[Senate Hearing 114-316]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 114-316
30 YEARS OF GOLDWATER NICHOLS REFORM
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2015
__________
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COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona, Chairman
JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma JACK REED, Rhode Island
JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama BILL NELSON, Florida
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri
KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia
DEB FISCHER, Nebraska JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
TOM COTTON, Arkansas KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York
MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
JONI ERNST, Iowa JOE DONNELLY, Indiana
THOM TILLIS, North Carolina MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska TIM KAINE, Virginia
MIKE LEE, Utah ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine
LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
TED CRUZ, Texas
Christian D. Brose, Staff Director
Elizabeth L. King, Minority Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
__________
november 10, 2015
Page
30 Years of Goldwater-Nichols Reform............................. 1
Locher III, James R., Distinguished Senior Fellow, Joint Special
Operations University.......................................... 5
Hamre, John J., President and Chief Executive Officer, Center for
Strategic and International Studies, and Chairman, Defense
Policy Board Advisory Committee................................ 16
Thomas, Jim, Vice President and Director of Studies, The Center
for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments........................ 21
(iii)
30 YEARS OF GOLDWATER-NICHOLS REFORM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2015
U.S. Senate
Committee on Armed Services
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:04 a.m. in Room
SD-G50, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator John McCain,
chairman of the committee, presiding.
Committee Members Present: Senators McCain, Wicker, Ayotte,
Fischer, Rounds, Ernst, Tillis, Lee, Reed, Nelson, Manchin,
Gillibrand, Blumenthal, Donnelly, Hirono, and King.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHN McCAIN, CHAIRMAN
Senator McCain. Good morning. The committee meets today to
continue our series of hearings focused on defense reform.
This morning's hearing is critical--is a critical
inflection point in our efforts. Our prior hearings have sought
to establish a broad context in which to consider the question
of defense reform. We have evaluated global trends in threats
and technology, their implications for national security, and
what the United States military and the Department of Defense
must do to succeed against these complex and uncertain
challenges.
Today, we begin to look more closely at our defense
organization, and we do so by revisiting the Goldwater-Nichols
Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. This landmark legislation,
which marks its 30th anniversary next year, was the most
consequential reform of the Department of Defense since its
creation. And this committee played a critical role at every
step of the way, from initial study to first draft to final
passage. Put simply, the Goldwater-Nichols reforms would never
have happened without the leadership of the Senate Armed
Services Committee. And yet, to a large degree, the
organization of the Department still reflects those major
decisions and changes made back in 1986. On the whole, those
reforms have served us well, but much has happened in the past
30 years. We need a defense organization that can meet our
present and future challenges. That is why we must ask, Has the
time come to reconsider, and potentially update, Goldwater-
Nichols? And if so, how and in what ways?
We're fortunate to have a distinguished group of witnesses
this morning to help us consider these questions. Dr. John
Hamre, President and CEO of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, is one of our Nation's finest defense
thinkers and leaders. And it all started right here on this
committee, where he was a young staffer at the time of the
Goldwater-Nichols reforms. Mr. James Locher, Distinguished
Senior Fellow at the Joint Special Operations University and
also an old committee hand, he was the lead staffer who helped
bring Goldwater-Nichols into being, and it's safe to say that
no one contributed more to these defense reforms than him. And
finally, Mr. Jim Thomas, Vice President and Director of Studies
at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, is an
accomplished defense strategist and practitioner who spent 13
years recently working inside the defense organization that
Goldwater-Nichols created, including serving as a principal
author of the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review.
I thank all of our witnesses for their testimony today.
Goldwater-Nichols came about in response to a series of
military failures, from the Vietnam War and the failed hostage
rescue in Iran to difficulties during the invasion of Granada.
After years of study, this committee concluded that these
failures were largely due to the inability and resistance of
the military services to function as a more unified force,
especially on strategy and policy development, resource
allocation, acquisition and personnel management, and the
planning and conduct of military operations.
In addition, the committee was concerned that the
Department of Defense had become excessively inefficient and
wasteful in its management and that civilian and military
staffs had grown too large. As a result, Goldwater-Nichols
fundamentally redrew the relationships between the major actors
in the Department. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
was strengthen, provided a deputy given responsibility over the
Joint Staff, and assigned the role of Principal Military
Advisor to the President. Responsibility for planning
conducting military operations was vested in empowered
operational elements, which are now combatant commands
reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense. The service
chiefs were focused more narrowly on their roles as force
providers, not on overseeing day-to-day military operations.
Major changes were made to strengthen joint duty requirements
for military officers. And many of the Packard Commission's
recommendations were adopted to reform the acquisition system,
with an emphasis on strengthening the Office of the Secretary
of Defense.
The record and performance of the U.S. military over the
past 30 years has largely been of--one of unquestioned and
unparalleled success, so the inevitable question that many of
us will ask is, Why change? There are several factors to
consider.
First, as our recent hearings have made clear, our
strategic environment today is radically different. The Cold
War is over, and we face a complex array of threats, from ISIL
[Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] and al-Qaeda to North
Korea and Iran to Russia and China. What all of these threats
have in common is that they are not confined to single regions
of the world. They span multiple regions and domains of
military activity. We must act whether our--we must ask whether
our current organization, with its regional and functional
rigidity, is flexible and agile enough to address these
crosscutting national security missions.
A second factor is technology. The clear consensus in our
recent hearings is that significant technological advancements
are now transforming the nature and conduct of war. Our
adversaries are working to harness these new technologies to
their military benefit. If the United States cannot do the
same, and do it better, we will lose our qualitative military
edge, and, with it, much of our security.
A scarcity of resources for defense is another reason to
consider change. We must spend more on defense. Reform cannot
take the place of sufficient funding. But, the fact is, with
budgets tights--with budgets tight, as they are and seem likely
to remain, the Department of Defense must make smarter and
better use of its resources, to include its people.
That said, the primary goal of reform must be to improve
effectiveness, not just efficiency. And there are serious
questions about the performance of the Department of Defense.
Our defense spending, in constant dollars, is nearly the same
as it was 30 years ago. But, today we are getting 35 percent
fewer combat brigades, 53 percent fewer ships, and 63 percent
fewer combat air squadrons. More and more of our people and
money are in overhead functions, not operating forces. The
acquisition system takes too long, costs too much, and produces
too little. And all too often, we see instances where our
senior leaders feel compelled to work around the system, not
through it, in order to be successful, whether it is fielding
critical and urgently needed new weapons, establishing ad hoc
joint task forces to fight wars, or formulating a new strategy
when we were losing the war in Iraq.
As we consider these questions, Senator Reed and I have
identified six enduring principles that any defense reform
effort must sustain and strengthen. We will consider each of
these principles in the hearings that will follow this one.
They are: 1) providing for a more efficient defense management;
2) strengthening the All-Volunteer Joint Force; 3) enhancing
innovation and accountability in defense acquisition; 4)
supporting the warfighter of today and tomorrow; 5) improving
the development of policy, strategy, and plans; and 6)
increasing the effectiveness of military operations.
Let me say again, in closing, that this oversight
initiative is not a set of solutions in search of problems. We
will neither jump to conclusions nor tilt at the symptoms of
problems. We will follow Einstein's advice on how to approach
hard tasks: spend 95 percent of the time defining the problem
and 5 percent on solutions. We will look deeply for the
incentives and root causes that drive behavior, and we will
always, always be guided by that all-important principle: first
do not harm.
Finally, this must and will be a bipartisan endeavor.
Defense reform is not a partisan issue, and we will keep it
that way. We must seek to build a consensus about how to
improve the organization and operation of the Department of
Defense in ways that can and will be advanced by whomever wins
next year's elections. That is in keeping with the best
traditions of this committee. That's how Goldwater-Nichols came
about, three decades ago, and that is how Senator Reed and I
and all of us here will approach the challenge of defense
reform today.
Senator Reed.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR JACK REED
Senator Reed. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And
thank you for your very thoughtful and bipartisan approach to a
significant issue, the review and reformation of the Goldwater-
Nichols.
But, I'd like to thank you also for bringing together this
distinguished panel of witnesses. As you have pointed out, Mr.
Chairman, Dr. Hamre and Mr. Locher were key to the original
passage of Goldwater-Nichols, and Mr. Thomas is a very, very
thoughtful, perceptive analyst of these issues. In fact, Jim
was the committee's lead staffer for DOD [Department of
Defense] reorganization, and then later served as the Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Special Operations in Low-Intensity
Conflict. John Hamre, as you pointed out, is one of the most
astute observers of the Department of Defense, having served as
Deputy Secretary of Defense and Comptroller in the '90s. So,
thank you both. Of course, Mr. Thomas is someone who continues
to be a expert in analysis of the Department of Defense and
others, at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Almost three decades after passage of Goldwater-Nichols, I
join the Chairman in the view that it is appropriate that we
take stock of what is and what is not working with regard to
the organization and processes of the DOD, given today's
dynamic security challenges, particularly.
The 1986 defense reforms were made necessary by a number of
identified deficiencies at the time, including operational
failures, poor interservice coordination, faulty acquisition
processes, and inadequate strategic guidance. Fortunately, our
military has not experienced any significant operational
failures in recent times, and remains the most effective
fighting force in the world, in no small part because of the
reform put in place approximately 30 years ago. Unfortunately,
DOD does continue to suffer from bureaucratic friction,
acquisition cost and schedule overruns, and difficulties in the
formulation and communication of strategy. Our task at this
juncture is to optimize the Department's organization and
processes and to shape our military to counter the threats and
other challenges they will face in the future while preserving
the important principles of jointness and civilian control of
the military enshrined in the Goldwater-Nichols reforms.
To do so, we should consider smart reforms to the structure
and responsibility of the combatant commanders, the alignment
of roles and missions across the military services, the manner
in which civilian control of the military is exercised, the
size and number of defense agencies and field activities, the
development and acquisition of required capabilities, the
education and compensation of military personnel, and other
relevant matters.
The 1985 staff report of this committee that underpinned
the Goldwater-Nichols Act and was authored by Mr. Locher and
Dr. Hamre, highlighted the challenges and risks in seeking to
reform the Department of Defense. It said, ``The Department of
Defense is clearly the largest and most complex organization in
the free world. For this reason, it is critically important
that if changes are to be made to DOD organizational
arrangements or decisionmaking procedures, the temptation to
adopt simplest--simplistic yet attractive options must be
avoided. Change just for the sake of change would be a critical
mistake.'' Those words remain true today. And I would note that
possibly the most important factor in passing the Goldwater-
Nichols Act was the relentless bipartisan effort of its
sponsors over the course of nearly 5 years to methodically
study relevant issues and build consensus reform, even in the
face of strong opposition from the Department.
The Chairman embodies this determination and bipartisan
approach, and I thank him for that. And I have no doubt that
your testimony and assistance will be very valuable.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator McCain. Thank you.
I welcome the witnesses. And the statements of the
witnesses will be included in the record.
We'll begin with Dr. Hamre.
Dr. Hamre. Mr. Chairman, thank you. May I just ask you to
start with Jim Locher? He was the staff director, and----
Senator McCain. Well, I was----
Dr. Hamre.--I work for him.
Senator McCain. I would be more than pleased to begin with
Mr. Locher.
Welcome back, Mr. Locher.
STATEMENT OF JAMES R. LOCHER III, DISTINGUISHED SENIOR FELLOW,
JOINT SPECIAL OPERATIONS UNIVERSITY
Mr. Locher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm delighted----
Senator McCain. And, by the way, for the record, the two
first--Hamre and Locher are friends and acquaintances for more
than 30 years.
Mr. Locher.
Mr. Locher. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I commend you and Senator Reed for initiating
this important and timely series of hearings. It has been
nearly 30 years since the Goldwater-Nichols Act mandated the
last major reorganization of the Pentagon. That legislation, as
you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, profoundly shaped by this
committee, has served the Department of Defense and the Nation
well. But, no organizational blueprint lasts forever.
To be successful, organizations must be designed and
redesigned to enable effective interactions with their external
environment. And the world in which the Pentagon must operate
has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Threats and
opportunities are more numerous, more varied, more complex, and
more rapidly changing. The changed environment demands Pentagon
decisionmaking that is faster, more collaborative, and more
decentralized.
Mr. Chairman, all public and private organizations are
facing the challenges of a rapidly changing world. Those that
continue to thrive have transformed themselves with innovative
organizational approaches.
The Department of Defense has delayed organizational change
longer than advisable. John Kotter, a leading business scholar,
has observed the price of such delays, and he said, ``The
typical 20th century organization has not operated well in a
rapidly changing environment. Structure, systems, practices,
and culture have often been more of a drag on change than a
facilitator. If environmental volatility continues to increase,
as most people now predict, the standard organization of the
20th century will likely become a dinosaur.''
Unfortunately, the Pentagon remains a typical 20th century
organization. It has intelligent and experienced leaders, but
no organizational strategy for achieving desired outcomes. It
has deep bodies of functional expertise, but cannot integrate
them. It has clear authoritative chains of command, but not the
mechanisms to ensure cross-organizational collaboration. It has
elaborate, slow processes that generate reams of data, but not
the ability to resolve conflicting views. It has a large,
hardworking staff with a mission-oriented ethos, but not a
culture that values information-sharing, collaboration, and
team results.
Mr. Chairman, reforming the Pentagon will require visionary
leadership--I'm sorry--visionary legislation from this
committee and its House counterpart. The intellectual and
political challenges of formulating this legislation will be
staggering. On the intellectual side, modern organizational
approaches differ significantly from past practices. They
require a new mindset and are difficult to implement.
Before passing the Goldwater-Nichols Act, the two Armed
Services Committees worked for years to become knowledgeable on
defense organization and modern organizational practice. A
similar effort will again be needed.
With the Pentagon swamped by multiple contingencies, a full
management agenda, and overhanging budget and staff cuts,
defense officials are likely to argue that now is not the time
to pile defense reform on top. Unfortunately, there is never a
good time to transition an outmoded and overwhelmed bureaucracy
to better, faster, more integrated approaches. Fixing the
Pentagon, Mr. Chairman, is much more than a leadership issue.
Dr. Deming, a systems expert, observed, ``A bad system will
beat a good person every time.''
We have repeatedly seen organizational dysfunction stymie
good leaders. On occasion, good leaders have prevailed.
Secretary Robert Gates was often able to overcome system
limitations, such as with the MRAP [Mine-Resistant Ambush
Protected Vehicles] program. Similarly, General Stanley
McChrystal created effective high-value terrorist targeting
teams in Iraq, despite vast institutional obstacles. But, Gates
and McChrystal did not achieve these results using the system;
they circumvented it. These outcomes were personality-driven,
and the processes they used were not institutionalized. The
system Gates and McCrystal struggled against remained
unchanged. In any case, defense reform is not a matter of
choosing between good leaders and good organization. We must
have both.
If the committee is to succeed in this historic
undertaking, it must adopt and execute a rigorous methodology
for each of reform's two dimensions: intellectual and
political. Changing organizations is difficult. The failure
rate of change efforts in business has remained constant, at 70
percent, over the last 30 years. It is even higher in
government.
The intellectual dimension of this methodology requires
deep study of problems in DOD's performance to enable precise
identification of required reforms. Three approaches are
imperative:
First, identify symptoms, problems, their causes and
consequences. Goldwater-Nichols' historic success resulted from
a rigorous methodology focused on getting beyond symptoms to
identify problems and their root causes.
Second, examine all elements of organizational
effectiveness, such as shared values, processes, structure,
core competencies, staff, culture, and strategy.
Third, examine the entire system. A holistic examination is
critical to meaningful reform.
The methodology's political dimension involves gaining
solid congressional approval of needed reforms and inspiring
first-rate implementation by DOD. Foremost among the components
of a political strategy is creating a sense of urgency.
To set the context for discussing today's problems, it is
useful to revisit the intended outcomes of the Goldwater-
Nichols Act. It sought to achieve nine objectives: strengthen
civilian authority, improve military advice, place clear
responsibility on combatant commanders, ensure commensurate
authority for the combatant commanders, increase attention to
strategy and contingency planning, provide for more efficient
use of resources, improve joint officer management, enhance the
effectiveness of military operations, and improve DOD
management.
The two Armed Services Committees, Mr. Chairman, gave their
highest priority to the five objectives dealing with the
operational chain of command. Not surprisingly, these priority
objectives have received the highest grades for their degree of
success. The four objectives addressing administrative
matters--strategy and contingency planning, use of resources,
joint officer management, and DOD management--have received
middling or poor grades. These areas, among others, Mr.
Chairman, need attention now.
In addition, some reforms identified at the time of
Goldwater-Nichols were not enacted, either because of
opposition or as a result of compromises to gain higher-
priority objectives. Two unachieved reforms were strengthening
the mission orientation of DOD's Washington headquarters, and,
two, replacing the service secretariat and military staff at
the top of each military department with a single integrated
headquarters staff. Thirty years later, these are pressing
needs, with the weak mission orientation ranking as the
Pentagon's greatest organizational shortcoming.
My written statement, Mr. Chairman, discusses 6 additional
problems: inadequate strategic direction--a problem that we
cited at the time of Goldwater-Nichols; inadequate
decisionmaking capacity; absence of a mechanism for rationally
allocating resources to missions and capabilities; weak
civilian leadership at all levels; outdated joint officer
management system; and sporadic guidance and limited oversight
of the 17 defense agencies, such as the Defense Logistics
Agency.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, these hearings represent the
beginning of a critical initiative by the committee. Many
voices will counsel against reform, insisting it is impossible
to do, or at least to do well. In truth, meaningful reform will
be difficult, and a hasty reform without a deep appreciation
for the origins of the behaviors that have limited Pentagon
effectiveness would be a mistake. However, successful reform is
both necessary and possible.
