In the words of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the Pentagon’s “bureaucracies have swelled to cumbersome and top-heavy proportions and grown accustomed to operating with little consideration to cost.”
Indeed, the defense budget has doubled over the past decade, as has the number of service contract personnel. Even the number of flag officers has grown by 11 percent since 9/11. Bloat, it appears, is ubiquitous.
Gates has repeatedly called for reform. He has emphasized, though, that he is not trying to cut the defense budget, but rather to reallocate its resources so the department can preserve its current force structure and fund modernization programs. He insists that his efficiency initiative does not amount to a budget cutting exercise, but it sure resembles one.
With a defense budget exceeding $700 billion, the problem for Gates is not that there isn’t enough money but that the process for allocating resources is broken. Just like his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld, Gates does not have confidence in the institution’s budgeting system, which is known as PPBE, for planning, programming, budgeting and execution. The 40-year-old PPBE was designed to match a well-considered defense strategy to available resources.
The problem of how to adequately allocate resources has worsened since 9/11. Possible reasons: The PPBE system doesn’t have the stabilizing and organizing features it should, key players are subverting them, or stakeholders are ignoring them. All three are probably true.
A dysfunctional power structure can be blamed on partisan leadership, conflicts of interest, parochial politics, institutional inertia and complacency. These are cultural issues that must be tackled by future leaders.
The fundamental issue is that the United States needs a long-term defense strategy, while retaining flexibility to adjust to unforeseen threats and conditions. Further, this has to be done in the context of the nation’s economic challenges. Invest too much national treasure into defense and Americans suffer an enormous opportunity cost, because many other national priorities such as education, debt reduction, transportation, infrastructure, cleaner energy, environmental clean-up, social services and healthcare will go begging. Allocate too little resources to defense and the nation’s security will be at risk, because it will not have the superior forces and equipment needed to combat future enemies. Deftly straddling these extremes and managing complexity to achieve a balanced defense enterprise is paramount.
The budget process is ultimately a balancing act, where selected segments of the government and industry determine the allocation of resources to a vast array of requirements. The process, however, has not worked.
One problem that gets in the way of balancing resources is that the defense agency heads and service chiefs expect to be allocated their traditional shares of the defense budget pie. The allocation has not changed materially since the start of the Cold War. But the reality is that shares of the pie are only loosely traceable to military strategy.
Secretaries of defense have failed to temper the services’ addictions by exercising leadership to bring sanity and discipline to the process. Too often secretaries are beholden to uniformed leaders and wily, seasoned civil servants because they have limited experience in defense matters and they practice a tradition of deferring to senior Pentagon operators. Some may even have been intimidated by the enormity of the task.
Sometimes, the Pentagon’s civilian leaders defer the “draining of the swamp” because they are focused on the “alligators” nipping at their feet. Former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin reportedly tried to break the mold of rigid funds allocation by service, but he failed amidst other distractions, including conflict in Somalia.
Another obstacle to strategy-based budgeting is that the services’ money easily finds its way into dubious programs. A case in point is the Army’s procurement of yet another camouflage uniform — a MultiCam pattern at a cost of $270 million — for use in Afghanistan. The existing Army camouflage design was supposed to be versatile enough for both Iraq and Afghanistan, and other parts of the world. It lasted six years. What happened? According to one theory, the services change their uniforms as a sort of mild sedative to divert service members’ attention from the dirty tasks at hand and to attract a new generation of young people. Senior leaders understand, like Napoleon, that soldiers are as drawn to distinctive uniforms as they are to a “handful of ribbons.” The real value of another camouflage pattern is questionable because each service has a different pattern for operating in the same geographic environment. This makes distinctive field uniforms a metaphor for wasteful competition between the services.
Where there is smoke, there is not necessarily fire. For years Pentagon officials have touted reform concepts such as transformation and a revolution in military affairs, yet, on the management front, little has come of it. In reality, most change has been prompted by exogenous events and outsiders. Generals and admirals, arguably a conservative, risk-averse and careerist bunch, are loath to challenge the procedures, doctrine and weapons upon which they have built their own careers.
French statesman Georges Clemenceau said that “war is too important to be left to the generals.” The same appears to be true of planning, programming and budgeting. Even when models and analyses indicate little utility for big-ticket systems, the generals and admirals weigh in with “military judgment” to ensure program funding.
In 2008, analyst Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, considered the Navy’s lack of a credible maritime strategy as a case study for the failure of leaders to make hard decisions and to manage the complexities of the PPBE process.
None of the services is immune to this criticism. Recall controversies surrounding the Navy’s on again off again employment of battleships in the 1980s and 1990s, and the specious arguments made for the 600-ship Navy, the A-12 Avenger and the Littoral Combat Ship. The Marines’ V-22 Osprey, AAAV, Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, and the vertical-takeoff version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are stark examples of systems that arguably duplicate capabilities that exist in other programs, or are simply not needed. For the Army it was the Sergeant York air defense system, Heavy Force Modernization, Crusader digitized artillery platform, Comanche helicopter, and the Future Combat Systems, among many others. The Air Force has had its share of white elephants, too. The B1 Bomber was considered a Cold War solution to an obsolete problem. Yet it has been kept around to be expensively shoehorned into every conflict since its rollout to justify its existence. The troubled KC-X tanker procurement has dominated the news for years without resolution. And let’s not forget the Coast Guard’s botched Deepwater cutter acquisition efforts.
If the Pentagon in fact is headed for an era of flat or smaller budgets, the war for resources is certain to intensify among the services.
The disconnect between strategy and resources seems to suit some military leaders just fine if it is the only price they pay to secure their customary budget slice, and to prevent other services or agencies from securing greater portions of the defense budget at their expense.
