The Pentagon Labyrinth

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8 | Why is This Handbook Necessary? Pentagon, as Ronald Reagan did in 1981. 14 In effect, the new president is a prisoner of the Pentagon’s fatally flawed bureaucratic planning process known as the Planning, Programming and Budgeting System (PPBS) 15 and all the MICC budget games it contains. 16 But there is more. Mr. Obama also inherited a congressionally-mandated requirement to produce a long range strategy document during his first year in office. This document is known as the Quadrennial Defense Review or QDR, and it is required by law, every four years, at the end of the first year of a newly elected president’s term. 17 The QDR is supposed to shape the activities of the PPBS, but they both go on simultaneously, and by necessity, pretty much independently. Nevertheless, the 2010 QDR was Mr. Obama’s first real chance to imprint his policy intentions on the MICC. Obama’s Pentagon let him down by producing yet another sham of a QDR. 18 To make a long story short, consider just one important example. Judge for yourself if it suffices to make the point. First, a little background: the Pentagon has been producing FYDPs since 1962. But they have been repeatedly criticized, quite rightly, for producing defense 14 In 1981, the Reagan administration was so intent on throwing money at the Pentagon they chose to rush through an amendment to President Carter’s 1981 budget. Without any kind of systematic review—and not having the time to type up a new budget—Reagan’s political appointees directed the Pentagon to just write in pen-and-ink changes adding billions of dollars to hundreds of line items. Much of this largesse was immediately converted into cost growth in existing programs. 15 The product of the PPBS is the Future Years Defense Plan or FYDP. This document is produced by staff work involving millions of man hours over a period of 18 months; it lays out the Pentagon’s future spending intentions for the next five years for thousands of individual line items. The first year of the FYDP is the budget that is sent to Congress each February. So, with only two months to make changes, and a staff not fully in place, the most a new president can do is make a few marginal changes to his predecessor’s document. 16 A description of the MICC’s gaming pathologies can be found in my 1991 pamphlet “Defense Power Games,” (http://pogoarchives.org/labyrinth/01/09.pdf) and in my June 4, 2002 statement to the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations, Committee on Government Reform, United States House of Representatives (http://pogoarchives.org/labyrinth/01/02.pdf). 17 In the 1994 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress mandated the Commission on Roles and Missions (CORM). Among the usual plethora of “feel-good” recommendations was the idea that DOD should undertake a major quadrennial strategy review. Reacting to this, Congress directed the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review as a method to conduct a “fundamental and comprehensive examination of America’s defense needs.” 18 See, for example, my critique of the first QDR in 1997, which can be downloaded from http://pogoarchives.org/labyrinth/01/06.pdf.
udgets disconnected from the national military strategy. Because the dollar allocations made in the budget define the government's real policy, the critique was logically equivalent to saying there was no functioning national strategy, and budget decision-making was actually driving strategy (which was and still is the case). The QDR legislation was the most recent attempt to deal with this long-standing criticism by requiring the Pentagon to lay out a framework for matching its military strategy and policy ambitions to its budgetary, people and technology constraints. The 2010 QDR, together with the new FY 2011 budget (and accompanying FYDP), therefore, are supposed to permit an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses implicit in the administration’s proposed match-up between resources and strategy. This information would then become the grist for a rational national debate by linking strategic considerations to the inevitable compromises made in the sausage-making factory that is Congress. Moreover, as this was the first defense budget President Obama controlled from beginning to end, and because it represented $700 billion-plus that Mr. Obama had temporarily put off limits in the extant debate over spending, it was crucially important for the Pentagon to get the QDR and the accompanying FYDP right in a logically consistent and transparent manner. The Pentagon flunked the test. Franklin C. Spinney | 9 For the past 20 years or so, the mainstream press, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Pentagon’s own Inspector General have inundated the American public with well-supported horror stories about the Pentagon's aging and shrinking force structure, the Pentagon's unauditable budget shambles, the apparently deliberate inability of the Pentagon’s accounting system to track actual expenditures, the weapons cost growth that outstrips the budget growth and, more recently, the wear-out of the force structure caused by our never-ending wars, and the alarming increase in Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) casualties (and suicides) caused by the excessive troop rotations mandated by shrinking force structures. With this in mind, readers should now download the QDR and the FY 2011 Budget Overview from these links: QDR - http://www.defense.gov/qdr/QDR%20as%20of%2029JAN10%201600.pdf FY 2011 Budget Overview – http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2011/FY2011_Budget_Request_Ove rview_Book.pdf These reports are searchable PDF files. I urge readers to do word and phrase searches on terms like “age,” “weapons aging,” “shrinking forces,” “weapons cost growth,” “wear-out,” “excessive troop rotation,” “sustainability of
Page 2 and 3: The World Security Institute’s Ce
Page 4 and 5: About the Authors Thomas Christie b
Page 6 and 7: security issues for members of the
Page 8 and 9: Table of Contents PREFACE . . . . .
Page 10 and 11: Preface This handbook aims to help
Page 12 and 13: xx | The Pentagon Labyrinth and for
Page 14 and 15: 2 | Why is This Handbook Necessary?
Page 22 and 23: 10 | Why is This Handbook Necessary
Page 24 and 25: Essay 2 “Penetrating the Pentagon
Page 26 and 27: 14 | Penetrating the Pentagon of a
Page 28 and 29: 16 | Penetrating the Pentagon years
Page 30 and 31: 18 | Penetrating the Pentagon Washi
Page 32 and 33: 20 | Penetrating the Pentagon Back
Page 34 and 35: 22 | Penetrating the Pentagon weapo
Page 36 and 37: 24 | Learning About Defense In the
Page 38 and 39: 26 | Learning About Defense with ou
Page 40 and 41: Essay 4 “Congressional Oversight:
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Page 68 and 69: 56 | Careerism In sum, our armed fo
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58 | Careerism institution.” 40 A
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Essay 6 “Confused Alarms of Strug
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62 | Confused Alarms of Struggle an
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76 | Follow the Money Why We Spend
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102 | Evaluating Weapons: Sorting t
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114 | Developing, Buying and Fieldi
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Suggested Contacts, Readings and We
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The Pentagon Labyrinth aims to help
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