The Pentagon Team
I think there’s a lot of logic to keeping Bob Gates on as Secretary of Defense. But I also thought Chris Bowers’ concerns about this are reasonable:
The most important appointment decision Obama will make during the transition, bar none, is who becomes, or remains, Secretary of Defense. As I have noted in the past, the Department of Defense oversees the expenditure of 52% of all discretionary spending, rendering it literally impossible for any other cabinet Secretary to oversee as much federal money. Further, keeping Gates on would only worsen Democratic image problems on national security, as he would be the second consecutive non-Democratic Secretary of Defense nominated by a Democratic President. The message would be clear: even Democrats agree that Democrats can’t run the military. [...]
Secretary of Defense is the big enchilada. Arguably, due to the vast percentage of federal spending it receives, it is more important than all other cabinet secretaries combined. The President may be Commander in Chief, but it is the Secretary of Defense who is decides how most federal revenue is spent. We need change in the Department of Defense, and keeping Gates along with his entire team of advisors and assistants doesn’t fit the bill.
The first step to meeting these concerns is to observe that it’s not actually the case that the Secretary of Defense just “decides” how the Pentagon’s giant budget is spent. It’s largely determined by congress, and budget requests have input from OMB and of course the president needs to agree. But this isn’t a crazy set of concerns. I think you meet the concerns two ways. One has to do with staffing the other civilian slots at the Defense Department.
Thus far, this seems to be going right. Gates’ Deputy will be Richard Danzig according to Mike Allen. Danzig was Secretary of the Navy under Bill Clinton and is an o.g. Obama supporter, a totally solid guy. And Gates’ most pernicious subordinate, Cheney aide Eric Edelman, is on his way out. Spencer Ackerman reports that his successor as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy (the number three job, used to be Doug Feith) will be Michèle Flournoy, who simultaneously held two subordinate positions in the Policy undersecretariat under Clinton, and cofounded CNAS. She’s the right woman for the job.
Of course personnel is personnel, and then there’s policy. As I said, I think there’s a huge opportunity to coopt Republican realists by enlisting Gates in an Obama administration. But that’s based on the presumption that a Gates-led Pentagon will be assisting in the pursuit of sound policies — withdrawal from Iraq, a tighter focus on al-Qaeda, a new diplomatic approach in the broader Middle East, and sensible budget priorities — rather than just being a Cohenesque abdication of responsibility. Budget issues will be, as Bowers highlighted, especially important. I’ve been distressed for months now about reports of a looming defense budget ambush and it’s crucially important that Gates be part of the pusback rather than part of the problem.
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November 26th, 2008 at 10:50 am
We find ourselves in the same position in our foreign policy as in our economic policy – all of the attention for the next couple of years is going to have to be on pulling the truck out of the ditch. The Vision Thing is going to have to go on the back burner for a little while. That’s just reality.
What’s more, in both cases, there is a general consensus about what to do now, that extents from the center-right through the Democratic left. End the Iraq War in a responsible manner, refocus on Afghanistan in a way that emphasizes building the Afghan’s government’s capacity, keep the pressure on Al Qaeda as we were before the Iraq War, and restore our diplomatic standing and military readiness. Maybe push for another peace deal involving Israel.
In such a circumstance, it doesn’t bother me in the least that the relevant cabinet posts are being stocked with centrists, neoliberals, and center-right pragmatists instead of liberals or progressives. The Vision Thing is off the table for the time being, anyway.
November 26th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Nitpick with Bowers’ comment, but does Obama really have to nominate Gates and have him confirmed again? He just continues until replaced, doesn’t he?
I also think that any inference about Dems can’t run Defense is lessened, or even eliminated, by the fact that, unlike Clinton’s choice of William Cohen, Obama is really just keeping on the current Secretary. It can be seen (though not, of course, necessarily) as a temporary continuity measure rather than a specific choice of a Republican over Democrats.
November 26th, 2008 at 10:56 am
“Republican realists?” What’s the word. On the tip of my tongue. oxy? oxy? Oh, yeah. Oxymoron.
