The Absurd Discussions at OSD

There's been constant chatter around the Beltway about when the day comes where the Defense Department is going to get wacked. Some day, and this will not be tomorrow or next year or even before 2012, the defense budget will have to fall from its incredible rise. All things must eventually return to the norm. This NYT article notes the sentiments.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has sought to contain the budget-cutting demands by showing Congress and the White House that he can squeeze more efficiency from the Pentagon’s bureaucracy and weapons programs and use the savings to maintain fighting forces.
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Mr. Gates is calling for the Pentagon’s budget to keep growing in the long run at 1 percent a year after inflation, plus the costs of the war. It has averaged an inflation-adjusted growth rate of 7 percent a year over the last decade (nearly 12 percent a year without adjusting for inflation), including the costs of the wars. So far, Mr. Obama has asked Congress for an increase in total spending next year of 2.2 percent, to $708 billion — 6.1 percent higher than the peak under the Bush administration.

Mr. Gates is arguing that if the Pentagon budget is allowed to keep growing by 1 percent a year, he can find 2 percent or 3 percent in savings in the department’s bureaucracy to reinvest in the military — and that will be sufficient money to meet national security needs. In one of the paradoxes of Washington budget battles, Mr. Gates, even as he tries to forestall deeper cuts, is trying to kill weapons programs he says the military does not need over the objections of members of Congress who want to protect jobs.

I don't quite agree with that assessment. DOD is going through some "efficiency drills" and forcing agencies to examine what they're doing and to give money back to OSD, but it's to reinvest in other weapon systems, other modernization efforts, so that no one has to make the tough decision to allocate funds for either modernization or combat operations in the Middle East. So SecDef Gates goes to the Defense Business Board and says, hey, help me out here with overhead costs. There's got to be some waste in overhead - there always is, right?

So I read in the Defense News that the DBB study group has some recommendations:

• disestablish the OSD Networks and Information Integration Office, because they have no authority to mandate anything to anyone
• Freeze all hiring actions for OSD, Joint Staff, or any combatant commands, because they're all fat enough from previous hiring actions over the past decade
• Eliminate the US Joint Forces Command, because they've got the most contractors of all of the combatant commands. Yeah. Really sound logic there.
• Curtail all "indirect spending" like duty station moves, business travel costs, and conferences, because those are all silly, unproductive things, too

Now I'm all for "efficiency" but this is just silly. In an attempt to find easy, fast ways to reduce defense spending, they'd rather carelessly cut into the muscle instead of looking for the real cost drivers - health care costs, recruitment and training costs, the ever-climbing costs of developing new equipment, and, oh, yeah, committing to unending combat operations in Afghanistan. Cutting back on hiring actions and travel and conference costs are only going to hurt the organization in the long run by reducing govvies and military staff to unimaginative drones handcuffed to their desks.

The USJFCOM hit is particularly annoying. The study group sees 14 subcommands and organizations in USJFCOM and finds out that there are more contractors than there are govvies, and so there must be something wrong. I wonder if they've considered that there is a cap on government strength and joint military billets, and given a stressful wartime environment, everyone (even USJFCOM) is being asked to do more with less. So of course it hire contractors - that allows a flexible approach to getting work done, then you can dismiss the contractors.

Here's the thing - if you want to get rid of USJFCOM, fine, but someone else is going to have to pick up the work. USJFCOM does a great deal of work for OSD and the Joint Staff, but since you've recommended to stop hiring for those agencies, the other combatant commands don't want the work, and the services sure as hell don't need the extra work, exactly who picks up the work? I know it may look like a lot of ash and trash, but someone thought this work had to be done. The DBB or OSD better have a transition plan, and if they transfer the work, they better supply bodies to the new organization - and then you haven't really saved any money, have you?

I'm not disparaging the DBB - they appear to have looked at a lot of business issues for OSD and they even have suggested priorities for the senior defense leadership. The problem is, as it always is, implementation - actually forcing bureaucrats to do their jobs, to become more far-looking, more efficient, more serious about addressing strategy and budget issues. And because our political process forces a turnover of all its political appointees every four to eight years, it does make it hard to envision success here. But honestly, DBB members, a little more creativity? A little more "truth to power" would be nice.

UPDATE: I missed another recommendation - the DBB suggests firing 15% of the civilian work force, pushing the numbers back to 2003 levels. This would mean about 111,500 people out of work. Yeah, good luck with that one.

Comments

[James]

"...health care costs, recruitment and training costs, the ever-climbing costs of developing new equipment..."

Whose healthcare costs do you cut and how do you cut it? Do we stop recruting and training people? Some equipment can be done without but, we have pinned our hopes on fighting future wars by maintaining a technological edge. It seems, as is usual, the problem is no one is serious about the budget debacle, no one wants to cut any programs, while it may be political suicide for the Virginia delegation to roll over on this, the Virginia delegation hase been reaping the rewards of a large and bloated government/military for a long time, and will do so after JFCOM is gone. Suck it up comes to mind. As an example of the bloat that needs to be trimmed, of the 150,000 troops in Iraq, approx 30,000 were actually troops patrolling the streets, how is this acceptable? JTF training and experimentation can remain in place with a much reduced staff under the auspices of JCS/STRATCOM/NORTHCOM...whomever, but the rest of JFCOM can go.

[Old MSgt]

Everyone threatened with cuts will howl that they are vitally necessary, but this is obviously not the case. Tough calls can involve eliminating useful activities, but not everything useful can be retained.
This is about forcing, repeat forcing, a situation by removing the option of perpetual agency bloat.