For my part, I encourage the committee to stay the course
and complete the task it has undertaken. It's important to
recognize there are dangers to inaction as well as misguided
action. We would not have our world-class military without the
Goldwater-Nichols Act and the service training revolutions of
the 1970s and 1980s. If the Senate Armed Services Committee
puts forth the same level of effort it mounted 30 years ago, it
will succeed. And the benefits to our servicemen and -women, to
the Department of Defense, and to the Nation will be historic.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Locher follows:]
Prepared Statement by Mr. James R. Locher III
I commend Chairman McCain and Senator Reed for initiating this
important and timely series of hearings. It has been nearly thirty
years since the Goldwater-Nichols Act mandated the last major
reorganization of the Pentagon. That legislation - profoundly shaped by
this committee - has served the Department of Defense (DOD) and nation
extremely well. But no organizational blueprint lasts forever.
To be successful, organizations must be designed and re-designed to
enable effective interactions with their external environments, and the
world in which DOD must operate has changed dramatically over the last
thirty years. Threats and opportunities are more numerous, more varied,
more complex, and more rapidly changing. Force levels have been
reduced, and forces that were once stationed overseas are increasingly
based in the United States. By enabling rapid communications and
networking, the information age has contributed significantly to the
environment's complexity and volatility. Among other Pentagon
organizational needs, the changed environment demands better decision-
making capacity at DOD's uppermost levels. Decision-making must be
faster, more collaborative, and more decentralized. The Pentagon's
inadequate capacity represents a major deficiency.
All public and private organizations are facing the challenges of a
rapidly changing world. Those that continue to thrive have transformed
themselves with innovative organizational approaches. Those that merely
remain viable have at least updated their organizational practices to
keep pace with the changing environment. And many organizations that
could not or would not change are no longer with us. Remember E.F.
Hutton, TWA, General Foods, RCA, and Montgomery Ward? They and hundreds
of other businesses are gone. The lack of ``market discipline,''
exclusive missions, and willingness of the American people to bear huge
financial burdens during times of war have allowed the government's
national security institutions to delay organizational change longer
than advisable. This includes the Department of Defense, which, with a
few exceptions, has not adapted its organizational approaches to keep
up with the world it faces. John Kotter, a leading business scholar,
has observed the price of not undertaking the necessary transformation:
The typical twentieth-century organization has not operated
well in a rapidly changing environment. Structure, systems,
practices, and culture have often been more of a drag on change
than a facilitator. If environmental volatility continues to
increase, as most people now predict, the standard organization
of the twentieth century will likely become a dinosaur.
Unfortunately, the Pentagon remains a typical twentieth-century
organization. It has intelligent and experienced leaders but no
organizational strategy for achieving desired outcomes. It has deep
bodies of functional expertise, but cannot integrate them rapidly and
well. It has clear, authoritative chains of command, but not the
mechanisms to ensure cross-organizational collaboration. It has
elaborate, slow processes that generate reams of data but not the
ability to resolve conflicting views productively. It has a large,
hard-working staff with a mission-oriented ethos but not a culture that
values information-sharing, collaboration, and team results.
Reforming the Pentagon will require visionary legislation from this
committee and its House counterpart. The intellectual and political
challenges of formulating this legislation will be staggering. On the
intellectual side, modern organizational approaches differ
significantly from past practices. They require a new mindset and are
difficult to implement. Part of the committee's challenge will result
from Washington being a policy and program town with little attention
to organizational needs. The committee will find a paucity of
organizational expertise to assist it and few who will understand the
new directions that are imperative. Before passing the Goldwater-
Nichols Act, the two Armed Services Committees worked for years to
become knowledgeable on defense organization and modern organizational
practice. A similar effort will again be needed.
With the Pentagon swamped by multiple contingencies, a full
management agenda, and overhanging budget and staff cuts, senior
defense officials are likely to argue that now is not the time to pile
defense reform on top. There will be considerable sympathy for this
position, which will pose a political challenge to the committee's
efforts. Unfortunately, there is never a good time to transition an
outmoded and overwhelmed bureaucracy to better, faster, more integrated
approaches. In some corners of the Pentagon, broader executive branch,
and Capitol Hill, complacency and fondness for the status quo will
represent another set of political obstacles. Moreover, active
opposition will come from those who prefer what they know best or
benefit from current arrangements and those in Congress who will ally
themselves with opponents.
key observations
Before going further, I would like to offer a few key observations.
First, my urging for dramatic changes in Pentagon organization does not
represent a criticism of defense civilian or military personnel. They
are working extremely hard and with unyielding commitment.
Unfortunately, much of their hard work is wasted in an outdated system.
One indication of the massive frustration generated by the current
system is that most military officers lament being assigned to the
Pentagon. Intelligent, disciplined, knowledgeable officers are used to
taking initiative and managing or solving problems to generate desired
real-world effects. Seldom is this possible in today's Pentagon, no
matter how hard one works--which is why measures to enable Pentagon
staff to work smarter, not harder, need to be put in place.
Second, for all of its deficiencies, DOD is widely seen as the most
capable department in the Federal Government. This is in large part due
to the quality and drive of its workforce, and a military culture that
values detailed planning processes to cover ``what if'' and ``what
next'' contingencies. But because the Pentagon confronts the
government's most dangerous and diverse challenges, being better than
the rest of the government is not a useful yardstick for measuring
DOD's performance. More appropriate would be to determine whether the
department is capable of fulfilling its responsibilities effectively
and efficiently. The last fifteen years offer considerable evidence
that it is not.
Third, beyond the task of fixing the Pentagon, a larger challenge
looms: transforming the U.S. national security system. This system,
centered on the National Security Council and its hierarchical
committee system but encompassing the complex whole of all national
security institutions, is profoundly broken. All major national
security missions require an interagency ``whole-of-government''
effort, but we have repeatedly witnessed the system's inability to
integrate the capacities and expertise of departments and agencies. The
brokenness of the overall national security system will hamper the
effectiveness of U.S. foreign and security policy no matter how well
DOD transforms its internal operations or its performance at the
operational level of war. Significantly, no congressional committee has
jurisdiction over the heart of the national security system. I would
urge this committee to understand the liabilities of the national
security system and what they portend for DOD's performance. It will be
important to ensure we do not make difficult changes to DOD in the
false hope of circumventing national security system limitations.
Fourth, fixing the Pentagon is much more than a leadership issue.
Speaking of organizations, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, the noted systems
expert observed: ``A bad system will beat a good person every time.''
In the Pentagon and elsewhere, we have repeatedly seen organizational
dysfunction stymie good leaders. On occasion, good leaders have
produced remarkable results. Secretary Robert Gates was often able to
overcome system limitations, such as with the MRAP program. Similarly,
General Stanley McChrystal created effective high-value terrorist
targeting teams in Iraq despite vast institutional obstacles. But Gates
and McChrystal did not achieve these results using the system; they
circum-vented it at a high risk of failure. These outcomes--and many
others that resulted in far less propitious results--were personality-
driven, and the processes used were not institutionalized. They were
exceptions to the rule; the system Gates and McChrystal struggled
against remained unchanged. In any case and most importantly, defense
reform is not a matter of choosing between good leaders and good
organization; we must have both. Too many in Washington pretend
otherwise and dismiss organizational problems by saying, ``We just need
good leaders.''
My last observation concerns the fact that a key Goldwater-Nichols
provision is not now being implemented. Title 10, section 162 (a),
requires the secretary of each military department to assign all forces
(less those for man, train, and equip functions) under his jurisdiction
to a combatant command. This provision recognized the need for service
forces to train for missions jointly, either under the direction of a
geographic combatant command or a U.S.-based combatant command.
Immediately after passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act, this
requirement was met by making the U.S. Army Forces Command, a specified
combatant command, responsible for joint training and joint exercises.
In 1993, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell, in
a report on the roles and missions of the armed forces (which
incidentally was mandated by the Goldwater-Nichols Act) observed that
with troop strength overseas being reduced, the regionally oriented
military strategy was becoming more and more dependent on U.S.-based
forces. He recommended that U.S.-based general purpose forces be
combined into one joint command, U.S. Atlantic Command, which would be
responsible for joint training, force packaging, and facilitating
deployments during crises. Later re-designated as U.S. Joint Forces
Command, the command served as the joint-force provider until its
disestablishment in 2011. In apparent disregard for section 162 (a),
U.S.-based combatant forces are now assigned to their parent services,
returning to the service separateness that crippled military operations
prior to the Goldwater-Nichols Act. There is no reason to write more
law if we are indifferent to implementation of existing law.
methodology
If the committee is to succeed in this historic undertaking, it
must adopt and execute a rigorous methodology for each of defense
reform's two dimensions: intellectual and political. Changing
organizations is exceedingly difficult. The failure rate of change-
efforts in business has remained constant at 70 percent; it is even
higher in government. The business failure rate has persisted over the
last thirty years despite the enormous attention change-management has
received. Amazon lists more than 83,000 books on this topic. I urge the
committee to give careful attention to the methodology it chooses
because the nation cannot afford for this committee to fail in its
efforts to reform the Pentagon.
The intellectual dimension of a methodology requires deep study of
problems in DOD's performance to enable precise identification of
required reforms. Three elements are imperative. First, identify
symptoms, problems, their causes, and their consequences. Goldwater-
Nichols' historic success resulted from its rigorous methodology
focused on getting beyond symptoms to identify problems and their root
causes. Pinpointing problems was the committee's sole focus for
eighteen months. As part of this thorough process, the committee staff
produced a 645-page staff study with detailed analyses of each problem
area. Reorganization efforts too often address symptoms because they
are most visible. But addressing a symptom will not cure the underlying
ailment, just as prescribing aspirin could lessen a patient's
temperature without treating the fundamental illness.
Work on the Goldwater-Nichols Act provides one example of failing
to get beyond symptoms. Near the end of the Senate Armed Services
Committee's deliberations, an amendment was offered to require in law
that the president submit annually a national security strategy. The
amendment's sponsor was asked what problem his amendment was designed
to fix. He responded, ``I don't know what the problem and its causes
are, but whatever they are, mandating this report in law will fix
them.'' It did not. All presidents since have submitted a document
called the National Security Strategy, but the resulting reports have
fallen far short of satisfying the need for a true strategy document.
The second fundamental requirement for any effectual methodology is
examining all elements of organizational effectiveness. It is estimated
that eighty-five percent of people equate the terms organization and
structure, but there is much more to making an organization effective
than simply adjusting its structure. In the late 1970s, McKinsey and
Company, a management-consulting firm, identified seven elements of
organizational effectiveness, known as the McKinsey 7-S framework. Each
element starts with an ``S'' to remind McKinsey's clients of all seven
elements, but also to remind them ``structure is not organization.''
The seven elements are:
1. Shared values--agreed vision, purpose/missions, and principles
2. Systems--management processes, procedures, and measurements
3. Structure--arrangements for dividing and coordinating work
4. Skills--core competencies; necessary capabilities and attributes
of the organization
5. Staff--attributes of personnel; needed qualifications and
professional development
6. Style--leadership attitudes and behavior; organization's culture
7. Strategy--alignment of resources and capabilities for achieving
objectives
Three elements of the McKinsey 7-S framework--systems, structure,
and strategy--are termed ``hard,'' and four--shared values, skills,
staff, and style--are termed ``soft.'' The hard elements are visible,
being found in process maps, organizational charts, and strategy
documents. They are also the easiest to change. By comparison, the four
soft elements are difficult to describe and even more difficult to
influence. Despite their below-the-surface nature, the soft elements
have as much impact on organizational performance as the three hard
S's. In fact, many believe that the culture of an organization emerging
from these soft elements more powerfully affects performance than
formal structures. For this reason, effective organizations pay as much
attention to the soft elements as they do to the hard ones. The
committee's defense reform efforts are likely to focus on the soft
elements, increasing the degree of difficulty.
The third imperative of an effectual methodology's intellectual
dimension is to examine the entire system. Whether it is recognized as
such or not, DOD comprises a large system with many sub-systems. In a
reform effort, a holistic examination of the entire system is critical.
As Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch's book on organizational design noted:
``An organization is not a mechanical system in which one part can be
changed without a concomitant effect on the other parts. Rather, an
organizational system shares with biological systems the property of
intense interdependence of parts such that a change in one part has an
impact on others.'' Moreover, examining the entire system provides an
important opportunity to address system architecture, division of work
among components, integration initiatives, and process management and
improvement.
Given the difficulty of organizational reform, a great temptation
exists to approach this task in a piecemeal fashion by breaking the
work into digestible chunks. That approach poses a danger to meaningful
reform because reforming one part of an organizational system may not
work well with subsequent changes to other elements. To be effective,
an organization must have a high degree of internal alignment among the
seven elements of organizational effectiveness.
The methodology's political dimension involves gaining solid
congressional approval of needed reforms and inspiring first-rate
implementation by DOD. The change-management techniques that have been
developed and widely employed by businesses are basically a political
strategy for formulating and executing reform. This committee must
adopt an explicit and robust political strategy. George Bernard Shaw
said, ``Reformers have the idea that change can be achieved by brute
sanity.'' It cannot. Many brilliant ideas and new directions whose time
had come gained no traction and are collecting dust on some bookcase.
Foremost among components of a political strategy is creating a
sense of urgency. If you cannot convince principal leaders and
institutions of the pressing need for reform, the committee's effort
will fail. For six years, I headed the Project on National Security
Reform (PNSR), which sought to achieve Goldwater-Nichols-like reforms
of the national security system. Despite overwhelming evidence of
organizational problems in repeated operational setbacks--such as 9/11,
Iraq, Afghanistan, and Hurricane Katrina--PNSR was unable to create
urgency for system reform. In Bosnia and Herzegovina where I served as
chairman of the Defense Reform Commission, I saw the power of creating
urgency. Defense reform went from impossible to gaining overwhelming
approval, following a successful effort to convince the public of the
need for change.
A political strategy also needs to build a powerful bipartisan
guiding coalition to lead the reform effort. This coalition must have
people from inside and outside of government with power, prestige,
influence, and knowledge. The good news is that there is already a
great deal of well-informed interest in defense reform. Over the past
few years, experts in leading think tanks across the political spectrum
have joined together to urge Congress to consider defense reform.
However, most of the recommendations have focused on how to achieve
budget savings, not on how to improve organizational effectiveness.
Formulating a vision that articulates a clear sense of purpose and
direction is another key element of a political strategy. By showing a
possible and desirable future state, a vision will attract commitment
and reduce fears that naturally accompany an uncertain future.
problems and causes
To set the context for discussing current organizational problems,
it is useful to revisit the intended outcomes of the Goldwater-Nichols
Act. It sought to achieve nine objectives:
1. Strengthen civilian authority
2. Improve military advice
3. Place clear responsibility on combatant commanders
4. Ensure commensurate authority for the combatant commanders
5. Increase attention to strategy and contingency planning
6. Provide for more efficient use of resources
7. Improve joint officer management
8. Enhance the effectiveness of military operations
9. Improve DOD management
The two Armed Services Committees gave their highest priority to
the five objectives dealing with the operational chain of command. Not
surprisingly, these priority objectives have received the highest
grades for their degree of success. The four objectives addressing
administrative matters--strategy and contingency planning, use of
resources, joint officer management, and DOD management--have received
middling or poor grades. These areas, among others, need attention now.
In addition, some needed reforms identified at the time of the
Goldwater-Nichols Act were not enacted, either because of opposition or
as the result of compromises to gain higher priority objectives. Two of
these unachieved reforms were strengthening the mission orientation in
DOD's Washington headquarters and replacing the service secretariat and
military staff at the top of each military department with a single
integrated headquarters staff. Thirty years later, these are still
pressing needs.
The weak mission orientation in DOD's Washington headquarters must
be considered the Pentagon's greatest organizational shortcoming. DOD's
principal organizational goal is the integration of the distinct
military capabilities of the four services and other components to
prepare for and conduct effective unified operations in fulfilling
military missions. The Washington headquarters--the Office of the
Secretary of Defense (OSD), Joint Staff, and three military
departments--are organized by and excessively focused on functional
areas, such as manpower, health affairs, and intelligence. This rigid
functional orientation inhibits integration of capabilities along
mission lines. Among many difficulties, this orientation leads to an
emphasis on material inputs, not mission outputs.
A second problem is inadequate strategic direction. It has been
argued before this committee that the Pentagon lacked a strategy for
Iraq and now lacks a strategy for ISIS, and it is not hard to
understand why. Senior leaders do not focus on the major issues
confronting the department. They are pulled down into crisis
management, where the Pentagon is better at producing policy than
strategy. Strategy is an explicit choice among alternatives, and DOD is
unable to rigorously assess risks and benefits among competing courses
of action and alternative capability sets. Without a guiding strategy,
it is far more difficult to make reasoned decisions about planning,
capability, and program priorities.
The absence of strategy helps explain why the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff finds it difficult to decide between combatant
commanders when they disagree about near-term priorities or to speak
for the future joint force commander when establishing priorities for
future capabilities. Typically, the Joint Staff defaults to the need
for consensus and is not able to choose between stark alternatives.
Consequently, service programs predominate, and the budget drives our
strategy rather than vice versa. Secretary Gates, one of our most
powerful and competent defense secretaries, fought the service tendency
to discount new and unconventional threats and sacrifice the near-term
to the far-term. He prevailed on some important issues, but left no
enduring impact on the Pentagon and its inability to allocate resources
to capabilities to missions in a strategy-driven process.
Closely related to the lack of strategic direction, and third on my
list of key problems, is inadequate integrated decision-making capacity
in general. Currently, Pentagon decision-making is more bureaucratic
than rational, which is to say decision outcomes are more likely to
reflect compromises between components' organizational interests than a
conscious choice among alternative, integrated courses of action
designed to maximize benefits for the department as a whole. The
Pentagon's ostensibly rational processes are managed in sequence by
hierarchical, functional structures that represent relatively narrow
bodies of expertise. For example, the planning, programming, and
budgeting process typically begins in Policy; then is led by Cost
Assessment and Program Evaluation; and then, by the Comptroller.
Frequently the lead office in the process satisfies competing
objectives with compromises that dilute the integrity of the process;
compromises that are then compounded as the decision process moves
forward. All too often the result is consensus products that avoid and
obscure difficult trade-offs, clear alternatives, and associated risks.