November 26th, 2008 at 10:59 am
You’re not going to see a cut in the defense budget to fund social programs during a time of two wars and intensive counter-terrorism around the globe. I’m sympathetic to the desire here, but it just won’t happen. You can fight wars and spend money, or you can stop fighting wars and cut defense. But you can’t do both.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:00 am
What’s a pusback?
Wait, don’t answer that.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Greg Worley,
Once upon a time – as recently as eight years ago, actually, and certainly throughout the 70s and 80s, almost all Republicans were realists, to the point that the realist/idealist divide was the defining split between Republican and Democratic foreign policy.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:04 am
I think the hand-wringing about “sending the wrong message” with regards to Democrats and the military is overblown.
Do swing voters really care if the Secretary of Defense is a Republican or a Democrat? How many will even be aware of it?
November 26th, 2008 at 11:08 am
I’ve argued elsewhere that the most important thing that Obama can do, for the sake of the nation, is straight up paternalism directed at Republicans: reward the good and punish (or better yet ignore) the bad in a very carrot and stick kinda way… The nation, overall, will be better 4 years from now with a stronger,realisitc and much less extreme, GOP. Win win for everyone.
Keeping Gates at Defense is in keeping with this line of thinking.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Joe from lowell –
November 26th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Joe from lowell –
November 26th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Try this again.
joe from Lowell –
Ah, I see. Before the “faith-based” revolution.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:09 am
I think there’s a lot of logic to keeping Bob Gates on as Secretary of Defense
You know, if Barack Obama had announced a year ago, while he was still campaigning in Iowa, that he planned to make Robert Gates his Secretary of Defense, Larry Summers the head of the NEC, Rahm Emanuel his Chief of Staff and Clinton his Secretary of State, I really, really doubt that the soi-disant liberals currently lauding those picks would be doing so.
The Obama administration has already experienced a phenomenal lowering of expectations among its supporters not seen since the heyday of the Iraq War, when TNR and the Weekly Standard would repeatedly tell us that the war was a success because Catastrophic Thing X hadn’t happened yet. Would 2006 vintage Matt Yglesias have argued there was “a lot of logic” to keeping Gates on in an Obama administration? Hell, 2006 vintage Yglesias would’ve been a lot more upset at the notion of putting Clinton at the State Department. But there’s not even an attempt at independent analysis of Obama going on here; all we get is simple apologetics.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Gates does have some reformist tendancies. An example is him taking on the Air Force as the SecDef – I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s game for implementing Obama’s reforms (if he wasn’t, I’m sure Obama wouldn’t have kept him). Plus, it’ll give him that bi-partisan cred.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Ah, I see. Before the “faith-based” revolution.
Presisely. I can remember when “promoting democracy” as a foreign policy plank was greeted with references to the Grateful Dead and granola.
You know, if Barack Obama had announced a year ago
When the Republicans were still talking about a permanent American presence in Iraq, and saying that withdrawal = surrendering to al Qaeda? Absolutely, liberals would have been turned off.
But now that we won the debate and everybodey from Bob Gates to Hillary Clinton to Ted Kennedy are reading from the same playbook, things have changed.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Once again, I post the summary of America’s Defense Meltdown. We don’t need a “tough” defense, nor do we need “soft power.” We need a smart defense, adapted to the 21st and not the 20th century. And that means out with the old.
Executive Summary:
Chapter Summaries and Recommendations
Chapter 1
Introduction and Historic Overview: The Overburden of America’s Outdated Defenses
Lt. Col. John Sayen (U.S. Marine Corps, ret.)
Our military forces have become high-cost dinosaurs that are insufficiently lethal against most of the enemies we are likely to face. Our forces have also broken free of their constitutional controls to the point where they have essentially become a presidential military. Congress exerts meaningful control neither in peacetime nor in wartime – and has lost all control over going to war. The large peacetime standing army established just before World War II (and maintained ever since) has become a vehicle for misuse by presidents, and multiple other parties both internal and external to the Pentagon.
