guard officials were not notified until the end of January, and after they complained, Army leaders agreed to restore the Guard’s end strength in FY-07.

If another round of personnel cuts comes as a result of shrinking Pentagon budgets, Vaughn said he is confident that this time, the Guard will be included in the process.