WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is freeing up another $10 billion to apply to its top priorities in its next five-year budget plan, according to the service’s undersecretary.

“We are about to slap the table on the [program objective memorandum] here by no later than the middle of June,” Ryan McCarthy told a group of reporters during a May 29 media roundtable in his office.

As part of a rigorous review of programs and spending, the Army set out to find $10 billion within the budget that could be reallocated toward priorities in its fiscal 2021-2025 program objective memorandum.

The money shook out through another round of what the Army informally calls “night court,” a review process that freed up $30 billion in the last budget cycle to get ambitious modernization programs off the ground.

The night court process was inspired by similar reviews conducted under Robert Gates when he was defense secretary. Rather than make $182 billion worth of decisions in a few hours, the process is meant to establish a deliberate route to applying funds against priorities, McCarthy said.

For example, if a program didn’t contribute to a more lethal battlefield or to one of the Army’s six modernization priorities, it was canceled or downsized.

Inflection point: Army wrestles to strike balance between current and future capability At some point soon, the Army will have to make difficult decisions on how long legacy weapon systems and planned upgrades for those capabilities can — or should — carry the service into the future.

The Army set up a new four-star command — Army Futures Command — last year to tackle the service’s top six modernization priorities: long-range precision fires, the next-generation combat vehicle, future vertical lift, the network, air and missile defense, and soldier lethality.

× Fear of missing out? Sign up for the Early Bird Brief, the defense industry's most comprehensive news and information, straight to your inbox. Thanks for signing up. By giving us your email, you are opting in to the Early Bird Brief.

The review was conducted with the Army chief, vice chief, secretary and undersecretary at the head of the table last summer. But this year, to establish a more sustainable model, leadership fell to the major four-star commands and civilian heads in charge of major offices like acquisition and manpower.

“Every dollar counts in this environment,” McCarthy said. “And so what we’ve done is we’ve realized that it’s not a sustainable model to have the entire Army leadership hunkered down every summer, but should delegate to the appropriate echelon of authority.”

Only the most difficult decisions will be brought to the top four Army leaders, he added.

When it comes to finding another $10 billion across the five-year planning period to apply to priorities, McCarthy said, “we are in very good shape there.”