The large standing forces were supposed to facilitate professional preparation for war, but the essential officer corps never truly professionalized itself. Thus, we were almost invariably unprepared, in mind set and in doctrine, for the conflicts we faced. In both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam, America hurriedly threw together unprofessionally led armies to fight – too often ineffectively. The result, especially today, has been notably mediocre senior military leadership – with only the rarest exceptions. At the same time, our armed forces have become ruinously expensive, as they simultaneously shrink, age, and become remarkably less capable. In Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, the Army and Marine Corps have been stretched to the limits of their strength to fight enemies not even a tenth as numerous as those they faced in Vietnam. We have become a pampered, sluggish, weak-muscled elephant that can not even deal effectively with mice.
Chapter 2
Shattering Illusions: A National Security Strategy for 2009 – 2017
Col. Chet Richards (U.S. Air Force, ret.)
Decisions by the last two Democratic and Republican administrations have left the country deeply in debt, depleted our military strength, lowered our national standard of living, and strengthened those around the world whose goals conflict with ours. Much of this can be traced to the initially politically-popular use of military force to attempt to solve problems that are inherently social, economic or political and therefore do not admit of military solutions. Chief among the examples are Iraq and Afghanistan, where the initial successes against third-rate military opponents have dragged on into separate occupations of a bewildering array of religious, political, and ethnic groups, few of which wish to be dominated by Americans. The solution requires the next administration to explicitly restrict the use of our military forces to those problems that only military forces can solve and that the nation can rally to, and to eschew the use of our forces to serve hubris, propaganda, or dogma.
The advent of nuclear weapons has limited the utility of military force against other major powers: there will be no replays of World War II. For smaller conflicts, history has shown that military occupations of developing countries or alien cultures will be expensive and very unlikely to succeed. Furthermore, the continuing epidemics of crime and political instability in areas where force was initially successful, as in the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East, show that the West still has no solution to the problem of rebuilding destroyed states.
Recommendations:
The new president needs to
* formally assess the policy objectives for which military force still has utility in today’s world, and
* propose a program of revamping our force sizes and missions, shaped by the essential requirement to act in concert with America’s national ethic and our allies on each of those missions.
In parallel with this presidential revamping, Congress and the president need to
* fundamentally change the preparation and presentation of intelligence so that misuse of force based on false pretext becomes far more difficult, and
* dramatically strengthen regulation of private contractors in the public sector, particularly in the military and intelligence services.
Chapter 3
Leading the Human Dimension Out of a Legacy of Failure
Col. G.I. Wilson (U.S. Marine Corps, ret.) and Maj. Donald Vandergriff (U.S. Army, ret.)
Institutional failures pervade the current management of military men and women, by far our most important defense resource. The end of the Cold War necessitated fundamental change, yet we remain hobbled by an archaic and dysfunctional personnel system in each of the active military services and their all-important reserves. That archaic system fails to recognize and benefit from the new realities of leading human resources in the 21st century. Without fundamental changes in how we nurture and lead our people, there can be no real military reform.
The military’s legacy system is built on flawed constructs: a centralized “beer-can” personnel system, lack of imagination in nurturing leaders, and faulty assumptions about human beings and warfare itself. This concoction is worsened by ingrained behaviors: adversity to risk, preference for the status quo and “group think,” preoccupation with bureaucratic “turf battles,” and valuing contracts above winning wars.
Recommendations:
* The fundamental reform requirement is to learn to lead people first and manage things second. Instead, today we administer people as a subset of managing things.
* The primary route to valuing people is to learn to nurture highly innovative, unshakably ethical thinkers. Sadly, in today’s armed forces such people, those who lead by virtue of their courage, creativity, boldness, vision, honesty and sometimes irreverence, are known as mavericks. The military services must learn it is admirable to disagree with, change, and improve the institution the individual serves and remains loyal to. Such change-seeking individuals are the ones who best adapt and prevail in humankind’s most stressful circumstance: war. They are the war-winning leaders.
Specific recommendations for bringing such people and such values to the fore are articulated in the chapter.
Chapter 4
Maneuver Forces: The Army and Marine Corps after Iraq
Col. Douglas Macgregor (U.S. Army, ret.) and Col. G.I. Wilson (U.S. Marine Corps, ret.)
Today’s Army and Marine warfighting structures have reached block obsolescence. The strategic conditions that created them no longer exist. The problematic structures are characterized by antiquated, inappropriate World War II-style organizations for combat, inventories of aging and broken equipment thanks to unaffordable and mismanaged modernization programs, heavy operational dependence on large, fixed foreign bases, disjointed unit rotational and readiness policies, and a very troubling exodus of young talent out of the ground combat formations.
