FEATURE ARTICLE

March 2005

Washington Pulse

by Joe Pappalardo

Defense Budget: Pay Now or Pay Later?
The question that keeps defense insiders buzzing around these days is how much of the nation’s ballooning deficit realistically can be trimmed even as Pentagon’s budgets continue to rise. Although the Pentagon has been under pressure for decades to slash unneeded big-ticket programs that are perceived as Cold-War relics, even deficit hawks warn that it may be irresponsible to cut weapon systems indiscriminately, just for the sake of reducing the federal deficit.

“I think President Bush’s words are sincere, that he wants to reduce the budget. But I don’t think his policies are yet consistent with those words,” says Michael E. O’Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Tax cuts suggest we are not serious about deficit reduction. In this environment, I don’t think the Defense Department should be asked to make significant cuts to reduce the deficit.”

His prediction, nevertheless, is that the Defense Department’s contribution will be largely “in the spirit of symbolism or modest chipping away.” At worst, he said, the Defense Department is going to offer up $5 billion to $10 billion a year, a modest reduction in a $450 billion-a-year deficit.

Winning Isn’t Everything, But ‘Metrics’ Help
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously asked his senior advisors in October 2003 if they could come up with ways to measure the Defense Department’s performance in the war on terrorism.

Although it’s a valid question, the answer is, it can’t be done, says Douglas Feith, the outgoing undersecretary of defense for policy. “I don’t think we’ve gotten the complete refinement of ‘metrics’ that would allow you to give a mathematical response to the question the secretary raised,” Feith tells reporters.

Rumsfeld’s memo noted that, “today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more

terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?”

Officials Advised to Tone Down ‘Joint’ Rhetoric
Pentagon officials like to drone on about the “jointness” of every aspect of military operations. That thinking is also becoming pervasive in the development and procurement of weapon systems. The emphasis on “joint,” however, has gone too far and may backfire, warns retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales Jr., former commandant of the Army War College.

“We all want to be joint,” he tells a Navy conference. “But frankly, I’m getting so sick of the pleadings from the Joint Staff trying to make every piece of warfare joint.” What’s happening in Iraq, he said, is joint to some extent, “but it’s all about soldiers and Marines.”

In many ways, this obsession with “jointness,” he adds, “becomes almost an impediment to melding together” concepts from different services. As an example, he cites the difficulties the Navy and Marine Corps are having in garnering Army and Air Force support for the development of high-tech floating bases, which would be used by all services.

Advantages of Info-Tech Overestimated
According to the thinking that prevails in the Defense Department today, information technology is more important than old-fashioned military hardware, such as fighter jets, observes Loren Thompson, of the Lexington Institute, a defense industry think tank.

The growing emphasis on “net-centric” warfare, he says, also offers a convenient rationale to budget officials seeking to trim expensive weapon systems, such as the F/A-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter.

This line of reasoning has serious flaws, Thompson contends, because it assumes that no other country would have an edge over the United States in information technology. “The problem with net-centric warfare is that other countries can compete much more successfully,” he asserts. “If you walk around Best Buy or any electronics store, see if you can find anything made in the United States. Other countries can compete much more successfully.”

Network-centric warfare may be a worthwhile option, he adds, “to deal with fools such as Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.” But it may not work against more sophisticated enemies, such as China.

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