To ensure success, each service now has in its headquarters a J8/G8/N8 “programs” or “resources” office, which is dedicated to the acquisition and allocation of resources. These offices can be rubber stamps for what the services’ leaders want rather than bastions of objective analysis for the realization of the national military strategy. Even more troubling is the Pentagon’s cost-assessment shop, now called Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE), justifying planning and programming requests rather than objectively assessing them against the national military strategy and the service’s or agency’s missions. This practice is a glaring conflict of interest. This is war all right, as described by George C. Wilson in his seminal book, “This War Really Matters.” It is a “resource war.”
Congress has not played a helpful role in fixing this problem. When he announced his cost-saving initiatives, Gates admitted that Defense Department efficiency and reform is a “politically fraught topic.” Congress has placed legal restraints on the department’s ability to close installations, for instance.
The character of Congress’ involvement indicates that its concerns are not sufficiently strategic or even related to national security, but rather, they are provincial and often petty. Pentagon leaders who honestly try to modify strategy in ways that will hurt certain programs risk running afoul of Congress and its key constituencies – localities and major defense contractors. For example, an aspiring general’s promotion might be held up in the Senate if he or she has not played the game properly.
The C-130J cargo aircraft and medium and heavy trucks come to mind. It did not matter that the planning and programming processes rejected or gave only lukewarm support to these programs. As a political animal, Congress will do as it will, regardless the facts or needs. Not surprisingly, both programs were eventually approved for procurement.
Another example is the alternate engine program for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The Joint Staff has rejected the enormous up-front expenditure and the costs to sustain a second engine program. Yet, some in Congress are undeterred.
It is no wonder that the services and defense agencies have large staffs that pour over the budget numbers in excruciating detail at the expense of broad strategic planning. The staffs seem to be organized around the task of following Congress’ lead, currying favor with it, and keeping the funding flowing to sustain their bureaucracies. To demonstrate this point, Fareed Zakaria observed in a Washington Post editorial that the Pentagon has 10 times as many accountants as there are Foreign Service officers. To some this is a throw-away statistic. To others it screams loudly about what is wrong. Accountants are important, but how do they spend their time? Are they truly accounting for our treasure? Not likely. Today, they are more likely soldiers on the front lines of the resource war.
In Congress, tough policy-making has been ignored, deferred or outsourced to others. Gates appears chagrined that today, there are more than 60 Defense Department boards and commissions studying various issues. This certainly does not warm the cockles of the hearts of those who demand more responsible governance.
Six-year and two-year budgeting might well improve the current PPBE process and give the service and agency staffs more time to conduct strategic planning rather than the frequent and extensive budget drills they do today. This was the intent of changes made to the system in the early 2000s. But Congress, for obvious reasons, does not approve.
Politics should not be an important element of strategic planning. But realists know differently. Politics, by definition, makes the process subjective, contradicting the fundamental aim of the PPBE process, which is the objective matching of strategy, requirements and resources.
Still, we should ask whether the propensity for political expediency gives the United States military forces that are strategically responsive and poised to address both current and future threats and missions.
Current U.S. military superiority might lead one to conclude that the national defense apparatuses are effective enough, if not overwhelmingly successful. The nation’s willingness, though, to spend enormous amounts of national treasure on defense may be masking wasteful inefficiencies and a military not ready for genuine peer challenges. It may take an even more severe economic crisis, or the tragedy and embarrassment of another Task Force Smith, Desert One, Beirut Barracks, or Khobar Towers to expose the many shortcomings of the defense enterprise — shortcomings that are sanctioned by the budget process.
The battles amongst the stakeholders create unnecessary burdens. While some service competition is healthy for the discovery of an optimum national military strategy, much of it leads to waste and duplication — multiple air forces and navies, various camouflage uniforms — duplication that leadership and the budget process have failed to reduce sufficiently.
The PPBE system could succeed if it could surmount deep institutional inertia. As it is currently designed and implemented, it cannot. Structural and cultural changes, better leadership and management, and public interest and awareness are the remedies.
Usually, new blood is required to change culture. The good ole’ boy system just gives us good ole’, but ineffective, solutions. The Pentagon requires new senior civilian and military leaders who must be continually trained to push innovation, objectivity, jointness, efficiency and ethics. To get the ball rolling, the Defense Department must reverse “brass creep,” the assignment of increasingly higher ranked officers to positions previously held by personnel of lower rank.
The future does not appear bright. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, ironically, created the PPBE system to harness the disparate cultures within the Pentagon. It appears he left us a mixed blessing. Donald Rumsfeld, a two-time secretary of defense, was a strong leader, but his power served misguided policies and ideals. His reform initiatives were short circuited by his zeal for war in Iraq.
With Gates, there is a chance to stem inefficiency. Unfortunately, he’s already announced his departure in 2011, giving his efficiency initiatives the appearance of a “hand wave.” Bureaucrats and special interests may find ways to confound his goals. Gates has said he has the commitment of other senior leaders and Congress, but today’s commitments are tomorrow’s inconveniences.
As Gates has pointed out, there is a culture of extravagance throughout the national security enterprise that must be addressed. Gates appears to have the bold vision and moxie of a true leader. The problem is that his actions seem arbitrary and capricious, management by fiat and impulse.
Where is the analysis to support a 10 percent per year cut in white-collar contract personnel? Is it credible to believe that in-sourcing tasks without organic growth is possible? Where is the field input that warrants cuts in advisory reports by 25 percent? And where is the consideration of military value in the decision to eliminate the Joint Forces Command?
It appears that Gates, like so many of his predecessors, has little faith in the established planning and programming system.
The system has to change. Too much is at stake to allow the status quo to remain entrenched.