Compensating for these deficiencies by binding ground forces more tightly within “networked” systems, such as the Army’s misguided Future Combat Systems, does not work and is prohibitively expensive.
Reform lies in changes that promise both huge dollar savings and powerful synergies with proven – not hypothetical – technologies and concepts fielded by the air and naval services. This means a laser-like focus on people, ideas, and things in that order.
Recommendations:
* Because defined, continuous fronts on the hypothetical World War II model do not exist today and because ubiquitous strike capabilities and proliferating weapons of mass destruction make the concentration of ground forces very dangerous, mobile dispersed warfare is the dominant form of combat we must be prepared to conduct.
* Needed organizational change means new, integrated, more fundamentally “joint” command and control structures for the nation’s ground maneuver forces. This approach expands the nation’s range of strategic options in modern warfare operations against a spectrum of opponents with both conventional and unconventional capabilities.
* Because Marines are now much more likely to conduct Army-like operations far from the sea than they are to re-enact Inchon-style amphibious landings, it is time to harmonize Army and Marine deployments within a predictable joint rotational readiness schedule.
* The authors focus on ways to reorient thinking, organization, and modernization in the ground maneuver force to:
* reshape today’s force for new strategic conditions (mobile dispersed warfare);
* exploit new technology, new operational concepts, new organizations, and new approaches to readiness, training and leadership; and
* fundamental reorganization and reform.
The authors do not pretend that the changes outlined in the chapter will gain easy acceptance. New strategies, tactics and technologies promising more victories and fewer casualties are typically viewed as threatening by general officers and senior civilians who are comfortable with the status quo.
Chapter 5
A Traveler’s Perspective on Third and Fourth Generation War
William S. Lind
While the United States Marine Corps espouses a doctrine of Third Generation (maneuver) War, it is organized and mentally prepared only for Second Generation (attrition) Warfare. The chapter proposes an alternative structure that reflects Third Generation doctrine.
Recommendations:
* Most Marines should again become “trigger pullers.”
* The size of the officer corps above company grades should be drastically reduced.
* A “regimental” system – based on the battalion – would provide mentally and morally cohesive units through unprecedented personnel stability.
* Reserve units should become as capable as active-duty battalions.
* Marines need to convert from line infantry to highly mentally and physically agile, true light (”Jaeger”) infantry.
* Marine aviation should be restructured and re-equipped to reflect the “Jaeger Air” close air support concept with far less costly and inestimably more effective task-designed, single purpose aircraft.
The chapter concludes with a brief look at Fourth Generation War concepts, for which the proposed Marine Corps force structure would also be suitable.
Chapter 6
The Navy
William S. Lind
America’s geography dictates that it must remain a maritime power, but today’s U.S. Navy remains structured to fight the aircraft carrier navy of Imperial Japan. Reform can only proceed from a fundamental understanding that people are most important, ideas come second, and hardware, including ships, is only third.
Recommendations:
* The main personnel deficiency of the Navy is an officer corps dominated by technicians. That reinforces the Navy’s Second Generation institutional culture. Reform requires adopting a Third Generation culture and putting the engineers back in the engine room.
* Fourth Generation War demands the Navy shift its focus from Mahanian battles for sea control to controlling coastal and inland waters in places where the state is disintegrating.
* Submarines are today’s capital ships, and the U.S. Navy must remain a dominant submarine force while exploring alternative submarine designs.
* Aircraft carriers remain useful “big boxes.” However, they should be decoupled from standardized air wings and thought of as general purpose carriers, transporting whatever is useful in a specific crisis or conflict.
* The Navy should acquire an aircraft similar to the Air Force’s A-10 so it can begin to effectively support troops on the ground.
* Cruisers, destroyers and frigates are obsolescent as warship types and should be retired; their functions assumed by small carriers or converted merchant ships.
* The Navy should build a new flotilla of small warships suited to green and brown waters and deployable as self-sustaining “packages” in Fourth Generation conflicts. (The Navy’s current “Littoral Combat Ship” is an apparently failed attempt at this design.)