These sequential, stove-piped, industrial-age processes are slow
and cumbersome, and, depending on the issue, frequently overly
centralized. Such decision-making processes are also notably lacking in
their ability to anticipate and meet future challenges. The Pentagon
has future threat scenarios, but actually pays close attention to only
a handful that greatly resemble past wars. In reality, the Pentagon
does not have a well-developed competency for scanning the horizon for
coming threats and opportunities. For example, DOD was in denial about
the need to combat terrorism and other forms of irregular warfare until
9/11 occurred. Further, the department is not a learning organization.
Although it has many lessons-learned efforts, the common observation is
that they are ``lessons encountered'' rather than learned because they
are not rigorously evaluated and acted upon to correct shortcomings.
This is true even for well-documented, big lessons. For example, the
Pentagon made the same mistake in post-conflict operations in Iraq as
it did in Operation Just Cause in Panama fifteen years earlier.
All of this explains a fourth problem: The Department of Defense
lacks a mechanism for rationally allocating resources to missions and
capabilities. The secretary and deputy secretary of defense need well-
integrated problem assessments and solution options but instead
discover they are the first real point of functional integration for
the departmental stovepipes they oversee. Worse, unless they make a
conscious, sustained effort to pursue issues, they will not have
sufficient information (on data, methods, threat assumptions, etc.) to
make a reasoned choice among clear alternatives. It is not surprising
that they typically do not value this kind of decision support. Former
secretaries and deputy secretaries often say privately that they would
favor substantial staff cuts. Uncertain of why they do not receive
better support or whether and how the system can be improved, they
conclude incorrectly that smaller staffs might prove more
collaborative.
In reality, middle management is working hard but not to good
effect. An internal Pentagon review I participated in a decade ago
noted that members of middle management typically come to work early
and stay late to produce papers and attend innumerable meetings, but
lack a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities and are
uncertain about the outcomes desired by senior leaders. Duplicative
effort and ``shadow'' organizations sprout up for lack of collaboration
across office lines. Information flow is poor, and information that is
shared is used to persuade rather than objectively assess problems and
potential solutions. In such a system, much valiant effort is wasted
and of marginal use to the secretary and deputy secretary. Cutting
staff will save some dollars but it will not get the senior Pentagon
leaders what they want and need, which is well integrated,
multifunctional problem assessments and solutions. To date secretaries
have said they want better decision support, but they have been
unwilling to adopt 21st century organizational practices and reengineer
their staffs for better collaboration.
A fifth problem centers on weak civilian leadership at all levels.
Like many professional organizations, the Pentagon emphasizes technical
competence as the yardstick for civilian promotion. Little attention is
given to developing and mentoring civilian leaders. In fact, I am
concerned that at least one significant change in the civilian
personnel system of the OSD Policy office has had unfortunate
consequences. In the late 1990s, Policy decided to rotate all personnel
between different functional offices as a matter of course. In addition
to relatively rapid promotions to the upper end of the civil service,
this decision has led to a Policy organization where even the most
experienced may know relatively little about the issues they are
assigned to manage. Breadth of experience for senior personnel on a
management track makes sense, particularly when they are backed up by
subject matter experts with deep functional expertise, but a system
where everyone is presumed to be on a management track sacrifices deep
expertise and institutional knowledge that used to complement the fresh
military experience constantly rolling through the service and joint
staffs. This development illustrates a point I made earlier about the
need for a holistic consideration of organizational effectiveness. OSD
Policy may have solved one relatively narrow personnel problem with
this initiative, but it did not give sufficient thought to the larger
impact on the organization's ability to execute its mission.
The outdated joint officer management system is a sixth problem.
The Senate Armed Services Committee expected the Pentagon to devise
improvements to joint officer management within three-to-four years
after enactment of the Goldwater-Nichols Act. Thirty years later, the
system's major features remain unchanged. Much has happened in the
interim. The officer corps is smaller. What it takes for an officer to
remain tactically and technically proficient has grown more complex,
and the time demanded by repeated overseas deployments has reduced the
time for officers to learn the institutional side of their own military
department and the overall DOD. In addition, there are needs for
improved collaboration with mission partners, both internationally and
domestically. Especially in light of these changes, the Pentagon lacks
a vision of its needs for joint officers and how to prepare and reward
them.
A seventh problem is the duplication of effort and inefficiencies
associated with having two military department headquarters staffs in
the Departments of the Army and Air Force and three in the Department
of the Navy. These dual structures are a holdover from World War II
when the service chief and his staff worked directly for the president
in running the war, and the service secretary became the department's
businessman in acquiring and supplying. After the war, the military
departments with their two separate staffs were perpetuated. It is
judged that the resulting duplication of effort wastes time and
manpower.
The Department of Defense has seventeen defense agencies, such as
the Defense Logistics Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency, which
provide department-wide support. In the late 1950's, they were started
as mom-and-pop businesses, but they have grown into large enterprises
that consume a significant portion of the DOD budget--nearly as much as
a military department. While the defense agencies have grown, their
supervision has remained mom-and-pop, being provided by policy
officials, such as under and assistant secretaries of defense. Although
highly proficient on policy matters, these supervisors lack the skills
and experience of overseeing large enterprises. The result is sporadic
guidance and limited oversight. This is an eighth problem requiring the
committee's attention.
Once the committee has identified problems that need to be
corrected, it must determine the factors that are causing these
problems. Understanding the causes is critical because reforms must
address the causes in order to fix the problem. In this statement, I
provide only insights into the importance of causes. I have already
mentioned the fact that DOD is dominated by its functional structure,
which undermines mission-integration efforts. But the functional
structure causes other problems. A quotation by Peter F. Drucker
captures the ills that come from a nearly exclusive reliance on
functional structure:
The functional principle [of organizational design] . . . has
great clarity and high economy, and it makes it easy to
understand one's own task. But even in small business it tends
to direct vision away from results and toward efforts, to
obscure the organization's goals, and to sub-optimize
decisions. It has high stability but little adaptability. It
perpetuates and develops technical and functional skills, that
is, middle managers, but it resists new ideas and inhibits top-
management development and vision.
Functional expertise in the Pentagon is absolutely essential, but
an exclusively functional structure results in weak collaboration;
slow, cumbersome decision-making; unduly centralized decision-making;
diminished focus on essential mission outcomes; lower innovation in
cross-cutting challenges; powerful resistance to some types of change;
and an ill-configured organizational structure that is often
duplicative rather than engineered for cutting-edge challenges.
A second cause of many organizational problems is DOD's culture.
Culture--which encompasses vision, values, norms, assumptions, beliefs,
and habits--is a key determinant of organizational performance. Some
experts assert: ``Culture is the backbone of every organization.'' The
Pentagon's culture is misaligned with what is required for effective
organizational performance in the complex, rapidly changing 21st
Century. By my assessment, DOD's culture is too predictable, rule-
oriented, bureaucratic, risk adverse, and competitive among components.
It is not sufficiently team-oriented, outcome-oriented, and innovative.
cautions
This committee will face political pressure to water down its
problem analyses and articulate them as something less onerous. An
argument will be made that people will be offended by candid
assessments and become more determined to oppose your efforts. Although
this may occur in some cases, reform efforts cannot succeed without
candid and precise identification of the problems.
A second caution centers on focusing on efficiency rather than
effectiveness. It is much more politically acceptable in the Pentagon
to be inefficient than to be judged ineffective. Thus reform efforts
typically focus on attacking ``inefficiency'' rather than
``ineffectiveness,'' and do so in the least controversial manner,
operating on the simple assumption that we will save money by cutting
staff and duplicative functions. Obviously, any reduction in staff will
save a commensurate amount of resources, but it will not--without
needed reforms--generate greater effectiveness. Just cutting staff
ignores real problems, like our inability to collaborate across
organizational lines on multifunctional problems. Not coincidentally,
one reason why the staffs grow so large is that they attempt to
preserve autonomy and avoid collaboration by duplicating one another's
functions. How can we be effective if we don't cooperate on what it
takes to be truly effective (from strategy to missions to capabilities
to programs), and if the analysis of courses of action and alternatives
is not clear, transparent, and collaborative rather than political?
Once we are clear about what is required for ``effectiveness,'' the
less important areas naturally become targets for ``efficiencies.'' I
should note that the Goldwater-Nichols Act focused on effectiveness.
A third caution concerns the power-back-to-the-services movement.
In pre-information-age warfare, the battlespace could be divided up,
and service roles and missions ``deconflicted.'' In the information
age, more and more--but not all--mission areas are intrinsically joint,
which means effectiveness depends upon integration and not a sharp
division of labor between the services. Our concepts and investments
need to reflect that. It makes sense to give the lead back to the
services in service-centric mission areas where one service retains the
bulk of required expertise, such as land control, air superiority,
anti-submarine warfare, or amphibious operations. But intrinsically
joint missions, like theater missile and air defense, require more, not
less, jointness. It would be a grave error--which we would inevitably
pay for in blood and treasure--to roll back jointness in any mission
area where success requires a tightly integrated multi-service effort.
A fourth area to watch out for is layering oversight
(organizational layers with more people and process) rather than making
authority and responsibility clearly commensurate with expected
outputs. Arguably that is what has happened in labeling all military
mission areas joint, and requiring additional oversight process and
mechanisms for major acquisition programs by the Acquisition,
Technology, and Logistics (AT&L) office. As the committee is probably
aware, statistical evidence indicates that the large AT&L bureau-cracy
and its many efforts have not improved acquisition outcomes despite the
best of intentions on the part of those promoting the many previous
acquisition reforms mandated by Congress and the Pentagon.
conclusion
These hearings represent the beginning of a tremendously important
initiative by the committee. Many voices will counsel against reform,
insisting it is impossible to do, or at least to do well. In truth,
meaningful reform will be difficult; and a hasty reform without a deep
appreciation for the origins of the behaviors that currently limit
Pentagon effectiveness would be a mistake. However, successful reform
is both necessary and possible.
It is necessary because the men and women in uniform who go in
harm's way for our collective security deserve the best policy,
strategy, planning and program decision making possible. And as this
committee already has heard from much expert testimony, they do not
currently receive it. It is doable because the reasons why most large
reorganizations fail are well known. If the committee adopts a rigorous
methodology for managing change in the Department of Defense that
avoids the common pitfalls, it can create a more efficient and
effective defense establishment capable of managing 21st-Century
challenges well. This will take time, but I am confident it can be done
Politically, defense reform will be an enormous challenge. The
committee should expect resistance from well-intentioned practitioners
and observers but also a great deal of support from defense experts who
are already on record supporting major change. In addition, many of our
dedicated civil servants and military officers currently working in the
Pentagon will support a well-researched and well-reasoned set of
reforms that make it possible to generate better decision support and
operational outcomes.
For my part, I encourage the committee to stay the course and
complete the task it has undertaken. It is important to recognize there
are dangers to inaction as well as misguided action. We would not have
the unparalleled, world class-setting military we have today without
the service training revolutions of the 1970s and 1980s and Goldwater-
Nichols reforms. If the Senate Armed Services Committee puts forth the
same level of effort it mounted thirty years ago, it will succeed. And
the benefits to our service men and women, to the Department of
Defense, and to our nation, will be historic.
Senator McCain. Thank you.
Dr. Hamre.
STATEMENT OF JOHN J. HAMRE, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, AND
CHAIRMAN, DEFENSE POLICY BOARD ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Dr. Hamre. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Reed. And may I
just have 30 seconds on personal privilege?
I just have to say what an honor it is to be back to--in
front of this committee. I spent 10 years working for you, the
best professional experience of my life. All of us want to live
a life where we know we're living a bigger life than for our
own personal well-being. And this committee gave me a chance to
do that. The grandeur of service is unbelievable. And I want to
say thank you for letting me be here. And I hope all the young
people that are sitting behind you that are staffing you now
appreciate the enormous privilege in being on this committee
staff.
Senator McCain. Well, I thank you, Doctor, and I thank Jim,
also. And I'm sorry we have a level of incompetence that is
really just deplorable on the committee now.
[Laughter.]
Senator McCain. Dr. Hamre.
Dr. Hamre. I'm smart enough not to follow up that sentence.
So----
[Laughter.]
Dr. Hamre. I would like to, if I could, make just three
process comments and then maybe three recommendations, if I
may.
First, you're--this is going to take a while. You're--this
is a large issue. It's a complicated problem. It'll take more
than a year. Right now, we have to get as much moving as
possible in this year, but I hope you'd also establish a
process that will carry beyond, because it is--it's going to
take a lot of work to get the real problems worked through. You
can do the very big things now, I believe. And I hope that
you'd think about it as a process.
Second, if possible, make the Secretary of Defense your
partner. I think that it will make it so much easier to get
things implemented if he is wanting to work with you to get
shared reform moving. I've had a chance to speak with him. I
think he feels that this is just as important as you do. He may
have a different, you know, issue alignment than you do, but
he--if the two of you can work together--or, I should say, the
two institutions can work together, you'll get a lot done in
this first year. So, I hope you would think of that.
And then, the last comment is, please be careful.
Bureaucracies are adaptive things. They will adapt to good
incentives, and they will also adapt in bad ways to incentives.
And you really do need to understand how that's--you know,
bureaucracy is going to think about this--these new changes.
And we have a marvelous officer corps. We have a terrific ethic
in the Department. You're right, it's inefficient, but we need
to make sure we don't lose something along the way. And I think
modeling the impact of change would be very important.
Let me, if I may, just make three observations--or
recommendations, I should say:
First, I think there are a few things that we need to fix
from the original legislation. There were some birth defects,
frankly. Now, I think you are fixing one of them with the bill.
And I hope, you know, the [National Defense] Authorization Act
passes today. When you've made these changes--putting the
service chiefs back in the chain of command, that's a very big
thing, and I'm really glad that you've taken that step. I think
it's going to have enormous impact over the next couple of
years. It'll take a few years for it to find its true power.
But, I think that was a very important thing, and I thank you
for doing that.
Another--it wasn't a birth defect, but we--when we created
the Joint Duty Officer Assignment--you know, you can't become a
flag officer unless you've been in a joint duty billet--well,
we put that obligation on top of DOPMA [Defense Officer
Personnel Management Act]. You know, it's a--DOPMA was a very
complicated, elaborate personnel management structure. Now we
put another layer on top of it. It's very hard to get through
the system now. And so, the personnelists have kind of
engineered pathways through this complexity, and it has created
an excessively large headquarters structure. They need that
headquarters structure to get joint duty billets for everybody.
There just are not enough jobs without it. So, unfortunately,
we've cut our forces--in my view, too deeply--but, we haven't
cut the officer corps very deeply, and now we've got too many
headquarters. Just pure and simple. So, we've got to figure
out--we've got to go back and look at that interplay of DOPMA
and joint duty, and find out, How do we take pressure out of
the system so we're not feeding big headquarters structures
that are really doing too much micromanagement? So, that would
be the first thing.
Second set of issues. And I think they revolve around the
unified combatant commanders. We used to call them ``unified
CINCs'' when--on the committee. Back at the time of Goldwater-
Nichols, we thought that we were going to fight wars through
these unified combatant commands--the Pacific Command, the
Central Command, the European Command--that we--we thought they
were going to be warfighting headquarters. But, that's really
not how we do it anymore. We now fight through combined task
forces, or joint task forces. We organize a task force purpose-
built for that activity. And, frankly, the regional combatant
commands are supporting elements now to this activity. They're
not really fighting that war. It's the commander of that task
force that's fighting the war. But, if you go out and you look
at the unified combatant commands, they all have pretty beefy
structures built around warfighting. They've got a J1, a J2, a
J3, a J4--I mean, and they're not really doing operational
warfighting, they're supporting warfighters.
So, I still think we need those unified commands, very
much, because they do strategic engagement with our partners.
The next 30 years, our central grand strategy is to get
stronger partnerships with friends around the world that share
our values and interests. Those combatant command offices,
that's what they do, that's their great contribution to us.
But, you don't need a J4, a logistician. I mean, he--what does
he do every day? He calls the guy who is really doing
logistics, figuring out what he's doing. You know, or a J6 or a
J2. You know, you--what we need to do is, we really need to
redefine those commands so that they are streamlined and
they're doing the strategic role that we need to have them done
on behalf of the Department. That would be a second thing.
A third thing, we did--you know, when we were working on
Goldwater-Nichols, at--running at the same time was the Packard
Commission. And so, all of the back-office stuff--the
logistics, support, all that--was being handled in a different
process, and we really didn't handle it inside Goldwater-
Nichols. We can't afford to keep cutting operating forces and
not deal with the support structure. The support structure is
too large, it's too inefficient. And, you know, every
corporation in America long ago got rid of separate warehousing
functions and transportation functions. They merged that so it
could be managed efficiently. We haven't done that in the
Department. I mean, we need to start taking on those back-
office activities. And that's a very--a couple of simple, very
direct things could make a huge difference.
Finally, one last thing--I apologize for going so long--
but, there are some things that we didn't know about when we
worked on Goldwater-Nichols, primarily cyberwarfare. That was
not in our consciousness at the time. And we now have to think
about this in a very different way. We're very fractured as a
Defense Department when it comes to command and control. The
services buy the systems, the--they operate in a regional
command theater when we've got a centralized Cyber Command--you
know, we're hopefully going to have that here. So, we're very
fractured. And I think it comes down to a fundamental issue.
That is that the services still buy their own command and
control. And it--while I think they should be the ones that buy
military hardware, I personally am of the view that we now have
to buy command-and-control equipment on a centralized basis.
It's the only way we'll get interoperability. It's the only way
we're going to get our arms around cyber vulnerability in the
Department. Very complicated problem, but I think we're--it's
almost inevitable we'll have to do something like that.
