The Patriot Files Forums  

Go Back   The Patriot Files Forums > Active Duty > Active Duty Concerns

Post New Thread  Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old 09-01-2003, 03:20 AM
Gunner Carvo's Avatar
Gunner Carvo Gunner Carvo is offline
Senior Member
 

Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Earth
Posts: 296
Send a message via AIM to Gunner Carvo Send a message via MSN to Gunner Carvo Send a message via Yahoo to Gunner Carvo
Distinctions
Contributor 
Default Rumsfeld to armed services: Can't we just all get along?

In biggest push in decades, he wants to limit Pentagon infighting. It is a tall task.
By Seth Stern | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON - When major combat operations ended in Iraq, top US generals and admirals all but gushed about how well the military services worked together in the field. Army Special Forces, for example, operated off a Navy aircraft carrier. And Air Force spotters on the ground in Iraq guided Navy planes to their targets.

Unfortunately, says Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, that spirit of cooperation doesn't necessarily extend back to the Pentagon, where services still bicker over what weapons to develop, how to divide up budgets, and the best way to train troops.

"Wars in the 21st century will be fought jointly," Mr. Rumsfeld told a Senate committee in May. "Yet, too often our forces still train and prepare for war as individual services. That needs to change."

The question is, Can he do it?

Almost 20 years after Congress enacted a law prodding the services to operate in greater harmony, Rumsfeld is mounting the most concerted push yet to make that happen on the battlefield and back home..

No one expects the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marines to meld into one. Especially in procurement, interservice rivalry is a time-honored tradition. But by pressing for greater civilian control over what the services buy and how they train, Rumsfeld could nudge them toward greater back-office cooperation.

"It's been a hard to find a way that increases the efficiency of forces," says John White, who served as deputy secretary of defense under President Clinton.

While the task isn't glamorous, the emphasis on joint training and procurement may be crucial to transforming the way the military fights, some observers say.

Interservice rivalries have plagued secretaries of defense ever since the separate Army and Navy were united under a single civilian leader after World War II. When President Truman signed an agreement delineating service roles and missions, the result was a military with two armies and four air forces that squabbled over turf.

Even so, the military has become better at integrating forces on the battlefield in recent decades. When Congress passed the Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1986, the individual services ceded power to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and unified regional combat commanders who command the fighting forces.

Yet observers say the Goldwater-Nichols Act proved far less effective in unifying the military's administrative functions. Its vehicle for coordination - a committee of the services' vice chiefs - is plagued by logrolling, say former high-ranking defense officials. Members end up approving other services' priorities to ensure their requests sail through, too.

Rumsfeld has picked the way the military trains for war as the first fight in the war against service parochialism. The Pentagon requested $1.8 billion over the next six years in its FY 2004 budget to create a new joint-training capability.

As part of Rumsfeld's strategy, a mix of current and retired officers are developing joint strategies at Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va. JFCOM also serves as a voice for regional combat commanders in how the Pentagon develops forces and new weapons.

Rumsfeld has also targeted the way the Pentagon develops and buys weapons as a function that needs to be done more jointly too. He tapped Edward Aldridge, the recently departed under secretary of defense for acquisition, to help form a central body with greater power to determine the military's equipment needs - a function the services now do individually.

"What we need to do is ... say 'What [are] the needs of the Department of Defense in a joint sense?' So that when programs are developed by the services they are by definition born joint," Mr. Aldridge says.

Joint development of weapon systems is supposed to save money by ensuring the weapons can operate with all the services' existing technology from the outset instead of requiring costly retrofitting later.

Thus far, analysts say the services have a decidedly mixed record on developing weapons together. The JSTAR, a flying radar that tracks vehicles on the ground, highlighted the difficulty of merging divergent needs of Air Force and Army.

Observers expect Rumsfeld to use a spate of base closures as another way to force the services to work together. Air Force and Marine planes might be based at the same airfields, for example.

Still, critics - particularly those inside the military - argue that such moves could hinder creativity. "The military has a very effective engine for innovation and that comes through rivalry," says Harvey Sapolsky, an MIT military studies professor.

Mr. Sapolsky says the experience of the Navy and Air Force aircraft since Vietnam shows the value of competition. After it was outperformed by the Navy in skies over Vietnam, the Air Force invested in smart bombs and new training that paid off during Operation Desert Storm. The Navy spent the past decade playing catch up. "If we had one air force we would have done less well," Sapolsky says.

But in the current atmosphere, where promotions depend on joint assignments, officers worry about dissenting over resource allocation. Says one midlevel Marine officer, "At the end of the day, jointness or not, you still have legitimate arguments over how to fight wars and [how] to get the equipment necessary to fight them."
__________________
"I strive to be the best at what I do for many reasons, millions of them actually." - me

"Without me, the war will go on. With me, it could end." - me

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." - JFK

"Nonsolis Radios Sediouis Fulmina Mitto."
(I bring not the rays of the sun but the thunderbolts of Jupiter)

sendpm.gif Reply With Quote
Sponsored Links
  #2  
Old 09-01-2003, 06:13 AM
BLUEHAWK's Avatar
BLUEHAWK BLUEHAWK is offline
Senior Member
 

Join Date: May 2002
Location: Ozarks
Posts: 4,638
Send a message via Yahoo to BLUEHAWK
Distinctions
Contributor 
Default

Gunner -
Interesting...
I'm skeptical though, knowing human nature, and knowing that adding a "newly improved" civilian layer on top of five existing military layers probably won't do much more than encourage people to find ways around it, if it is even a realistic idea to start with.
I know we have that civilian oversight thing going on anyway, but there have been times when that truly went tragically against war-time battle requirements is all. I just think the DOD should be facilitators, not controllers. The commander-in-chief will always be civilian, & that seems like enough in a chain of command sense. I'd rather be hearing directly from the military about what is happening than to have their words parsed for the sake of the party in power every four years.
With a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, it would seem to me that we've got about as good a coordination system as can possibly be expected.
So, if the services feel that "promotions depend on joint assigments" for officers, then they oughta just knock that off. Besides, there's a lot more to the military than solely what the needs of officers are, and they know it better than anyone else.
Now, having said that, if the Secretary of Defense were NOT the political appointee on a presidential cabinet, but rather a GS grade or something, then things might work better. Every time party politics is allowed to enter into military decisions, things do not go well, in my opinion. And as far as I am concerned, this move by Rumsfeld is nothing more than an extension of goals articulated by the American Enterprise Institute, a PRIVATE non-profit think tank whose influence upon the future of our nation is way too dominant already.
So long as I'm being contrary this early in the morning, I might also mention that it ticks me off when writers fail to mention the Coast Guard, by name, in these type of articles.
But then, coming as I do from 30 years of a management/administrative profession, I'm kinda fussy and wary about stuff like this.

Good information, thanks for posting it. That's a great closing saying you use on your page.
sendpm.gif Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is On

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Senate Armed Services Committee Testimony, June 23, 2005 David General Posts 0 06-23-2005 08:42 AM
residents at the Armed Forces Retirement Home sue Rumsfeld MORTARDUDE General Posts 1 05-25-2005 05:25 PM
'Up or Out? in other services catman Airforce 0 03-26-2005 07:42 PM
Armed services seeing healthy recruit figures thedrifter Marines 0 08-21-2003 04:34 AM
Tribute to all Armed Forces members who have ever been involved in any Armed Conflict VIETNAM 1968 Vietnam 0 04-19-2003 10:15 AM

All times are GMT -7. The time now is 01:15 AM.


Powered by vBulletin, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.