Chapter 7
Reversing the Decay of American Air Power
Col. Robert Dilger (U.S. Air Force, ret.) and Pierre M. Sprey
The Air Force’s resource allocations and tactical/strategic decisions from the 1930s until today have been dominated by airpower theoretician Giulio Douhet’s 1921 assertion that strategic bombardment of an enemy’s heartland can win wars independently of ground forces.
The authors’ analysis of combat results and spending since 1936 shows the unchanging dominance of that strategic bombardment paradigm has caused the Air Force to:
a) leave close air support capabilities, which have proven far more effective than strategic bombing in determining the outcome of conflicts, essentially unfunded over the last 70 years;
b) habitually underfund effective air-to-air capabilities; and
c) engender serious U.S. military setbacks and unnecessary loss of American lives in each modern conflict America has fought.
The actual combat results of strategic bombardment campaigns in each conflict since 1936 show a consistent pattern of failure to accomplish the assigned military objectives – and often, no noticeable military results at all. Supporting these bombardment campaigns always entailed very high budget costs, far higher than the costs of close support or air-to-air. There were also consistently high losses of aircrew lives in pursuing strategic bombardment – far higher than the losses in close support or air-to-air. In every theater with sustained air opposition, neither strategic bombardment nor close support proved possible without large forces of air-to-air fighters.
Wherever we mounted significant close support efforts (invariably opposed by bombardment-minded senior Air Force leaders) in mobile battle situations-no matter whether we were retreating or advancing-the military gains proved to be remarkable, out of all proportion to the resources expended.
The implications of the last 70 years of combat results for future Air Force aircraft procurement are not hard to grasp.
Recommendations:
* First and foremost, we must abandon a business-as-usual procurement process hopelessly centered on aircraft specifically designed for-or compromised for – strategic bombardment.
* For the first time in U.S. history, we need to provide in peacetime for real, single-purpose close air support forces of substantial size. The only aircraft to succeed in real world close support have been ones that are highly maneuverable at slow speeds and highly resistant to anti-aircraft artillery impacts. High speed jets have consistently failed in close support.
* We must provide adequate air-to-air fighter forces to make close support (and perhaps some small amount of deeper “interdiction” bombing) viable in the face of air-to-air opposition.
To actually implement such forces,
* we must abandon wish-list planning that comes up with outrageously expensive, unimplementable procurement plans.
* Instead, we must fit our aircraft development and procurement plans within fixed, real world budgets – and make sure we develop and buy aircraft so austerely designed for single missions (and therefore much more effective than multi-mission “gold-platers”) that we can procure large, adequate forces.
* The authors present a radically new procurement plan, based on new close support, air-to-air, “Forward Air Control,” and “dirt-strip” airlift aircraft designs of greatly superior effectiveness and vastly lower unit cost. These will make possible buying over 9,000 new, highly effective airframes over the next 20 years – all within current U.S. Air Force budget levels.
Air forces based on these concepts will have unprecedented effectiveness in either conventional or counterinsurgency warfare.
Chapter 8
Air Mobility Alternatives for a New Administration
James P. Stevenson
The Pentagon’s current plans for air mobility should not continue; they are not plausible. The United States has the best air mobility capability in the world. Nevertheless, it comes at excessive cost. Even with record-level defense spending, current plans for air mobility are impossible to achieve without huge budget increases – increases which are unnecessary and even counter-productive.
Recommendations:
* To reduce the cost of the tanker fleet, the U.S. Air Force should start work on a smaller, cheaper, more tactically effective tanker (KC-Y) as quickly as possible. The Air Force should also stop the currently contemplated buy of large, too expensive KC-X tankers at about 100 aircraft. There exist other innovative ideas to provide more capability at lower cost.
* For strategic air- and sea-lift, the Pentagon should reduce the number of strategic airlifters to approximately 260, which implies retiring C-5As and stopping the buy of C-17s at about 205 aircraft. The Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) should be increased by at least ten percent. The capacity for fast strategic sealift should be doubled since it dominates the actual fast deployment capabilities of U.S. forces.