Let me stop here. I'm obviously very flattered to be
invited. I'll be glad to help in any way.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Hamre follows:]
Prepared Statement by Dr. John J. Hamre
Chairman McCain, Ranking Member Reed, it is a special
privilege and pleasure to be before the Senate Armed Services
Committee, especially for the topic of this hearing, ``Do we
need to reform the Goldwater-Nichols Act?''
I devoted ten years of my life to serving the United State
Senate and the Senate Armed Services Committee. Honestly, it
was the highlight of my professional career and I will always
be grateful for those opportunities.
As a relatively junior member of the staff, I was able to
work on the legislative effort that ultimately became the
Goldwater-Nichols Act. That too, was arguably one of the
premier professional experiences of my life. I can still
remember the debates within the Committee during markup of the
bill. The debates were strong and the Committee was deeply
divided. But the debates were highly substantive and conducted
with deep respect. Every member of the Committee knew the
gravity of the issues before them, and approached the
deliberations with honesty and great seriousness. It was the
model of Congress at its best.
The issue before us today is the question whether this
landmark legislation needs to be changed. I think it does,
honestly. But we have to change it in a way that preserves the
great accomplishments of the original landmark legislation.
Prior to passage of Goldwater-Nichols, the military
services operated as highly autonomous entities. Coordination
in the field was ad-hoc, with little predictability of effect.
Back then, coordination meant ``de-confliction.'' Senior
officers saw the other services as competitors for resources,
feeling that their requirements were inherently superior to the
needs of other departments. Command and control was fractured.
Joint command and control meant carrying multiple redundant
communication radios that worked only in service-specific
channels.
Before Goldwater-Nichols, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
was a figure head, but lacked the power to coordinate a unified
approach. Regional combatant commanders were largely extensions
of the dominant military service deployed in the theater.
The Goldwater-Nichols Act changed all this. Of course there
are still strong parochial forces within the Defense
Department. But the senior officer corps today genuinely knows
more about the other services and respects their capabilities
and operating procedures. Senior officers genuinely think
``jointly'' now, something that was quite rare 35 years ago.
This has produced the finest fighting force it the world.
So people will rightly ask ``why change it now?''
In some instances, changes are needed because we didn't
quite get it right with the original legislation. But in most
instances, the times have changed. The structure that emerged
from Goldwater-Nichols doesn't well fit operations in year
2015. And in a few instances--like cyber war and cyber
defense--there was no consciousness of these issues when the
Goldwater-Nichols Act was passed. So permit me to present my
thoughts along these three lines: (1) things in Goldwater-
Nichols that we need to fix, (2) changes that have occurred in
modern military operations that need to be reflected in
revisions to the Act, and (3) things we need to incorporate
that were never anticipated.
CORRECTING ORIGINAL PROBLEMS IN GOLDWATER-NICHOLS
There are two major issues that were ``flaws'' in the
original design of Goldwater-Nichols. One of them the Committee
has already addressed, and that is chain of command for
acquisition.
The underlying theme of Goldwater-Nichols was to create a
healthy balance between ``supply'' and ``demand'' within the
Department. Prior to Goldwater-Nichols, both supply and demand
resided within each military service. We wanted to increase the
voice of ``jointness,'' and to do that Goldwater-Nichols
elevated in prominence the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. You gave the Chairman a Vice Chairman, and he was given
protocol status of being #2 and not #6. You elevated the
stature of the Regional Combatant Commanders (then called the
Regional Commanders-in-Chief).
The Service Chiefs--as heads of their respective services--
were stripped of operational command. Command would be
exercised by the President through the Secretary directly to
the Unified Combatant Commanders. The Chairman was assigned the
responsibility of providing military advice directly to the
President. The Service Chiefs no longer commanded forces in
combat.
At nearly the same time, Congress adopted the Packard
Commission recommendations that stripped acquisition
responsibilities away from the Service Chiefs. The Committee
acted to correct this mistake with the National Defense
Authorization Act you recently passed. This is a very good
thing.
From my perspective, DOD often courts trouble when there
are confused or bifurcated responsibilities for functions and
activities. It made no sense to have the Service Chiefs
responsible for training, equipping and housing their
respective forces, but not accountable for acquisition.
As I said, I think that you have largely fixed this problem
with the authorization act you passed this year. It will take
some years to work through all the details and make the new
connections in the Pentagon, but I am confident this one act
will produce the changes that we need.
The second problem with the original Goldwater-Nichols Act
is not resolved, and that concerns the way we added joint-duty
obligations to the normal officer management system. The
Defense Officer Personnel Management Act, or DOPMA, was enacted
in 1980. It created a uniform set of requirements for officer
development. It was a very good and successful act. But it
created a very elaborate set of requirements. We then added on
top of that, the joint-duty requirements for promotion to
general officer/flag officer ranks.
The idea was simple--you can't become a general or flag
officer if you have not had experience in a joint-duty
assignment. In general terms, I agree with this. It created a
valuable incentive we need to keep.
But this requirement was layered on top of DOPMA, creating
a very complex and elaborate system. This complex system is now
driving force structure, which is upside down in my view.
Now I will add an additional factor, and I anticipate that
my words will be controversial. We could manage that elaborate,
complex personnel management system when we had much larger
operational forces. But since 1990, we have dramatically
reduced the size of the operating force--too much in my view.
But we didn't cut the officer corps as much as we cut the
operating forces. So we had to find places for officers to
work, and that has contributed to the significant expansion of
headquarters staffs. Large headquarters organizations demand
ever-increasing levels of coordination, and also generate
considerable micromanagement of people doing real things.
This is a complex problem that cannot be easily engineered
away by a small change to Goldwater-Nichols. I believe that the
size of the officer corps should be reduced. And we need to
fundamentally review DOPMA and change it to create a more
dynamic management system.
There might be a set of changes you should contemplate for
the fundamental requirement of joint duty experience as a pre-
condition for promotion to general/flag rank. I have not
studied this adequately, so I offer this as a hypothetical
idea, not a recommendation. But perhaps we might change the
requirement for non-combat military operational specialties
that require joint duty only for promotion to O-8 or O-9 rank.
I don't know if that is the right answer or not, and I don't
know how significantly it would change personnel management
models. But it is an example of ideas we should study.
UPDATING GOLDWATER-NICHOLS FOR CHANGING PATTERNS OF WAR
Second, we have new operating patterns today that were not
anticipated at the time Congress enacted Goldwater-Nichols.
The largest item in this category concerns the unified
combatant commands. I was on the staff of this committee at the
time you deliberated Goldwater-Nichols. At that time, we
thought that wars would be fought by the regional combatant
commanders. But that is not how we go to war today. Today, we
largely conduct operations through joint task forces or
combined task forces--purpose-built for the operation at hand.
The regional combatant command headquarters are now overseers
and supporters of those task force organizations.
We still need regional commanders, and I think they are
more important than ever. The primary role of regional
commanders, in my view, is to develop strategic partnerships
with friends and allies in their region, to undertake planning
functions for dealing with crises in their region, and to
engage local military establishments in a constructive way.
Our grand strategy for the next thirty years will be to
build networks of partner relationships around the world with
countries that share our broad goals. We need to have a very
senior officer in the region with a strategic vision about what
we need to manage tension and deter conflict, and to develop
operational plans to do that. This cannot be done from
Washington, D.C. Washington is obsessed with politics and
staffing cabinet secretaries who spar every day over policy
matters with political impact. The forward regional commanders
are detached from the daily politics of Washington and can
nurture enduring relationships.
So in my view, regional commanders are more important than
ever. But I don't think they need the kind of war-fighting
structure and staffs that they have. The logistics chief for a
regional command, for example, doesn't command anything
associated with logistics. That general officer is looking over
the shoulder of real logisticians in task force organizations,
and providing administrative support from a distance. Much of
the headquarters structure in regional combatant command
headquarters is redundant, in my view.
I believe we should radically restructure most of the
regional commands and sub-command headquarters to focus them on
the indispensable role they plan as strategic architects of
security in their respective regions, and then strip away the
command structure that is not needed now that we fight through
task forces.
A second area where I think we need to update our structure
reflects the revolution in industry that we have neglected in
the Defense Department. For example, 50 years ago, American
corporations had separate warehouse departments and
transportation departments. Now every successful corporation
has combined these two functions. Yet we in DOD have stand-
alone organizations that do transportation and depot
warehousing.
I hear all the time the tired argument of defenders of our
current system that our demands are different--that our forces
are moving and we can't use a Walmart model. I think that is
absolute nonsense. A friend of mine once said ``candle makers
will never invent electricity.'' That is what we have here. The
people working within the existing system will never transform
their operation to eliminate their job. We need re-organization
from the top, because we will not get it from the bottom up.
Goldwater-Nichols really didn't tackle the support side of
the Defense Department. Understandably, and quite
appropriately, it focused on warfighting. But now we must focus
on the support side of the Defense establishment, and bring in
modern management methods to eliminate outdated organizations
we inherited from World War II.
NEW DEMANDS
The third broad area I would suggest we need to examine are
those issues that never existed 35 years ago when Goldwater-
Nichols was adopted. The primary issue here is how we organize
ourselves for cyber warfare.
When I was Deputy Secretary of Defense back in 1998, I
revealed publicly the first cyber-attack on the United States.
In retrospect, it was laughable and not serious. Now it is
deadly serious. America has become more dependent on computers,
and our opponents have become far more skilled in exploiting
our weaknesses.
The Defense Department is wrestling with this. I support
the idea of creating a cyber command. But this papers over a
larger set of issues that have not been resolved within the
Department. Who is responsible for the computers when we go to
war? Is it the service that bought the system? Is it the
regional commander that is supporting task forces fighting in
his area of responsibility? Is it a central cyber command in
the National Capitol Region? Can the head of Cyber Command take
over operations of networks of a regional commander during
wartime?
These are very hard issues. And there are no easy
solutions. Again, I will make a controversial observation. I am
a strong advocate for individual services being responsible for
acquisition for military hardware for their respective
services. Loyalty to a service matters a great deal. We don't
want to do what other military establishments have done--which
is to create a unified ``buying command'' that buys things on
behalf of the military departments.
But I make one major exception to this. I have come to the
painful conclusion that command and control systems should be
procured centrally by the Defense Department, not by individual
military departments. We will never solve interoperability
problems until we get a single, central authority to buy them.
We will never get our arms around cyber vulnerabilities until
we have a single focus responsible for stronger protection. In
this one instance, I would take the Title 10 authority away
from the military departments and shift it to a central agency
working for the whole Department.
CONCLUSION
Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of this Committee, I
admire your foresight and courage to take on this important
question. Goldwater-Nichols was landmark legislation. It
produced the finest military establishment in the world. It was
legislative activity at its best. But after 30 years, it needs
amending. None of these changes would undermine the great
contribution it made to build the best military in the world.
But these changes are needed to make this Department function
more effectively going forward.
I am honored to have been invited to appear today. I will
gladly help the Committee in any way as you move forward with
this important agenda.
Senator McCain. thank you.
Mr. Thomas.
STATEMENT OF JIM THOMAS, VICE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF
STUDIES, THE CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS
Mr. Thomas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It's a real personal privilege for me to testify before you
today and alongside John Hamre and Jim Locher, who, in the
field of defense, are both enormous figures who have made
incredible contributions over many decades to our national
security.
I also want to commend you for holding these hearings and
your leadership, foresight, and spirit of bipartisan in
addressing these very important issues.
In my testimony today, I'd like to highlight some of the
problems with our current organization, consider how those
problems might be--might have emerged over time, and offer some
ideas for how they might be fixed or addressed.
As you are all too aware, DOD has trouble producing good
strategies and plans. Its headquarters staffs have grown too
large. Its processes are too cumbersome and time-consuming. The
pace of change on many issues is just simply glacial. Decisions
often cannot take place until every one has occurred, and this
frequently results is lowest-common-denominator outcomes that
everyone can live with.
How did we get to this place? Many of these problems, I'd
argue, are the unintended consequences of Goldwater-Nichols. To
be sure, that legislative watershed solved a very big problem
for the United States: how to improve the ability of the
military services to operate together more effectively in
combat. But, the legislation altered the Pentagon's internal
balance of power between the Secretary, the Chairman, the
service chiefs, while also elevating the COCOMs [combatant
commands] and making them direct-reports to the Secretary. And
it did so in ways that would leave all of the main actors just
short of being able to decide anything alone, thus driving the
need for excessive coordination and concurrence between them.
By making the Chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] principal
military advisor to the President, the legislation intended to
create a nonparochial ally for the Secretary of Defense. But,
in fact, it also elevated the status of the Joint Staff to that
of OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense], essentially
creating a second, highly duplicative central headquarters
staff. And, while the legislation improved considerably the
quality of officers serving on that Joint Staff, it did not
result in a cadre of staff offers--officers particularly
trained as such or shift control over their career advancement
to the Chairman.
By taking the Chairman out of the chain of command, it fell
short of creating an effective central control entity. In our
current system, combatant commands and service chiefs do not
work for the Chairman, but for the Secretary of Defense and the
Service Secretaries, respectively. Thus, the Chairman has to
rely on his convening powers and ability to control--cajole and
persuade to get things done, because he lacks directing
authority. Consequently, no military leader in our current
system is empowered to prioritize efforts across regions and
produce something analogous to the very simple, but highly
effective, strategy General George Marshall articulated for
dealing with Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, upon United
States entry into World War II: win in Europe, hold in the
Pacific.
Lastly, Goldwater-Nichols strengthened the regional
combatant commanders and gave them almost exclusive control
over war planning, but did not foresee, as Dr. Hamre mentioned
earlier, how, over several decades, they would be consumed by
their peacetime roles as de facto regional ``super
Ambassadors,'' at the expense of time and attention needed for
operational planning in the prosecution of wars. The reality
now is that combatant commanders often make only cameo
appearances in actual wars before DOD establishes new ad hoc
commands and joint task forces devoted to warfighting, as was
done in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr. Chairman, as you and members of this committee
deliberate on possible changes in DOD reorganization, I would
offer several interrelated reform ideas that could help to
address the problems I've outlined:
First, I think it's time to rethink the combatant commands.
The regional combatant command headquarters should be
considered for consolidation, at the very minimum, and to
consider replacing the service component commands that are part
of them with joint task forces focused on planning and fighting
wars.
Second, I think the time's come to power up the Chairman by
placing him in the chain of command and giving him directive
authority on behalf of the Secretary of Defense. He should have
greater authority to decide between the competing demands of
the regional commands and to develop global strategy.
And third, an idea that was considered too controversial
and taboo in the 1980s is one that perhaps you would
reconsider, and that is to create a true general staff composed
of the very best strategists, planners, and staff officers from
across the services who would compete to competitively serve on
this staff and would remain with the general staff for the
remainder of their military careers, with their promotion
tracks controlled and determined by the Chairman or the chief
of the general staff.
I believe that, to deal with the diverse range of threats
we face today and are likely to face for the foreseeable
future, we will need to make major reorganizational changes,
not modest, ineffective tweaks to the current system. It will
be difficult, if not impossible, for the executive branch to
reform itself. If change is going to happen, it will need to
come from the Congress, just as it did with Goldwater-Nichols
30 years ago.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Thomas follows:]
Prepared Statement by Jim Thomas
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Reed, and distinguished members of the
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. Major
national security re-organizations often come only after a major
military disaster when the problems become blindingly apparent. Your
decision to convene this series of hearings attests to your foresight
and determination not to wait until a national catastrophe to act, but
to actively seek out potential reforms now that could improve the
Department of Defense's (DOD) ability to deal with current and future
security challenges. It is appropriate for this Committee to undertake
a fundamental assessment of the DOD's organization and consider
measures for improving its ability to conduct core functions related to
strategy formulation; contingency planning; preparing forces and
developing needed capabilities; and conducting military operations.
This Committee was the driving force in formulating sweeping
organizational changes across the DOD three decades ago. The resulting
Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 was a watershed
event in American military history and has had a profound impact on the
U.S. defense establishment. It addressed the major problem of its day:
the lack of sufficient inter-Service cooperation or ``jointness,''
especially at the operational-theater level.
While Goldwater-Nichols has had a major positive impact on
improving operational jointness in the field--to the point that
America's rivals seek to achieve similar proficiency in inter-operating
forces from different Services--I think that the scorecard is mixed
when it comes to organizational arrangements in the Pentagon. Three
decades on since the historic enactment of Goldwater-Nichols, we should
consider whether our current command structure and organizational
arrangements remain appropriate for the world we live in today. There
are strong grounds for arguing that new legislation is needed to ensure
the DOD is effectively organized to address current and future security
challenges. In my testimony today, I will highlight some of the
problems with DOD's current organizational design and then offer a
handful of reform ideas that could merit further exploration going
forward. My testimony today is based on first-hand observations of the
Department's strategy formulation, as well as operational and force
planning processes I gained while serving in the Pentagon as a deputy
assistant secretary of defense for plans and participating in four
Quadrennial Defense Reviews.
problems with our current system
The United States faces a far more diverse set of threats than it
did in 1986. Where once we squared off against a single superpower
adversary, today we confront a far wider array of threats including a
rising, militarist China; an irredentist Russia; regional hegemonic
aspirants like Iran; shaky nuclear-armed states like North Korea and
Pakistan; emboldened terrorist groups like al Qaeda; and barbaric
quasi-states like ISIL. We face new functional challenges as well, like
cyber attacks, anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) challenges, and
hybrid warfare. Our effectiveness dealing with these modern threats is
hindered by our Cold War organizational structure. Too often our
responses to these threats have been too slow, too reactive and
regionally stove-piped. Our current system is optimized for dealing
with discrete military problems that can be addressed with temporally
short, intense conventional operations confined to the area of
responsibility of a single Regional Combatant Command. It is less
suited to deal with protracted operations, unconventional warfare, and
multiple threats that span the boundaries of the Unified Command Plan's
map. Contingency planning is largely the responsibility of the Regional
Combatant Commands, which leads to a tendency to look at security
challenges through a regional rather than global lens. Thus, many see
China as Pacific Command's issue, Russia as European Command's, ISIS is
Central Command's, and so forth, when in fact we require globally
integrated approaches to wage effective long-term strategic
competitions against these actors.
