Warning that the kind of massive budget increases seen since 2001 cannot continue, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is ordering the Pentagon to tighten its belt in ways that could squeeze its massive bureaucracy and create serious heartburn on Capitol Hill and in the defense industry.
“The attacks of September 11th, 2001, opened a gusher of defense spending that nearly doubled the base budget over the last decade, not counting supplemental appropriations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Gates said Saturday during a speech at the Eisenhower Library. “Given America’s difficult economic circumstances and parlous fiscal condition, military spending on things large and small can and should expect closer, harsher scrutiny. The gusher has been turned off, and will stay off for a good period of time.”
Since President Barack Obama took office, Gates, a Bush appointee kept on by the new administration, has preached the gospel of austerity, moving to rein in the cost of out-of-control weapons systems – but now he wants that restraint will spread more widely across the Pentagon.
It’s a matter of necessity, he said. The military’s nearly $700 billion war chest may still grow slightly, but not enough to properly equip the military at its current size.
Given the economic circumstances, Gates told reporters that the president and Congress would probably think very hard about whether to engage in another conflict that didn't directly threaten U.S. security. Iran isn’t one such conflict now, but said it could become one.
As an example, Gates cited some telling statistics about large weapons platforms.
“Should we really be up in arms over a temporary projected shortfall of about 100 Navy and Marine strike fighters relative to the number of carrier wings, when America’s military possesses more than 3,200 tactical combat aircraft of all kinds? Does the number of warships we have and are building really put America at risk when the U.S. battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined, 11 of which belong to allies and partners? Is it a dire threat that by 2020 the United States will have only 20 times more advanced stealth fighters than China?
Pointing out that defense bureaucracies have mushroomed, even as the rest of the world has streamlined, Gates asks why we can't be more efficient?
Even as the US military scaled back its forces in the 1990s, the Pentagon continued to add layers of management, he said.
The trends were unsustainable and the approach was outdated, he said.
"The private sector has flattened and streamlined the middle and upper echelons of its organization charts, yet the Defense Department continues to maintain a top-heavy hierarchy that more reflects 20th century headquarters superstructure than 21st century realities," he said.
As an example, Gates said that a request for a dog handling team in Afghanistan had to be approved by five different headquarters led by four-star officers.
One reason, of course, is that Congress often treats military spending as their personal piggy bank with constituents back home.
Gates's call for "root-and-branch" changes and his questioning of whether the current number of headquarters, flag-officers and commands were necessary could trigger a struggle with groups that have major clout in Congress.
Jacques Gansler, who served as the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer from 1997 until 2001, said Gates' biggest hurdle may be winning over members of Congress who are liable to say: "'We all want to make savings but not in my district.'"
Gansler said the secretary's goal of saving 3 percent was doable through efficiencies such as greater competition for contracts, streamlining computer systems and easing requirements that half of all maintenance work on U.S. weapons systems be done at U.S. government depots.
"We'll get this done," Gates said, promising to spearhead a review to reduce wasteful spending and slash bureaucratic overhead. But it is unclear how long Gates will remain in the job to follow through on what he acknowledged would be a "long-term process."
In the end, though, Secretary Gates notes taht Ike was more right than wrong.
Other presidents and defense secretaries have tried to rein in what was seen as unnecessary Pentagon spending, in particular big-ticket items beloved by the so-called “iron triangle” of military services, defense contractors, and their champions in Congress – the “military-industrial complex” Eisenhower famously warned of in his 1961 farewell address to the nation.
But “looking back from today’s vantage point, what I find so compelling and instructive was the simple fact that when it came to defense matters, under Eisenhower real choices were made, priorities set and limits enforced,” he said. “This became increasingly rare in the decades that followed, despite the best efforts of some of my predecessors and other attempts at reform over the years.”
And Robert Haddick has called for Gates to do some self-examination before pounding on the services next time.
How right is Gates? Doesn't matter. In the era of high unemployment, atrophying manufacturing base, Congressional uncertainty over anti-incumbent attitudes, and the unwillingness to cut anything remotely military-flavored in a time of war, will ensure that the money flows, no matter how ill-distributed or unnecessarily spent. Dollars will flow because the bureaucrats who take a Chinese-style "long view" of these multi-decade programs can afford to wait out political appointees while soaking the taxpayers for plenty of retirement-creditable 'public service' years without regard to whether or not they're *really* making the country any more safe. Unless you fire the entire government and make them all re-apply for their jobs, it ain't happening.
By: Brant
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