* Tactical airlift capability should be about 400 aircraft. The mix of aircraft should include faster retirement of older C-130s, stopping the egregiously high cost C-130J buy at about 100 aircraft, buying more of the smaller, cheaper, more useful-to-the-Army C-27Js, and pursuing a new commercial-derivative airlifter that is more cost-effective than anything in current Air Force plans. The Army’s Joint Heavy Lift program should be cancelled.
* For Special Operations air capabilities, the CV-22 should be stopped immediately, replacing them with one or more new, cost-effective helicopters. New variants of the C-130Js and C-27J should replace MC-130s and AC-130s. A new irregular warfare wing of small, manned aircraft should be started instead of less effective unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
The chapter advocates a strategic focus on aerial refueling and special operations air warfare, with less emphasis on strategic and tactical airlift. In all cases, innovative solutions that run counter to conventional wisdom allow us to lower costs without loss of overall capability.
Chapter 9
The Army National Guard, the Army Reserve, and the Marine Corps Reserve
Bruce I. Gudmundsson
The chapter lays out the broad outlines of a new approach to the recruitment, organization, and training of reserve forces. Essentially, it would mean a reserve component much more closely tied in outlook and mission to the citizenry it defends.
Recommendations:
* A somewhat smaller National Guard should focus on homeland security missions
* Most units of the Army Reserve and Marine Corps Reserve should be organized as “lifecycle units,” organizations in which members remain together for the entire course of their initial terms of service. As such, these units should receive much more training than they currently receive.
* Training schedules and benefits packages should be custom tailored to the civilian occupations of their individual members. For example, units composed of college students – of which there would be many based on the recreated incentives packages – will have longer periods of initial training as well two-month periods of training each summer. Similarly, units composed of people with seasonal occupations would train in their “off-season.”
Chapter 10
Long in Coming, the Acquisition Train Wreck Is Here
Thomas Christie
After more than four decades of supposedly well-structured defense planning and programming, as well numerous studies aimed at reforming its multi-billion dollar acquisition system, the Pentagon’s decision process governing our defense establishment is clearly broken. We need far-reaching, even radical, remedial initiatives. The evidence supporting the need for drastic action abounds.
Despite the largest defense budgets in real terms in more than sixty years, we have a smaller military force structure than at any time during that period, one that is equipped to a great extent with worn-out, aging equipment.
Granted, the employment of our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has contributed to the wear and tear on our combat and support equipment, particularly for our ground forces. The bill for repairing and replacing that equipment (reported to be in the hundreds of billions) is mostly yet to be faced. And, more to the point, this only exacerbates the already severe modernization problems faced by all three services. Those problems have been on the horizon for decades and would have plagued our forces even if the war on terror had not evolved as ruinously as it has since 2001.
A fundamental source of DOD’s problems is the historically long pattern of unrealistically high defense budget projections combined with equally unrealistic low estimates of the costs of new programs. The net effect is for DOD’s leaders to claim that they can afford the weapons they want to buy. Thus, there is no urgency to face up to the needed hard choices on new weapon systems. In addition, there are other looming demands on the budget, such as health care for both active and retired personnel and planned increases in ground forces manpower. Any confidence that DOD’s in-house goals can be achieved in the future (even with increased spending) is sorely mistaken.
Recommendations: See below for Chapter 11.
Chapter 11
Understand, Then Contain America’s Out-of-Control Defense Budget
Winslow T. Wheeler
As Thomas Christie and Franklin C. “Chuck” Spinney have argued, major U.S. defense components are now smaller, older, and less operationally ready than at any time in recent history. This collapse has occurred in the face of the highest levels of defense spending since the end of World War II. This is not compensated by the (false) illusion that our smaller military forces are more effective due to their “high tech,” sophisticated nature. In fact, what many proclaim to be “high tech” is merely high complexity – at extraordinarily high budgetary and operational cost. The armed forces, Congress, and many others seek to solve the problems with still more money, which will only accelerate the shrinking, the aging, and the diminishing of combat effectiveness. In fact, if existing ways of thinking and current processes are employed, more money will guarantee failure. Decades of data make this counter intuitive conclusion unavoidable.