While Goldwater-Nichols strengthened the role of the Chairman as
principal military adviser to the President and Secretary of Defense,
and improved the quality of officers assigned to the Joint Staff, it
fell short of creating an effective ``global brain'' at the center of
the defense establishment--a central control entity that can assess all
of the military threats and opportunities we face, prioritize resources
and actions needed to address them, and sequence global operations over
time, with the needed directing authority to make it all happen. There
is no central military entity today that has the authority to
prioritize efforts across regions and produce something analogous to
the very simple--but highly effective--strategy General George Marshall
articulated for dealing with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan upon
United States entry into World War II: ``win in Europe, hold in the
Pacific.''
In the current system, the Combatant Commands and Service Chiefs do
not ``work'' for the Chairman, but for the Secretary of Defense and
Service Secretaries. Thus, the Chairman has to rely on his convening
powers to get things done. The Chairman is unable to play the role of
``decider'' between the competing demands of the Combatant Commands and
to hold the Services accountable as force providers. Consequently, he
must resort to cumbersome processes and coordination mechanisms aimed
at reconciling the competing demands of the Combatant Commands and
Services. These processes are laborious and time-consuming. They tend
to result in lowest common denominator compromises where everyone can
agree while major issues often going unresolved.
By making the Chairman principal military adviser to both the
President and the Secretary of Defense, Goldwater-Nichols inadvertently
undermined civilian control and blurred the distinctions between the
Secretary's and Chairman's responsibilities. In theory, the Secretary
of Defense is the ultimate power and decision authority within the
Department of Defense on any matter where he chooses to act, as well as
the President's principal assistant for national defense. Goldwater-
Nichols established the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as
``principal military adviser to the President'' with the intent that he
would be a non-parochial ``ally'' of the Secretary of Defense. In
reality, however, this has created a situation where, de facto, the
Chairman has two bosses, one of whom also serves at the pleasure of the
other. This matters less in terms of the actual relationships between
Secretaries and Chairmen, which have generally been cordial, than it
does in terms of the peculiar organizational relationship between the
Secretary's staff in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the
Joint Staff. Joint Staff officers principally view themselves as
serving the Chairman in his role as principal military adviser to the
President. Only secondarily do they tend to see their role as
supporting the Secretary. And few see the Joint Staff as
institutionally supporting OSD. While the Secretary has statutory
responsibilities to oversee the deliberate plans of the Combatant
Commands, he lacks dedicated military advisers to challenge those plans
or generate alternatives. The Joint Staff could be a source for such
alternative plans, but in practice it is reluctant to offer second
opinions to the Combatant Commands' plans. The Chairman's statutory
responsibility as principal military adviser to the President has led,
moreover, to an excessive duplication of staffing functions between the
OSD and the Joint Staff. Where you have an OSD policy expert, that
person will almost inevitably have a counterpart on the Joint Staff. In
Interagency meetings, this means DOD will normally have two seats the
table with possibly two conflicting viewpoints, which either becomes a
source of frustration for others or an organizational seam others can
exploit.
While Goldwater-Nichols improved the quality of the officers who
are assigned to the Joint Staff--they tend to be some of the most
outstanding officers from each of the Services--the vast majority are
skilled operators (ace pilots, ship captains, and brigade commanders)
who aspire to higher command assignments when they return to their
Services. Their promotions are still determined by their Services
rather than the Chairman, which tempers their non-parochialism while
serving on the Joint Staff. Too few of these officers, moreover, come
to the Joint Staff with deep educational backgrounds in military
history, strategy and war planning experience. Too often Services will
assign to the Joint Staff an officer with high promotion potential who
excelled as a tactical commander but has no staff officer experience,
rather than a highly qualified strategist or planner who is unlikely to
be promoted to O-7. The kinds of officers who naturally gravitate
toward staff jobs and might be best qualified to formulate strategy and
develop imaginative plans also tend to be iconoclastic. Sometimes they
are promoted as general or flag officers despite their maverick
streaks, but more often they retire from O-5/6 staff jobs. Finally,
requiring every general and flag officer to be joint qualified may have
contributed to the growth of joint headquarters staffs and resulted in
too many ``ticket punches'' rather than a creating smaller, more elite
corps of highly qualified joint staff officers.
Goldwater-Nichols empowered the Unified and Specific Commands as
the exclusive warfighting institutions of the Department of Defense and
succeeded in improving jointness at the operational level. Few could
have imagined, however, how the role of the Regional Combatant Commands
would evolve over the past several decades. Increasingly, the Regional
Combatant Commanders' peacetime ``Pro-Consul'' political-military
functions have diverted their time and attention away from their
statutory responsibilities planning for or conducting regional combat
operations. The reality now is that Combatant Commanders often make
only cameo appearances in actual wars before the Department of Defense
establishes new ad hoc commands devoted to warfighting as was done in
Iraq and Afghanistan, thereby freeing the Regional Combatant Commanders
of their combat duties.
While they play critical roles in political-military peacetime
engagement, it is arguable that they have also grown preoccupied with
so-called ``Phase Zero'' activities relative to preparations for actual
warfighting and war termination.
While Goldwater-Nichols was widely seen as shifting power from the
Services to the Combatant Commands in 1986, over time the system has
also tended to empower the Regional Combatant Commands relative to the
Functional Combatant Commands. For example, Special Operations Command
has played a leading role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well
as in wider global counter-terrorist operations over the past fifteen
years. But the Regional Combatant Commands have resisted any accretion
in SOCOM's command responsibilities in global terrorist operations,
limiting its role to ``synchronizing'' operations across Combatant
Commands, while stopping well short of directing authority over other
commands. Similarly, Regional Combatant Commands have resisted moves to
give SOCOM greater flexibility in moving special operations forces and
assets between theaters, preferring to ``own'' their forces rather than
depend on a Functional Command to provide forces to them when they are
needed. Strategic Command has experienced similar problems in
integrating global strike and cyber warfare capabilities into the
contingency plans of Regional Combatant Commands, whose preferences for
forces and capabilities assigned or apportioned to them may be
prioritized over those controlled by a Functional Combatant Command.
This imbalance between Regional and Functional Combatant Commands
also manifests itself in resource allocation and force planning
decisions that subordinate global priorities to regional ones. The
steady proliferation of A2/AD capabilities around the world threatens
the effectiveness of many traditional elements of our regional forward
presence, ranging from short-range combat aircraft operating from bases
close to a potential adversary, to large surface ships, to
expeditionary ground forces that require access through traditional
ports and airfields. In the face of growing A2/AD threats, power
projection capabilities like SOF and global surveillance and strike
systems that can penetrate and operate in denied areas are among the
most viable power projection options available to us. They are,
moreover, globally fungible and can therefore help to deter or defeat
aggression in multiple areas of the world. Thus, from a global
perspective they should be highly prioritized. But in reality there is
a confluence of interests between the Regional Combatant Commanders who
tend to favor capabilities and forces that will actually reside in
their theaters and confer political-military benefits through their
visible presence, and the Services, which continue to acquire
capabilities and forces that are heavily dependent on relatively
permissive operating conditions. In this case, the global perspective
of the Functional Combatant Commanders appears to be receiving
inadequate weight in the Department's deliberations.
Finally, headquarters staffs, especially OSD and Joint Staff, have
simply grown too large over time and the normal processes too
cumbersome. There are always compelling reasons for adding new staff
and offices as pressing issues emerge, but once they are added it is
difficult to divest those functions later on. Although large staffs
enable leaders to ensure that no issue area goes uncovered, they reduce
organizational agility and hamper effective decision-making. Large
staffs, moreover, contribute to excessive coordination and labyrinthine
processes. And in a system where the coordination process normally
requires the concurrence of the major players, the process tends to
favor keeping things just as they are or making only marginal changes
that are acceptable to everyone. Rarely is someone's ox gored or do
clear winners and losers emerge, especially when it comes to resource
allocation. And increasingly in the Department of Defense, when senior
leaders want to get something done, they must work around the existing
processes rather than through them. Secretaries of Defense have to find
innovative ``out of band'' solutions to procure MRAPs, to produce real
options in a QDR that the normal bureaucratic process would kill, or to
develop alternate military strategy ideas like the 2006-2007 Surge.
recommendations
Mr. Chairman, as you and members of this Committee deliberate about
possible changes in the organization of the Department of Defense, I
would offer a handful of interrelated reform ideas that could help to
address the problems I have outlined. All of these ideas would require
detailed analysis to fully understand their strengths and avoid
outcomes that might inadvertently leave us worse off. It is also
difficult, if not impossible, to consider these proposals in isolation
from one another. Enacting one but not another is likely to lead to
greater problems than either maintaining the current system or adopting
wholesale changes.
Replace the Joint Staff with a True General Staff
I believe the time has come to reconsider the merits of creating a
true General Staff. I think this would have the greatest organizational
impact addressing many of the problems we currently face. The
Goldwater-Nichols Joint Staff aimed to establish an independent central
staff that would be less beholden to the Services, but it fell short of
a General Staff in three main ways. First, officers assigned to the
Joint Staff normally return to their Services and their future
promotions are still controlled by their Services. Second, despite the
quality of the officers assigned to the Joint Staff, they are not
trained as an elite strategy and planning staff cadre. Third, the Joint
Staff and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff lack directing
authority one would expect a General Staff to have, resulting in
cumbersome processes aimed at achieving consensus across the Services
and Combatant Commands rather than having a decider who can make hard
choices.
In the 1980s, broaching the topic of a General Staff was considered
taboo--too radical, ``un-American,'' and a political non-starter. I
believe that the strongest arguments AGAINST the establishment of a
General Staff are that it could lead to: (1) the over-concentration of
power within the military; or (2) burying alternative courses of action
or isolating civilian leaders from alternative military viewpoints.
These risks, however, are not insurmountable and could be addressed
explicitly in the design of a General Staff. I believe that the
inability of the current system to formulate effective strategies and
imaginative plans, the lack of directing authority invested in the
current Chairman and Joint Staff, and other potential benefits that a
General Staff offers make an option that has long been seen as
heretical worth exploring.
The main purposes of a General Staff would be to assist senior
leaders to:
Identify global threats and opportunities;
Formulate globally integrated, resource-informed
strategies;
Develop initial concept plans and offer alternative
plans;
Conduct mobilization planning; and
Determine needed capabilities across the Joint Force.
The last function would be particularly important to ensure
adequate investment in interoperable command and control, and
communications systems that serve as the technical glue binding the
Joint Force. The General Staff should also be the advocate for globally
fungible power projection capabilities like SOF, global surveillance
and strike, space and cyber capabilities, nuclear forces and global
mobility assets that can swing between theaters to deter, deny or
punish regional aggressors.
The General Staff would assume the role of the military's global
brain to develop cross-regional military strategies and initial concept
plans for various contingencies. It should have the authority to decide
between the competing demands of the Combatant Commands and to direct
them to take preparations or actions consistent with direction or
orders coming down from the President or Secretary of Defense.
Unlike the Regional Combatant Commands organized by geographical
area, a General Staff might be organized around missions or issues. For
example, the General Staff might assign Flag Officers with
responsibilities for a particular high-level issue (e.g., a major
potential adversary or key mission like counter-WMD) to develop both
the overall strategic approach and initial plans that could cross-cut
the various Combatant Commands and draw forces and capabilities from
the various Services as appropriate. The General Staff would also play
a key role in devising and validating innovative joint concepts of
operation.
The General Staff should ideally be reduced in size relative to the
current Joint Staff. It should be streamlined to focus on inherently
military tasks while shedding political-military and policy functions
(e.g., bilateral defense relations, NATO policy, arms control) where it
currently duplicates functions performed by OSD. It should, however,
provide technical military advice to support OSD as needed.
A General Staff would be comprised of elite officers selected at
the O-4/5/6 level from the various Services on the basis of rigorous
exams, interviews and their performance in operational-and strategic-
level wargames. Following their highly competitive selection they would
enter into an intense professional military education course centered
on strategy formulation and war planning where they would be
responsible for developing alternative plans and concepts of operation.
Officers would remain in the General Staff for the remainder of their
military careers and their advancement would be determined solely by
the head of the General Staff; thus, they would not be beholden to
their original Services in formulating strategy, developing plans, and
determining needed capabilities and forces. Force management and
manning levels would have to be worked out with the Services in
advance. General Staff officers should also be eligible to compete for
General and Flag Officer assignments both within the General Staff and
across regional and functional joint operational commands and Joint
Task Forces. Over the course of their careers as General Staff
officers, they should rotate between the General Staff and assignments
in the field to maintain operational currency.
To address some of the historic concerns, the General Staff should
be required to develop ranges of options and alternative courses of
action rather than single ``point'' solutions. The Congress should
ensure adequate channels exist for Service Chiefs and Combatant
Commanders to surface dissent or alternative courses of action to the
Secretary and President if they judge it necessary. Similarly, the
General Staff should foster a culture in which superiors' ideas and
opinions are routinely challenged.
In sum, a General Staff would help to improve strategic and
operational planning competence and would represent a globalist
perspective to formulate truly integrated, cross-regional and
competitive strategies. With directing authority on behalf of the
Secretary of Defense over the Combatant Commands and Services, it would
be far less encumbered by current coordination processes and the
penchant of the current system toward concurrence in order to drive
needed changes. It would also be more likely to identify problems and
challenge the status quo as it would not be beholden to the Services
and would be more empowered than the current Joint Staff in making hard
choices between competing demands.
Replace the Chairman with a Chief of the General Staff
A Chief of the General Staff would be the highest-ranking military
officer and report only to the Secretary of Defense. I see merit in the
Chief of the General Staff being interposed between the Secretary of
Defense and combatant commanders in the chain of command to assist the
Secretary in oversight of operational commands in the field. This would
give him the authority to influence operations and activities around
the world to a far greater degree than the Chairman can today.
The Chief of the General Staff would be principally responsible for
formulating military strategy, developing concept plans, and directing
global force allocation and application. He would have both decision
and directive authorities the current Chairman lacks. The Chief would
play the critical role of global integrator and decider between
competing military demands consistent with guidance from the President
and Secretary of Defense. He should have a deputy from a different
Service who would bring complementary military expertise and help to
ensure that no single Service is perceived as dominating the General
Staff. Both the Chief and the Deputy should serve four-year terms that
are staggered so that they do not normally retire at the same time,
thereby ensuring continuity.
To address Congress' historical concerns about the over-
concentration of power invested in this individual, the Chief of the
General Staff should not be the principal military adviser to the
President (unlike the current Chairman) but should be under the
direction and control of the Secretary of Defense and provide military
advice to the President through the Secretary of Defense. The
President, however, might be authorized a principal military adviser to
assist in assessing the strategies and plans produced by the Department
of Defense. Such an adviser would ideally be a recently retired or
serving general or flag officer who would, by assuming this position,
be ineligible for promotion or command and thus not beholden to any
organization within the Department of Defense. I have in mind the role
played by Admiral William Leahy during World War II when he came out of
retirement to serve as the personal Chief of Staff to President
Franklin Roosevelt.
Retool the Regional Combatant Commands
Complementing central control organizational changes, Congress
might also consider consolidating and retooling the Regional Combatant
Commands. The existing six Regional COMBATANT Commands (Northern
Command, Southern Command, European Command, Africa Command, Central
Command and Pacific Command) could be consolidated and reestablished as
three or four Regional Command Headquarters. One possibility might be
to keep Pacific and Central Commands but combine Northern and Southern
Commands, as well as Africa and European Commands. A more radical idea
might be to organize these consolidated Regional Commands around the
three major oceans of concern (Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans)
rather than continental landmasses.
The major change in the Regional Commands, however, would occur
below the headquarters level. The existing Service Component Commands
would be disestablished and replaced with Joint Task Forces focused
exclusively on warfighting preparation or execution. In many respects,
this would simply acknowledge what has already become a reality: the
current Regional Combatant Commands do not normally conduct operations,
but rather farm them out to subordinate Joint Task Forces or commands.
Joint Task Forces would serve as the principal joint operational
command elements worldwide. For example, a Joint Task Force
Headquarters might be established to plan for operations in a certain
area of the world. A headquarters planning staff would be formed and
operational elements from the appropriate Services and SOCOM would
begin joint training and work-ups in preparation. When ordered to
deploy, the Joint Task Force would move forward and scale up. While in
theory the Joint Task Force Commander might report directly to the
General Staff, as a practical matter for effective span of control it
probably would make more sense for him to report through a Regional
Command. The Regional Command would take responsibility for supporting
the Joint Task Force in the field, especially in terms of logistics,
handling requests for forces and other support from the Services and
other commands, thereby freeing up the JTF Commander's time and energy
to focus on operational planning and warfighting.
Conclusion
As this Committee deliberates on potential ideas for further
reorganization it is important to remember that reform cannot
substitute for adequate funding, nor can it compensate for inadequate
leaders. Reform cannot ensure a perfect strategy or a brilliant plan
for every crisis. And reform alone cannot generate ready and combat
capable forces armed with the best equipment. But organizational reform
could help to ensure that increases in funding will be more wisely
allocated, that good leaders can work through a functional system
rather than around a dysfunctional one, that competent strategists and
planners can provide senior leaders with better options, and that the
Services can more effectively develop unrivalled forces and
capabilities.
The ideas I have proposed today are unlikely to garner an
outpouring of support from the Department of Defense institutionally
(although various officials might personally support them). You will
hear from many quarters that these ideas are too radical and
unnecessary, and more marginal changes will be offered as an
alternative. Indeed, that was the majority reaction to defense reform
ideas thirty years ago. Nevertheless, I believe that to deal with the
diverse range of threats we are likely to face for the foreseeable
future, we need major organizational changes, not modest, inoffensive
tweaks to the system. It will be difficult if not impossible for the
Executive Branch to reform itself. If change is going to happen, it
will need to come from the Congress just as it did with Goldwater-
Nichols.
About the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) is an
independent, nonpartisan policy research institute established to
promote innovative thinking and debate about national security strategy
and investment options. CSBA's analysis focuses on key questions
related to existing and emerging threats to U.S. national security, and
its goal is to enable policymakers to make in for med decisionson
matters of strategy, security policy, and resources.
Senator McCain. Well, I thank the witnesses. And we have,
obviously, a lot of issues to discuss.
I guess one of my first questions is--and I'd--I'll ask two
at the same time. One is the results that would entail if we
did nothing, if we just leave the status quo. And I guess my
second question is, I don't think there's any doubt about the
proliferation of COCOMs. Seems to me that every time there's
some issue or area, we create a command, whether it be African
Command or AFRICOM or what--now we have Cyber Command, and all
is--and all of those, of course, includes large staffs and
support activities that continue to contribute to the reduction
in actual warfighting when we look at the reduction of brigade
combat teams and the commensurate increases in size and numbers
of COCOMs and staffs.
So, maybe we could begin with you, Jim, and maybe discuss
those two issues.
Mr. Locher. Absolutely. Mr. Chairman, there would be a high
price for doing nothing. The organizational arrangements in the
Pentagon are not well matched to the external environment.
We're going to have increased ineffectiveness and increased
inefficiency. This is not a modern organization at the
Department of Defense. It's filled with lots of talented people
who are incredibly dedicated to what they are doing, but they
have an outmoded approach. There are also some cultural
obstacles. So, I would encourage the committee to take action
in this area. The--as Mr. Thomas mentioned, the Pentagon is not
going to reform itself. It's going to need external help to do
so.
The--on the second question, on the proliferation of
combatant commands, this is an age of specialization in which
we need people who can get focused either on a region or a
particular topic, like cyber. And if we have a problem with
these commands being too large, I think some of the ideas that
Dr. Hamre mentioned, in terms of making them much smaller, not
having large headquarters--but, if we consolidate them, as Mr.
Thomas had mentioned, we dilute that specialization, but we
also begin to layer. And layering is not good in a world that
moves so fast. So, I would look for other ways to reduce the
burden of combatant commands to figure out how we can
centralize some functions for the combatant commands to reduce
their cost. But, I think that they serve a very useful purpose,
and I would not consolidate them. And I'd be very careful on
eliminating some of them.
Dr. Hamre. Mr. Chairman, when I came on this committee,
working for you, I remember it so distinctly. This was--you
said in your statement that the purchasing power of the budget
we have today was roughly the same as we had 30 years ago. But,
30 years ago--and I remember this--we bought over 950 combat
aircraft, we bought 21 surface combatants, we bought 50 ICBMs
[intercontinental ballistic missiles], 1,200 M1 tanks, 1,800
Bradley fighting vehicles. We had 300,000 troops in Europe. We
had 2.2 million people in uniform. We have a fraction of that
today, and we're spending the same amount of money. And you
look to see the size of the overhead structure and interference
that comes from too many headquarters and too much
micromanagement, it is choking this Department.
So, I think this is crucial. Doing nothing would be very
damaging, so I really hope that you take this with full energy.
We have to do it.
Senator McCain. And the second question.
Dr. Hamre. Sir, I think the--in general, we have--we've had
a pattern--during the Vietnam War, the average person that
testified in front of the Congress was a colonel. By the end of
the war, they were generals. And now you hardly ever have
anybody but a four-star general coming up here. I mean, we've
got too much top-heavy focus. The people that run this
Department really are the O6s [colonels]. We should be giving
them much more of that responsibility back.
And I think we have too many commands. We've got commands--
every command looks the same way Julius Caesar would have
created it, you know, personnel, operations, intelligence,
logistics. I mean, this--we have got to be smarter than just
simply cookie-cutter--doing a cookie-cutter model for every
command headquarters that we set up. It just--this--we're too
smart. I mean, we don't have to be as rigid and structured as
we are. So, I think going back and forcing a massive
streamlining of this command structure would be very important.
Senator McCain. Mr. Thomas?
Mr. Thomas. Well, I agree with the points. I think Mr.
Locher is--a good issue, in terms of--we want to avoid adding
duplicative layers. But, I also think Dr. Hamre made a good
point earlier, which was, the role that's played by the
regional combatant commands is an important one, in terms of
engagement and partnership and all of that, but I think we have
to divide them out. I mean, the reality today is that we are
warfighting with joint task forces. We're not warfighting with
those combatant commands. So, I think the real choices are
between: Do you want to just eliminate that layer of what we
call combatant commands today and have joint task forces that
report directly to the center, which I think is the solution to
that problem, or is perhaps, for span of control and also to
conduct some of these political, military, international
activities, do you want that command layer there? And I think
that's a question that we need to address.
Overall, I think our fundamental problem is that we are
losing the command-and-control competitions against all of our
adversaries today. All of our adversaries, from great powers,
like Russia and China, to nonstate actors, like al-Qaeda and
quasi-states like ISIL, are inside our OODA [observe, orient,
decide, and act] Loop, they are moving faster and making
decisions faster than we can possibly keep up with our outdated
processes and organizations. So, I absolutely agree, part of
the answer has to be reducing headquarter staffs. In part, you
do it maybe to save money, but I think the bigger reason is,
you do it to gain back your agility as an organization.
Senator Reed. Thank you very much, gentlemen. It's very,
very thoughtful testimony.
And just let me follow up on a point that Mr. Locher made,
and ask the whole panel to--you urged us to take a holistic
look, which would, I think, also include the connections
between the Department of Defense and every other agency it
works with. I don't want to make our task more difficult, but
that world needs some attention, too. But, could you give us a
sense of the relative importance of reform of not just the DOD
system, but the interagency system? And I'd ask everyone to
comment.
Mr. Locher.
Mr. Locher. If it were possible, I would urge this
committee to take on the interagency issues first, because they
are much more troubling. But, that's not within the committee's
jurisdiction. But, I think it's important to note that, no
matter how well you transform the Department of Defense, it is
still going to be troubled by an interagency system that is
quite broken. And the problems that confront this Nation and
national security require an interagency response. The days of
the Department of Defense being able to execute a national
security mission by itself are long gone. And we do not have
the ability to integrate the expertise and capacities of all of
the government agencies that are necessary.
As you know, Senator Reed, I headed the project on national
security reform for 6 years, trying to bring a Goldwater-
Nichols to the interagency. We did not succeed. But, that is a
major, major problem.
Senator Reed. Thank you.
Dr. Hamre, your comments, and then Mr. Thomas.
Dr. Hamre. Well, I agree it's a major problem. The problem
is, it's a faultline in American constitutional government.
There's no question that Congress has the right to oversee and
fund the executive branch departments, and you have a right to
demand that they come and talk to you about what they're doing.
There's also no question that the President has a right of
confidentiality in how he runs the executive branch. And that
nexus is at that interagency process. We have not been able to
solve this constitutional dilemma. So, what we do is, we try to
improve everybody's functioning and then hector everybody to do
a better job of getting together on it.
It really comes together with the President. The President
has to have the kind of vision for what the interagency process
should look like. And the person who did it best was Dwight
Eisenhower. Dwight Eisenhower had a J5 and he had a J3 in his
NSC [National Security Council]--I mean, the equivalent of
that. And that's when it worked best. That's when they did
strategic planning. Right now, everything is what's on fire in
the inbox.
Senator Reed. Thank you very much.
Mr. Thomas, please.
Mr. Thomas. I agree with Dr. Hamre in his formulation. The
one concrete thing that the committee might consider is, there
is a legislative requirement for the President to prepare a
National Security Strategy every several years. And this is an
ad hoc--this is a unclassified document that, over the years,
has really generated pablum. We rarely have anything that
would--truly looks like a strategy when you look at this. It
looks like a marketing brochure for the executive branch in a
lot of ways.
What we need is a hardhitting classified National Security
Strategy. And that Strategy should be coordinated with the
fiscal guidance that the President sends to each of the
executive departments. This, I think, would help to improve the
national security coordination and achieve greater unity of
effort across the government.
Senator Reed. Mr. Locher, you mentioned weak mission
orientation, and--can you give us an example on what--the
panel, an example. Because sometimes it helps us to sort of put
a specific anecdote or a specific example to a concept.
Mr. Locher. Certainly. You know, as--when you're at the
level of the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary, you have that
ability to focus on missions. But, the moment you go below the
Secretary and the Deputy Secretary, you're going into
functional areas: manpower, health affairs, intelligence,
acquisition. But, what we really need, to move quickly, is to
be able to focus on missions, missions such as counterterrorism
or countering weapons of mass destruction or some of our
activities in the Middle East. There is no place in the
headquarters of the Department of Defense where the Secretary
and the Deputy Secretary could go and have all of that
functional expertise integrated into what I would call a
``mission team.'' In the business world, beginning in the mid-
to late-1980s, businesses went to what they called ``cross-
functional teams,'' where they could get all of the expertise
of a corporation together on one team to solve a problem
quickly. We need to be able to do that in the Department of
Defense.
When Toyota started the cross-functional teams, they ended
up being able to design an automobile with 30 percent of the
effort. The Department of Defense could do the same thing.
You've heard both Dr. Hamre and Mr. Thomas talk about the slow,
ponderous process in the Pentagon. In part, that's because we
are dominated by those functional structures, the boundaries
between them are very rigid, and what we need to do is to adopt
more modern organizational practices, mirror what's been done
in business to create teams that are focused on mission areas.
Senator Reed. Thank you very much.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Dr. Hamre. Could I just react to say one thing, though? So
much of the rigidity in our system is really driven because of
the way we get money from the Congress. I mean, it comes in in
these buckets. We have to stay inside those buckets. People
have to be advocates for those buckets. That is the--that's the
structure that's, frankly, locking us in. You know, we do two
things very well: win wars and get money from Congress. And to
get money from Congress, we are very dutiful about taking your
direction. We're going to have to tackle that problem.
Senator Reed. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator McCain. Senator Fischer.
Senator Fischer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I understand that the Goldwater-Nichols Act--it was the
product of years of deliberation, and today we're hearing you
talk about a holistic approach, we're hearing about the dangers
of hasty reform or misguided actions. Is there anything that
you think Congress can do immediately? Are there small changes
that we can make? Or do you propose that more holistic, big
approach? And are we able to do that? You know, there's a sense
of urgency out there. We just heard that there's a slow,
ponderous process in the Pentagon. How do we get by that? Can
we do it by taking some incremental steps there? And, if so,
what would you all suggest?
Dr. Locher.
Mr. Locher. Well, I don't think there's--if you really want
to see a seed--if this committee wants to transform the
Department of Defense from a 20th century organization to a
21st century organization, it's going to take--have to take
that holistic approach and work very carefully through the
issues. That does not mean that, as part of this process, you
won't identify ideas in the beginning that are clearly needed.
And actually, during Goldwater-Nichols, there were four or five
provisions that were passed early on, at the insistence of the
House, focused on the Joint Chiefs of Staff organization, where
enough study had been done by the two committees to see that
those ideas really made sense. But, the larger reforms are
going to be quite difficult.
My view is that the work that this committee will have to
do will be more difficult than the work that was done as part
of Goldwater-Nichols, because lots of the things, such as the
cultural impediments in the Department of Defense, take a long
time to really understand and figure out how to get over them.
But, there could be a number of things that could be acted upon
quickly because they become so obvious that they would be
useful.
Dr. Hamre. Ma'am, I would--two things. I think the--one of
the greatest things that needs to be done is to rationalize
DOPMA, the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act, and
reconcile it with joint duty. But, I don't think that could be
done by a committee. I think you should create a task force
that supports this, gives you some recommendations. It's very
elaborate how personnel management is conducted and what it
does to patterns of officer recruiting and retention and all
that. So, I think you should have a--create a commission that
helps you with that.
The one thing I would ask you to focus this next year on is
the relationship of the Joint Staff and the unified combatant
commands. Overwhelmingly, that's going to be the--where you'll
get the biggest bang for the buck. It's the biggest force--
biggest factor that's going to make big structural changes in
the Department. And that's something that you could easily get
your arms around in one year.
Senator Fischer. Thank you.
Mr. Thomas.
Mr. Thomas. I would just second that and that I think it is
really about the role of the Chairman and the Joint Staff that
might be the most discrete, but all of these issues really are
intertwined. But, there are several things. One is improving
the training of officers who are going to serve on the Joint
Staff, in terms of their ability to do strategic and
operational planning. The other is really the role of the
Chairman, and considering perhaps placing him into the chain of
command and, at the same time, rethinking his role as principal
military advisor to the President, and how that could evolve in
the future.
Senator Fischer. Okay, thank you.
You also spoke of strategy and planning and a--the weak
civilian leadership, yet--how successful can the Department be,
when much of the strategic direction comes from active
participation by that civilian leadership?
Mr. Locher. Well, let me talk about that. I think that's a
little bit of a challenge in the Department. Many professional
organizations, whether they're medical, law, accounting, have a
tendency to promote people based upon their technical
competence. And for a long period of time, we've done that on
the civilian side of the Department of Defense, that we have
our greatest policy specialists who rise to the top of the
organization. And for a long time, that was fine, but, as the
world accelerated and the demands of leadership became greater,
we ended up with a vulnerability. We're not, in the Department
of Defense, preparing people well enough--civilians--for the
leadership responsibilities they have. And that leads to lots
of inefficiency, inability to produce quality products on time,
inability to recruit, to mentor the next generation of leaders.
And so, it's a topic that needs some attention, but would have
to be a long-term process with all of the right incentives.
Senator Fischer. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator McCain. Senator Manchin.
Senator Manchin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you all. I appreciate very much your giving us
all this insight.
As I look at the organization of the Department of Defense,
I have a hard time figuring out who's in charge. And I would
ask you all--I know the Department of Defense, Secretary at the
top. I always--and you're right about all the generals that
come--four-stars generals. We see very few below that level.
But, I've always felt the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in my mind,
before I knew the--what the chart looked like--the Joint Chiefs
of Staff would have been representing, but working together to
defend our country and make sure that we were--the homeland was
safe, and then they would have answered directly to the
Secretary of Defense for the responsibilities of each branch,
seeing that they were coordinating. When you look at the chart,
it's not that at all. The chart basically--the Joint Chiefs of
Staff have no more input than the Department of Army,
Department of Navy, Department of Air Force. It doesn't make
any sense. I mean--so, I don't know how you get a decision
being made, or how the Secretary is getting the information,
when they're supposed to be thinking as all-in-one versus just
individually. Is that the problem you all have been
identifying? Or----
Dr. Hamre. Well, yes, sir. Mr. Thomas had brought this up.
You know, the hottest debates we had 30 years ago on the
committee when they were deciding Goldwater-Nichols was this
question about creating a general staff. And there was great
fear----
Senator Manchin. Joint--you're talking about the Joints.
Dr. Hamre. The Joint Staff evolving into a general staff
like----
Senator Manchin. I gotcha.
Dr. Hamre.--the Bundeswehr used to have, you know, where
there was a dedicated cadre of staff officers that ran----
Senator Manchin. Okay.
Dr. Hamre.--you know, the Ministry. And there was great
fear that we would do that. And the reason you see the
structure of Goldwater-Nichols today was, in no small part,
because of that fear of the general staff. And part of it was
parochial, to be honest. I think there was a fear on the part
of the Navy and the Marine Corps that the Army would dominate
the--a general staff, as it did in Germany. And so, it was kind
of a backdrop argument why we shouldn't have a general staff.
But, we have always been deeply ambivalent about having a very
strong uniformed body in Washington, because--look, the average
Secretary of Defense serves 26 months; the Deputy Secretary,
about 22 months.
Senator Manchin. Who's the most powerful after the
Secretary of Defense? What--which layer does it go to?
Dr. Hamre. Well, I mean, it's--when--if it's a matter of
resource allocation, it's the service secretaries and the
service chiefs. Service chiefs are, by far, the most important
people in the building when it comes to physical things, real
things----
Senator Manchin. Okay.
Dr. Hamre.--people, equipment, training, et cetera. Service
chiefs are all-powerful. When it comes to operations in the
field, they're not in the game. That's--it's the Secretary to
the unified commander, actually, even though the unified
commander isn't doing much anymore, to a task force. So, we've
got two different channels where power is exercised, but it
only comes together at the Secretary. And, honestly, you know,
every one of us that's served in public life were accountable
to the people--the American public through the chain of command
through the President. So, I don't think that part is bad. But,
what's--where we get clogged up is when we have ambiguous
command and ambiguous----
Senator Manchin. I've got one final question. Time is
precious here. I want to ask all three of you this. And, Mr.
Locher, you can start, and then Mr. Thomas, and, Mr. Hamre, you
finish up.
Do you all believe there's enough money in the defense
budget to defend our country to continue to be the superpower
of the world? Do you believe there's enough money right now--I
heard a little bit--I need an--your thoughts on that.
Mr. Locher. You know, I--this is not an area of my
expertise currently. I've not been involved in the defense
budget. I do think that there are lots of improvements in
effectiveness that'll lead to considerable efficiency, which
would free up more money----
Senator Manchin. Well, you know our budget, in the 600
range, versus the rest of the emerging world, if you will----
Mr. Locher. I think my--the--my two colleagues here are
better----
Senator Manchin. Okay.
Mr. Locher.--able to answer this question for you, Senator.
Senator Manchin. Thank you.
Mr. Thomas, real quick, and then Mr. Hamre.
Mr. Thomas. Senator, if I could just comment on your first
question and just maybe add--very quickly--and then add--and
address the funding question.
I think----
Senator McCain. If we need additional time, please go
ahead. This is an important line of questioning. Go ahead.
Senator Manchin. Thank you.
Mr. Thomas. Thank you very much, Chairman.