Recommendations:
* There can be no recovery without being able to track how DOD spends its money, which is not now done. The first order of priority is to force DOD to comply with federal laws and regulations that require financial accountability – without permitting the exercise of the many loopholes Congress and DOD managers have created and exploited.
* Analytical integrity based on real world combat history must be applied to the rigorous evaluation of DOD programs and policies, now riddled with bias and advocacy. In the absence of objective, independent assessment of weapons program cost, performance, and schedule (especially at the beginning of any program), DOD decision-makers have no ability to manage programs with any competence whatsoever.
* A new panel of independent, objective professionals (with no contemporaneous or future ties whatsoever with industry or other sources of bias and self-interest) should be convened by the president to assess
* the extent to which DOD programs and policies do or do not fit with current world conditions
* the president’s national security strategy, and – very importantly -
* a realistic assessment of the reduced budget that will be available for the Department of Defense.
* This panel should provide the secretary of defense his primary advice on how to proceed with DOD program acquisition and management until such time as the military services and the regular civilian bureaucracy have demonstrated sufficient competence and objectivity to re-assert primary control.
* The president should expect strong protest from the advocates of business-as-usual in the military services, the civilian Pentagon bureaucracy, Congress, industry, and “think tanks.” Many such individuals cannot now conceive of a U.S. national security apparatus run outside the boundaries of what they have grown accustomed to and what they have advocated. Most will refuse to adapt. Those who can adapt, especially in the military services, should be brought back into the decision-making structure. Those who cannot should anticipate a career outside the Department of Defense.
http://snipurl.com/6ue62
November 26th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Hey, I’m glad you found this comment after the preceding 18,400 italicized words. And here it goes:
“Danzig?!? ROCK!!!! We go where EAGLES DARE!!!”
November 26th, 2008 at 11:31 am
A big part of “pulling the truck out of the ditch” is major cuts in defense spending. Not just dialing down the rate of increase, or stretching out programs (which only makes them more expensive in the long run). Cuts, intelligent decisions to stop wasting money on expensive super-weapon boondoggles while spending more on ground forces where it’s needed.
The analogy is actually more like tank recovery, which is something I got some experience with in the Army.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:42 am
“Danzig?!? ROCK!!!! We go where EAGLES DARE!!!”
“…and to our enemies, I say only: your future’s in an oblong box. Don’t try to be a baby.”
November 26th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
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November 26th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Gates and Obama’s other far right picks make one wonder if US elections make even the slightest bit of difference. Gates has been a miserable failure with terrible judgement.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
It’s pretty obvious Obama is as aware as Matt Yglesias of the defense budget ambush and I’m pretty sure he took it into consideration when he decided to keep Gates on.
Gates may already have some ideas on how to cut the budget without giving neocon loonies too much ammunition to go after Obama.
In addition, it’s a good bet both Danzig and Flournoy will have their own contacts in the White House — if not with Obama then maybe with Biden — and will serve as a counterbalance to any leftover Bushian impulses Gates might have.
Finally, all I’ve ever heard is that Gates will be there for a year or so — just long enough to get the Iraq withdrawal under way and provide some cover for some serious budget rationalization. Barring something blowing up somewhere, Obama isn’t going to have any time to start any serious foreign policy initiatives for the next year anyway, what with a tanking economy and Iraq on his plate. In a year or so he can appoint someone he really wants in the job and start moving on his other foreign policy plans.
November 26th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
And then there’s this, which Matt would have read last night if he hadn’t bitched about my sending him all that “spam”:
US military ripe for a fight with Obama
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JK25Ak01.html
November 27th, 2008 at 5:48 am
Gates was one of the finest presidents in Texas A&M’s history. He managed to convince liberal professors, conservative Corp members and everyone in between that he had the school’s best interest in mind, not some political agenda. When he left, all missed him. He has done the same at the DoD. He has smacked down the Airforce’s nonsense which right there makes him better than anyone in a long time. He has no agenda of getting elected for anything and you can be doing the right thing will be his mantra.
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April 15th, 2009 at 10:02 am
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April 16th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Greeting. Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack.
I am from Kenya and learning to speak English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: “Ita software, located in cambridge, massachusetts, usa, develops software for the travel and airline industry.”
Thank :p Wes.