The way we do command and control in the American military
is exceptional. It is unlike the command and control for any
other country in the world. And we have had a tension, since
the founding of the Republic, between a Jeffersonian aversion
to a--the concentration of power in any military officer versus
the Hamiltonian impulse toward centralization and
effectiveness. And I think that's really what we're struggling
with today, is that, if anything, we understand that either
extreme is going too far, but where we are on that pendulum
swing maybe is too far in the Jeffersonian direction today. And
I think if we're frustrated with how much--the Byzantine
coordination process, and everyone has to concur, and you can't
figure out, on the process, who's responsible for what--those
are all symptoms of that. And so, I think that that's something
we would consider. And I think that really gets to this
fundamental point of thinking about the role of the Chairman.
Is he or is he not in the chain of command? And should we have
a general staff? And it's a part of the issue.
With respect to funding, I think that our funding today is
inadequate, given our level of strategic appetite, that, for
all the things we want to do in the world and that we perhaps
are required to do in the world, we simply don't have the
resources to do it all. And I think the other part of this
problem, again, is that there's a lack of global
prioritization, there's a lack of an ability to determine where
we're going to take risks--below the level of the Secretary.
Senator Manchin. Mr. Hamre.
Senator McCain. Does that respond, Mr. Thomas, to Senator
Manchin's question about sufficient funding?
Mr. Thomas. I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman?
Senator McCain. One of Senator Manchin's questions was, Do
you believe there is sufficient funding for defense?
Mr. Thomas. No, sir, I do not. I think that--I think we are
underfunded, given our strategic appetite and what we want to
accomplish. I think improvements in organization could help us
more efficiently allocate resources across the Department, but
reorganization is no substitute for adequate funding for
defense.
Senator Manchin. Gotcha.
Mr. Hamre.
Dr. Hamre. Sir, we have too small a fighting force, and
we've got too big a supporting force, and we have inefficient
supporting--I personally think we can live with the budget that
you've outlined if we were to do fundamental changes in how we
support this force.
I'll give you just a little example. You go to the
headquarters that are operating and supporting satellites for
the United States Government. I won't say--I'll just say the
Air Force.
Senator Manchin. Yes.
Dr. Hamre. They'll have 5- and 6- and 700 people in that
office. If you go to a commercial satellite operating company,
they're going to have 10. I mean, the scale is so off. So, I
mean, we have so much we could do by becoming more efficient. I
think that there are--I think it's the case. There are more
people in the Army with their fingers on the keyboard every day
than on a trigger. This is what has to change. We can live with
the money you've given us if we can make real changes.
Senator Manchin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator McCain. Senator Rounds.
Senator Rounds. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In listening to the testimony of all three of you, there
seems to be a common thread. And that is, number one--and I
would ask your comment--Goldwater-Nichols did not design the
Pentagon to fix itself, but, rather, expected an outside entity
to provide that. At the same time, I think the suggestion by
Mr. Thomas that the Senate having the opportunity to fix and
then laying out the challenges you find within the Pentagon, it
is slow to adapt, it is slow to respond. It has an archaic
system, which, basically, feeds upon itself. It sounds a lot
like the United States Senate, in many ways. Would you care to
comment, in terms of: Should we be looking at--in terms of how
we fix, or if we fix--how do we put together a system that may
very well have the ability to make changes within itself to
keep up with an ever-changing environment?
Mr. Locher. Senator, if I might start on that topic.
At the time of Goldwater-Nichols, there was a great
interest in having the Department of Defense renew itself. You
know, the Defense Business Board was created, and it generated
some ideas for changes that need to occur. But, all large
organizations, even in the business world, have a great
difficulty in reforming themselves. Often, a leader in a
business sees that things are not working well, but his
institution is very interested in maintaining the status quo,
and so they often go to an outside consulting firm, where they
can get a fresh perspective. And the Department of Defense is a
large organization. It's overwhelmed with its day-to-day
responsibilities. It's hard for the senior leadership to find
time to take--to look at these issues in the depth that are
required. And so, I think the Congress, the two Armed Services
Committees are always going to have play a role, in terms of
thinking the--about the changes that will have to occur in the
Defense Department next.
You know, in addition to doing Goldwater-Nichols, the
Congress also passed the Cohen-Nunn Amendment that created the
U.S. Special Operations Command, another piece of legislation
that's been highly successful, and it was done over the
opposition of the Department of Defense.
Dr. Hamre. A friend of mine once said, ``A Candlemaker will
never invent electricity.'' And so, you're going to have to
create a reform impetus from outside of the system. This is
what corporations do. I mean, it--reform comes from cuts. Cuts
don't lead to reform. I mean, you--or cuts lead to reform. You
don't get savings by starting with a reform agenda. You have to
just impose some changes. And I--this is where I think you have
to do it, if possible, in partnership with the Secretary. I
mean, the two of you have the same goal right now. And trying
to find a way where you can--in this--you're ahead. You've got
1 year where you can make some very large changes. I think
there's real opportunities here.
Mr. Thomas. I would agree with that point, that one of the
things, thinking back to the history of Goldwater-Nichols, was
the staunch opposition, not only of the services, but the
Secretary of Defense at the time, Casper Weinberger. And I
think you have an opportunity to establish that dialogue today,
and perhaps a partnership to address some of these problems.
But, it is absolutely right that the organization simply cannot
reform itself, that there are too many conflicting interests
and priorities and parochial interests that just can't be
overcome from within. They're going to have to be addressed
from an external source.
I think, as much as the Department resisted Goldwater-
Nichols 30 years ago, that now has become the status quo in a
lot of ways. And I think, actually, there would be strong
defense for maintaining many of the edifices and processes that
it created. And so, we'll have a--the same sort of tension that
existed then, today. But, one way I think that could be
ameliorated is by early dialogue with the Secretary.
Senator Rounds. The cyber threat seems to be all-
encompassing, in terms of where it hits. How do you begin the
process of looking at a system that includes cyber? And where
do you put in at? Where in the system does cyber fit when we
talk about redoing or revamping the Pentagon operations?
Dr. Hamre. Well, I have--sir, I have my own personal view,
here, which is not--is rather different. In my view, you've got
two separate, parallel staffs that work for the Secretary of
Defense. We've got the Joint Staff--I mean, they report through
the Chairman, but the Joint Staff works for the Secretary, as
does OSD. OSD's C-cubed part is weak. I think the--that the J6,
you know, ought to become the direct guy watching over cyber
and all C-cubed stuff for the Secretary. And personally, I
believe that we stood--should migrate towards Title--take Title
10 authority away when it comes to command-and-control systems,
from the services. We're going to have to do that on a
centralized basis. It'll take a long time to get there, but
we're never going to get interoperability and we're never going
to get an efficient system to protect cyber--cyber defenses
with this very, very fractured landscape that we have. It's the
only area that I would change Title 10.
Senator Rounds. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator McCain. Senator Donnelly.
Senator Donnelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd just like to briefly say I was with the sailors of the
USS Kentucky this weekend. They passed on their best wishes to
the Chairman and Ranking Member. And you would be very proud of
the extraordinary job they're doing.
Senator McCain. The sailors, to Senator Reed?
Senator Donnelly. He's from Rhode Island. He's seen a
sailboat every now and then.
Senator Reed. Submarines.
[Laughter.]
Senator Donnelly. Dr. Hamre, you gave us an example of
where you thought you could see significant change. Do you have
another example or two that you can give us? And then the rest
of the panel, as well.
Dr. Hamre. Yeah, this is a real pet rock of mine, but our--
the way we--we spend over a billion dollars a year on security
clearances. Now, let me just tell you, this is the only system
in the world where the spy fills out his own form, and then we
give it to a GS7 to try to figure out if he lied or not. This
is the dumbest system in the world that we have. We spend a
billion dollars on it. You could easily ask somebody to fill
out a 1040EZ security form, where you put down your name, your
Social Security number, and your mother's maiden name, and I
can generate a dossier on you for $25 that's better than
anything an investigator's going to come up with. I could save
you $700 million tomorrow, and give you a better security
system.
Senator Donnelly. And do you have a second one?
Dr. Hamre. Yeah, I--we have to consolidate DLA [Defense
Logistics Agency] and the--and TRANSCOM [Transportation
Command]. I mean, we--it doesn't make any sense to have
separate transportation function and warehousing function for
the Defense Department. I mean, that has to change. There--I'd
be glad to come up to your office----
Senator Donnelly. That would----
Dr. Hamre.--and bore you----
Senator Donnelly.--be terrific.
Dr. Hamre.--to death.
Senator Donnelly. I'd enjoy that.
Mr. Locher?
Mr. Locher. What I'd like to talk about is the bureaucratic
bloat that has occurred in the headquarters--in the Washington
headquarters of the Department of Defense. As you may know, the
workload in the Pentagon is crushing. People are working as
hard as they possibly can, with incredible dedication. When I
was the ASD SO/LIC [Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special
Operations on Low-Intensity Conflicts], some of my people were
working so hard that I actually had to limit the amount of time
that they could come to work, because they were burning
themselves out completely.
Now, we've added more manpower to try to make this system
work. But, if we went to sort of modern practices, things that
have been proven in business, these horizontal process teams,
we could be incredibly more efficient. We could serve the
Secretary and the Deputy Secretary. We could have integrated
decision packages sent up to them. And we could do it with a
lot fewer people that we're--than we're currently using.
One of the things I had mentioned is, we have two
headquarters staffs, at the top of the Department of the Army
and in the Air Force, and three in the Navy. That's a holdover
from World War II. They ought to be integrated. The Secretary
and the Chief ought to have----
Senator Donnelly. Great. Thank you.
Mr. Thomas?
Mr. Thomas. The Department of Defense is a lot better at
adding new functions and organizations over time than it has
been in abolishing old ones that may not be as relevant in the
world we're living in. That's for sure.
I think headquarters reductions across the board, starting
at the very top, with the Office of the Secretary of Defense
and the Joint Staff, as well as in the service staffs and the
combatant commands, would not just be, again, a cost savings,
but could increase the effectiveness of those organizations and
their agility. Large staffs lead to overcoordination of a lot
of issues.
Senator Donnelly. If--I'll let you finish, but I'm running
out of time, so I wanted to ask you one other thing. One of the
things we do at Crane Naval Warfare Center in Indiana is try to
figure out how to do some commonality for the Navy, the Air
Force, the Army so that, instead of three different stovepipes
going up, that they work together on one project, one type of
weapon, one type of process. Does this seem to be a path that
makes sense to all of you?
Mr. Locher?
Mr. Locher. I would agree. You know, this--the 21st century
is the century of collaboration, that we need to be able to
work across organizational boundaries. And the work that you're
talking about being done across the three services is exactly
what we need to do. The problems we face are so complex that we
need lots of expertise that comes from different functional
areas. And so, they need to figure out how they are going to
collaborate in highly effective ways.
Senator Donnelly. Thank you.
Mr. Thomas, I had cut you off when you were finishing your
answer.
Mr. Thomas. Just on that last point, I think we need to
empower the services more to make some of those decisions. I
think sometimes we impose joint solutions across the services
in areas where it may not make sense, because the issues are
very complicated. I think when services come together and
decide they're going to design a common weapon system or a
common airframe, that has led to some good results. I think
when we try to impose it and say we will have a one-size-fits-
all solution for our next combat aircraft or for a weapon,
sometimes the results have been disastrous, because they just
layer more and more requirements on a system that's
overburdened and ends up being behind on schedule, over on
cost, and doesn't perform as well as we'd like for any of the
services.
Senator Donnelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator McCain. Senator Tillis.
Senator Tillis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you for being here.
Mr. Locher, I want to start with you. You've made
references a couple of times to examples in the private sector
that have worked. And I think you talked about Toyota. If you
take a look at a lot of those private-sector transformations,
they--the successful ones--and there have been many failures--
had a lot in common. They did have CEO commitment, they had the
commitment of what would be the CEO, the board, and the senior
management team saying, ``We're going to change this
organization.'' Given what we've said about the separation
issues that we have here, how do we actually apply that model?
Unless there's a different operating construct and you have all
the partners at the table, how are we going to be any different
35 years from now than the recommendations that were made about
35 years ago between the Packard Commission and the resulting
legislation in Goldwater-Nichols?
Mr. Locher. Well, you're correct. You--in successful
reforms, you have to have a guiding coalition, a powerful
guiding coalition. And, you know, at the time of Goldwater-
Nichols, most of the people in the Pentagon in senior positions
were dead-set against it, and that's why it took the two Armed
Services Committees so long to work their way through it to
mandate these reforms.
The suggestions of trying to work with the Department--and
Senator Goldwater and Senator Nunn never gave up in trying to
work with the Department of Defense--I think those are
important ideas. But, this committee can form that powerful
coalition. You can get people from outside of government, some
business experts to join your efforts and provide a convincing
case, even to people in the Department of Defense, that these
ideas are things that do need to occur, would be beneficial for
the Department. You know, as the committee develops a vision of
what a future Department would look like, that could be useful,
as well.
Senator Tillis. Well, thank you. You know, we remember the
stories of the $435 hammer and the $600 toilet seat, and the
$7,000 coffeepot. And now we've got more generals in Europe
than we have rifle commanders. We've got a lot of problems out
there. And it's a big--going back to the private-sector models,
it costs a lot of money to transform an organization. We're in
a resource-constrained environment, where there almost
invariably--if you look at Toyota, you look at GE, look at any
of the major companies that truly transform and produce
transformative results, they had to spend money to actually
save money. And one of the ways they did that is, they
identified so-called low-hanging fruit or quick hits to do
that.
Mr. Hamre, you talked about security clearances. Where do
we look for opportunities to try and create the resources that
we need if we're going to continue to be in a resource-
constrained environment to really accelerate the
transformation? And, Mr. Hamre, I'll start with you, since
you've already offered to do security clearances for $25 each.
[Laughter.]
Dr. Hamre. I offered to do the background investigation for
$25 each.
Senator Tillis. Okay. Fair enough.
Dr. Hamre. That's--that would save three-quarters of a
billion.
We are very poor at real property maintenance. You know, we
don't have a purple property book. You know, every bit of real
property is owned by a military service. It's not a well--
they're not well managed, they're not well run. We could easily
consolidate that and bring that under some broad-scale
professional management. Property disposal--we've got a 450-
person property disposal operation, and they've got eBay. I
mean, you know, we have 450 people who are going to work every
day doing what eBay does. I mean, so we could easily be--there
are changes all over we could do stuff like that. So--and that
would save money almost right away.
Senator Tillis. And how do you--and I was Speaker of the
House down in North Carolina, and we ended up having a fiscal
crisis. We had to find a way to save about $2 and a half
billion or fix a deficit, by no means scale here. But, one of
the things that we found is that we need to incentivize good
behaviors for a lot of good people that are working in DOD. And
we created this concept of ``finders, keepers.'' And the way it
worked is that, if we found it, we kept it. If they found it,
brought it to us, in terms of savings, things that could be
reinvested, then we would reward them. I think one of the
dangers that we'll have in this transformation is that we'll
find waste, we'll say you can no--or inefficiencies, or we'll
identify some productivity improvements. We sweep all that back
for spending based on our priorities rather than looking at
ways to incent good behavior and strategic investment to foster
an ongoing process of transformation versus--let's say we get
this right. And I believe Senator McCain is best suited to lead
us in this job. But, if it's once and done, we'll be back here,
in 10 years or 15 years or 20 years, lamenting the fact that it
was a great--it was a great meeting, great recommendations, a
few things got done, and we're no better off 25 years from now
than we are today than we were 35 years from now. So, how do
you--in terms of looking at the good things going on in the
Department, how do you create a construct that actually has a
lot of the best ideas, like came out of Toyota, like came out
of GE, are rooted in the minds of people down in the trenches
trying to do the jobs, knowing that there's a more efficient,
better way to do it?
And, Mr. Thomas, I'll start with you since I haven't asked
you a question, and then we'll go to Mr. Locher if the Chair
allows.
Mr. Thomas. Thank you, Senator.
I think you raise a good issue, in terms of looking across
the Department for ways where we can find efficiencies. And
this certainly is something that both, I think, the Secretary
and the services are probably looking at on a constant basis. I
mean, they've booked--both Secretary Gates and his successors
made finding efficiencies a big part of their remit, in terms
of trying to find some economies within the Department of
Defense. But, I think we have to ask ourself, How effective or
how well have we done, in terms of finding these efficiencies?
Senator Tillis. Not well.
Mr. Thomas. And I worry that, without really thinking
through a reorganization, I'm skeptical that we're going to
find that much, that I think you're going to have to actually
take some bolder steps, in terms of reorganization. And those
reorganizational steps, in turn, I really think should be
driven by considerations of strategic and operational
effectiveness first, not for efficiencies. I think, in the
process, that they could generate some.
Mr. Locher. Sir, your discussion of incentives is hugely
important, because we need to build some new behavior, some new
approaches, and so you need to be thinking, you know, What are
the incentives we have now that are not serving us well? And
what incentives do we need to create both for individuals and
for organizations?
And to give you an example, at the time of Goldwater-
Nichols, nobody--no military officer wanted to serve in a joint
duty assignments. And--but, our most important staffs were the
Joint Staff and the combatant command headquarters staffs. So,
the Congress saw that as an intolerable situation, so they
created incentives in the Joint Officer Personnel System for
people to want to go to serve in joint assignments and to do so
serving the joint need, not beholden to their service. And out
of that, they built a joint culture which served as--very, very
well.
So, as we're--as the committee is thinking about how it's
going to reform the Department of Defense, one of the things it
needs to figure out are, What are the incentives that are
producing dysfunctional behavior, and what incentives does the
committee need to put in place that'll move us in the right
direction?
Senator Tillis. Thank you.
Senator McCain. Senator Hirono.
Senator Hirono. Thank you very much.
And thank you, to the panel.
Goldwater-Nichols, I understand, was a big change to how
the Department of Defense operated. Correct? And you are the--
all of the--you panel members are looking to Congress to make
the--a big change to how DOD operates, because you have said
that the Pentagon cannot reform itself.
Now, Goldwater-Nichols, you've said--testified that it was
passed, over the objections of the defense--people from the
Department of Defense and others. So, I'm wondering whether, in
the time of Goldwater-Nichols passing and where we are now with
this committee, are there some significant limitations on the
ability of this committee to push through the kinds of
significant changes that Goldwater-Nichols represented?
Mr. Locher. My honest answer is, I don't see any
limitations upon this committee. It--the Congress has the
authority to provide for the rules and regulations of the
military. And I think, at this point in time, this committee
and its counterpart in the House are best prepared to take on
the intellectual and political challenges of setting some new
directions for the Department of Defense.
Senator Hirono. I wonder about that, because, for example,
on the issue of things such as base closures, it is really hard
for us. Most of us have very significant military
constituencies. And so, we are part of the environment of the--
I would say, the difficulties in moving us forward to modernize
our military. So, BRAC [Base Realignment and Closure] is one
example. You know, I have Pacific Command, which is a huge area
of responsibility. So, we all have these constituencies that I
think make it pretty challenging for us to remove ourselves
from the priorities and the input from our military
constituencies to move us forward. So, I think that--I don't
know if that--that this situation is more pronounced now
because of the complexities.
So, I'm world wondering, from a realistic standpoint--yes,
we can get to some of the low-hanging fruit, but the kind of
wholesale, large changes that you all are recommending, I--if
there are any suggestions on how we can move forward--do we
create a commission, do we--you know, how do we move forward,
knowing I--as I said, that we have our own huge military
constituencies in Congress--as Members of Congress?
Mr. Locher. Well, at the time of Goldwater-Nichols, you had
very strong ties between members of the committee and the
services. Almost everybody on the committee at that time had
served in the military, many of them during World War II. And
so, when the committee began the work, you had that pool of
those service loyalties, and eventually that was overcome as
the committee worked its way through the issues and came--
became convinced that there were fundamental changes that
needed to be made. As it turns out, this is a good-government
effort. And the committee was able to free itself up from its
ties to the various services and look at this from a whole--
Department of Defense--a whole-of-Department-of-Defense
perspective.
Senator Hirono. Do the other two panel members want to
chime in?
Dr. Hamre. Well, just--I'd just say, there's no low-hanging
fruit. I mean, everything's hard now. I mean----
Senator Hirono. Yes
Dr. Hamre.--we've had 15 years of picking low-hanging
fruit. I mean, there is no low-hanging fruit. So, we now have
to make hard choices.
I just would argue, your best chance of finding meaningful
changes is in the support side, not on the combat side. We've
cut the combat force too deeply.
Mr. Thomas. I would just add, in an era that sometimes is
seen by American taxpayers and voters is overcharged
politically, I can't think of a better bipartisan issue that
Congress could be taking up right now. This is not one that
divides cleanly along partisan lines. It's an issue where
there's going to be acrimony, and there will be huge debates on
lots of issues, and we would have disagreements amongst
ourselves in terms of thinking through these organizational
issues, but they're not going to break down along partisan
lines. And I think that's a--both an opportunity for this
committee and for the Congress as a whole, and I think it's
something that would just do tremendous good.
Senator Hirono. Usually an organization can move forward if
there is a guiding overriding goal. So, for example, for our
committee to move forward, what do you think should be a
organizing goal? Would it be something as broad as the need to
modernize our military, modernize DOD? Would that be a unifying
goal for us to proceed under?
Mr. Locher. Well, in his opening statement, the Chairman
mentioned six guiding principles for this work. And I think
that those provide, really, goals for the work of the
committee. Some of that is, as you've mentioned, to modernize
the management of the Department, but he listed some others, as
well.
Senator Hirono. Thank you. My time is up.
Senator McCain. Senator Blumenthal.
Senator Blumenthal. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
In light of the increasing reliance and importance of the
Reserve components and the National Guard, do you have any
suggestions as to whether there ought to be additional
reorganization changes that take account of their increasing
significance in our force?
Dr. Hamre. Well, it--I think we have to separate the
National Guard from the Reserves. I mean, the National Guard,
it's very hard because, of course, it's a federated--it's a
Federal structure. I mean, they work for Governors, and then
they're mobilized at a national level. So, there's no real way
around that central dilemma. I mean, we've--what we've done is,
we've create the National Guard Bureau, the--we have a four-
star Guard officer who now sits on the Joint Chiefs. I mean, I
think that--I think we've captured about everything we can on
the National Guard side.
I think, on the Reserves--I think there's a deeper
question, frankly, on the Reserves. And that is, for the last
10 years, 12 years, we've fought wars where we wanted to
minimize the number of soldiers' boots on the ground, and so we
used contractors to provide support. Historically, the Reserve
component was very heavy in doing that combat service support
in theater. And we didn't use them, because we were afraid of
having to make a military headcount.
I think we have to sit down and so some fundamental
thinking. If we're going to continue to fight wars like that,
where we use contractors, you know, to augment and support the
force in the field, we need to rethink what we're going to do
with the Reserve component, with the Army and Air Force
Reserves. The--you know, the Navy has a Reserve, but it isn't--
it's very different, you know.
So, I mean, I think there is a--I think that's worthy of a
real deep dive, actually, but I don't have a recommendation for
you, though.
Mr. Thomas. Senator, I might just add. I think there are
some new opportunities for how we think about leveraging both
the Guard and the Reserve components across the services. One
issue we've talked about already this morning is cyber warfare.
And this may be one where it may be very well suited for
Reserve components, both in terms of how we tap expertise that
comes from the private sector and where, in fact, they may be
some of the key drivers in the areas of how we think about
networks in the future.
Another may be in terms of unmanned systems and unmanned
system operation, where this can be done in a distributed
fashion that you don't actually necessarily have to be at the
point of attack.
And lastly, I'd say we're now well over 40 years on from
the Abrams Doctrine and coming out of our experience in Vietnam
and how we thought employing the Guard and the Reserve, and
this idea that--we wanted to actually make it very difficult to
mobilize the Guard and Reserve to go to war. And we may want to
go back and rethink some of that, in terms of making it easier
to tap the resources of the Guard and the Reserve in the future
for various military operations and activities.
Senator Blumenthal. I couldn't agree more that the role of
the Guard and Reserve--and I recognize that the National Guard,
in peacetime, unless it's mobilized, is under the jurisdiction
of State officials, but both the National Guard and Reserve
reflect resources that are used increasingly without,
necessarily, the kind of rethinking or deep dive that you've
suggested be given to that role. And so, I'm hopeful that this
conversation may lead, not necessarily to drastic changes, but
at least to an appreciation for the tremendous resource that
our National Guard and Reserve represent.
And talking about outside contractors, just a last
question. We haven't talked much about the acquisition process.
And we probably don't have time, in this setting this morning,
to reach any thorough recommendations, but I would just suggest
that the size of contracting, the time that is taken for
delivery of weapon systems--taking the Ohio replacement
program, for example, a submarine that's going to be delivered
well into the remainder of this century, and we're contracting
for it now, using a process that many of us have found
frustrating and disappointing, in some ways. I think there is a
need to think about the Department of Defense as a major
contractor and buyer and purchaser of both services and
hardware in capital investments.
So, thank you for your testimony this morning.
Senator McCain. Senator Gillibrand.
Senator Gillibrand. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator McCain. I'd just like to announce to the committee,
after Senator King, we will be adjourning, because we have a
vote at 11:00.
Senator Gillibrand.
Senator Gillibrand. Mr. Thomas, in the open letter on
defense reform, you and your colleagues wrote, quote, ``It's
time for a comprehensive modernization of the military
compensation system. America's highly mobile youth have
different expectations about compensation and attach different
values to its various forms than did earlier generations.''
What types of compensation do you think will attract modern,
tech-savvy youth to the military? And what lessons can we learn
from the private sector about employing a modern workforce? And
how does this affect National Guard and Reserve?
Mr. Thomas. Thank you, Senator.
I think one of the concerns--and maybe sometimes it's not
so appreciated--is that it's only really a small minority of
servicemen and women across the U.S. military that actually
will end up collecting any sort of retirement pension for their
service. It's really an all-or-nothing system today. And--
whereas most folks who serve in the U.S. military are not going
to serve for 20-year careers, or longer, they're going to serve
only for probably a handful of years. And so, just as we've
done in the private sector, where we've moved away from defined
pension schemes towards 401k's and contributory plans, perhaps
this is something we should be thinking more about for the
Department of Defense: more flexible compensation and benefits
that people can take with them as they move, not only from the
military out into the private sector, but increasingly as we
think more creatively about how we can also at various points
in--over the course of a career bring people from the private
sector and from the civilian world into the military for
various stints of time. This is something that's so foreign to
our concept of how we think about the military. And I think
this really impresses on the importance of the Guard and the
Reserve and how people can move, over the course of a career,
from serving on Active Duty to moving back into the Reserve
Force, making taking a few years off while raising a child or
pursuing educational opportunities, and then being able to
return again at a later point.
Senator Gillibrand. I thought your comment about cyber was
really important, because we've been trying to have that
discussion in this committee about using the Guard and Reserve
to create cyber warriors, since they have expertise. They might
work at Google during the day, but they have great abilities
that could be used by the Department of Defense. And so, I
think your testimony there is very interesting.
Mr. Locher, one of the fears of opponents of Goldwater-
Nichols was that it would decrease civilian control of the
military. What's your assessment on how the reforms have
impacted civilian control of the military? And do you think we
have achieved a good balance? And do you believe there is
sufficient civilian oversight of the combatant commanders?
Mr. Locher. Well, I don't--I--the fears of loss of civilian
control were misstated. I think the--Goldwater-Nichols made it
absolutely clear that the Secretary of Defense was in control
of the Department of Defense. In the past, you know, the
Congress had weakened the Secretary, in part for its own
interest in the Department, but now I think the Secretary's
role is absolute in the Department, and we do have effective
civilian control.
At the time of Goldwater-Nichols, the attention of the
Congress, in terms of confirming officers, was focused on the
service chiefs. And we ended up putting much more emphasis on
the combatant commanders, because those are the people on the
front line who are--who could actually get the United States
involved in some action in their various regions. And so, I
think that having the combatant commanders work for the
Secretary of Defense and having those efforts to review their
contingency plans by civilian officials, all of those have
helped to provide for effective civilian control of those
operational commands.
Senator Gillibrand. You also said that the Pentagon's
change-resistant culture represents its greatest organizational
weakness. Do you think that's still true today?
Mr. Locher. Absolutely. You know, we've gone 30 years
without major changes in the Department of Defense at a time in
which the world has changed tremendously. Organizational
practice has changed in lots of private organizations. We've
not seen that mirrored in the Department of Defense. And all
sorts of inefficiencies have come from that.
Senator Gillibrand. Where do you see the greatest overlap
and redundancy now in our current system?
Mr. Locher. Well, I think the greatest overlap and
redundancy is in the headquarters of the military departments,
where we have a service secretariat and a military headquarters
staff. They have one common mission. And I think we--lots of
manpower is wasted there.
There has also been some concern about--between the Office
of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff, whether there
are functions there that are being performed by both
organizations that could either be eliminated in one of those
two offices, or reduced. And so, I think that's another
question for examination.
Senator Gillibrand. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator McCain. Senator King.
Senator King. Dr. Hamre--if you fellows also want to chime
in on this--a lot of people talking about national security
today are talking about whole-of-government approaches to
dealing with some of these issues. Do we need to rethink or
think about how better to coordinate the activities and work of
the Department of Defense, Department of State, intelligence
agencies? Is there duplication, overlap, inefficiency in trying
to do a whole-of-government approach with the combatant-
commander structure?
Mr. Locher. Sir, we--this is--we--this is a very tough
problem, because it's a constitutional problem. The Congress
oversees the branches--the Departments of the executive branch.
But, it has no responsibility to oversee the coordination of
them. That's the President's responsibility.
Senator King. Right. That's the Commander-in-Chief.
Dr. Hamre. Commander-in-Chief. And so, you're dealing with
the central ambiguity of the Constitution. The President
chooses how he wants to organize and coordinate them. Now, I
think there are things that could be done, especially as we
think about transitions of government. For example, I think we
should be--when you come to a seam in the government like this,
we should be strengthening the executive secretariats. That's a
case where the Defense Department could make a contribution--
the executive secretariat's like the lymphatic system that
parallels the blood system, you know, in the body. And we put
military officers with senior elected officials--or appointed
officials. And it gets the--the government functions, even when
the new people that are coming in don't know how it works and
the people who are leaving have lost interest. You know, and so
you can at least have--you can do some things like that. But,
it's a very hard problem to solve.
Senator King. Mr. Locher, do you have comments?
Mr. Locher. I do. This is an area that I spent 6 years
working on, trying to produce a whole-of-government effort.
Today, national security missions require the expertise and
capacities of many, many departments. And right now, the only
person who can integrate all of that is the President. And it--
that's not possible for him to do. He has a small National
Security Council staff, and it's been drawn into management of
day-to-day issues, and it's completely overwhelmed. So, we need
to figure out a different system for integrating all of this
capacity across the government.
Now, the--inside the Executive Office of the President,
there's no oversight by the Congress of that, but there are
other things that could be done. The Office of Management and
Budget is inside the Executive Office of the President, but it
is overseen by the Congress, and three of its officials are
confirmed by the Senate.
Senator King. But, the--there's a contrary problem, where
if you concentrate all power in the White House, you end up
neutering the State Department and the Secretary of Defense,
and everything gets--the calls all come from the National
Security Council. So, I take it there's a tension there.
Mr. Locher. Well, you want the Departments of State and
Defense to provide their expertise. You don't want that
duplicated up at the National Security Council level. But, all
of that has to be integrated some way, and it's, you know, sort
of the integration we did in the Department of Defense at the
time of Goldwater-Nichols. We don't have mechanisms for doing
that. It would require some new legislation. But, right now,
our ability to pull together our government to tackle these
tasks is very, very poor, and something will have to be done
about it.
Senator King. That question is, Is it legislative or is it
presidential management and leadership?
Mr. Locher. Well, there's a lot that the President could do
within his own authority. You know, we have no executive order
for the national security system. The National Security
Advisor, there's no presidential directive for that. You don't
have any guidance from the President to the departments and
agencies as they put together their budgets. There are lots of
things that could be done, but there's not much capacity for
doing that. But, there are also some things that will require
legislation to enable the President to delegate his authority
to lesser officials.
Senator King. I'm running out of time, but I'm very
interested in this issue. And, to the extent you could supply
written comments for the record, giving us some suggestions as
to how we can tackle this issue.
[The information referred to follows:]
Dr. Hamre. We do need to rethink how to better coordinate the work
of the various departments of the Executive Branch. I personally think
there is not much duplication, but there are major gaps and lost
opportunities because we fail to coordinate appropriately.
But there is a larger issue here that merits our reflection. The
interagency process in foreign policy sits right on top of a fault line
in American constitutional governance. There is no question that the
Congress has a right to oversee the work of cabinet departments. The
senior leadership requires Senate confirmation. The Congress
appropriates annual funding for the department. There is no question of
Congress's right here.
At the same time, the President has a constitutional right to
privacy of his deliberations in his own office. Congress has to
subpoena records. The President decides what and how he wants to
cooperate. The Supreme Court has largely stated that these are
``political questions'' and not subject to their jurisdiction.
The question is this: is the interagency process within the
National Security Council something that is privileged for the
President and not subject to review, or does the Legislative Branch
have inherent rights to change the interagency process as an extension
of their right to oversee the work of cabinet departments?
This is an unresolved question. I am personally skeptical that
there are legislative solutions to this problem.
There is no question that many of the problems the country has in
foreign policy are more the caused by weak coordination of the
Executive Branch departments. I should also note that the Congress is a
major factor here because the committee jurisdiction reinforces the
stove-piped approach of the executive branch departments.
Senator King. Because I think this is going to be a major
issue, going forward. We're not--we're no longer going to be
engaged in strictly military conflicts, they're going to have
other dimensions. So, I look forward----
Yes, sir, you wanted to--thank you.
Very quickly--and perhaps this is for the record--Packard
Commission identified accountability as an essential element.
The Chairman has really focused very diligently on acquisition.
Are there other areas of the Defense Department that are
lacking in accountability or that we should raise the
accountability analysis level?
Dr. Hamre. Well, I think the action of your committee to
put the service chiefs back in the chain of command probably
fixes the biggest one. I think that was really important.
I think that probably looking at how we manage defense
agencies--defense agencies are very large enterprises now, and
I--there's not a great oversight system for the defense
agencies, how they perform, accountability to the Secretary----
Senator King. When you say ``defense agencies''----
Dr. Hamre. This would be the Defense Logistics Agency,
Defense Commissary Agency, the----
Senator King. Okay.
Dr. Hamre.--the Defense Finance and Accounting Service.
Senator King. Principally civilian.
Dr. Hamre. Yes, sir. They have a thin veneer of military,
but they're largely civilian enterprises and big business. I
mean, this is probably $85 to $90 billion every year. I mean,
these are big operations. And there's not a great system of
oversight for their activity.
Senator King. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator McCain. Well, I thank the witnesses. It's been very
helpful and certainly is, I think, an important basis for us
moving forward. We will be making sure as many people as
possible are able to see your written testimony. I think
they're very comprehensive and very important. And we will be
calling on you as we move forward.
And I do take your advice seriously about working with the
Secretary of Defense. We do have a bipartisan approach to these
issues, as we have in--as the bill we are about to vote on.
But, this has been, I think, very helpful to the committee. And
it is our mission to try to get as much done, this coming year,
as possible, recognizing that we aren't going to get everything
done.
But, I also might make what seem to be self-serving, but
some of the things that we have in this legislation, such as
retirement reform, such as many others, they're not necessarily
low-hanging fruit, but they certainly are issues that we could
address in a bipartisan fashion. For example, the retirement
system. The predicate for that was laid by a committee--a
commission that was appointed, that testified before this
committee, that I don't think we would have acted if it hadn't
been for that. So, it's also helpful to have your advice and
counsel.
Senator Reed, did you want----
Senator Reed. No, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to second
your comments and thank the witnesses' extraordinary insights,
and look forward to working with them.
Senator McCain. This hearing is adjourned. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 10:53 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
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