Trying to write a post on the defense budget is nearly an exercise in futility. In something like 500 words, it’s nearly impossible to make an overarching judgment that neatly summarizes the bill for the largest government department in the world. That said, let’s give it a shot!
My frame of reference for Pentagon budgeting is in one sense deeply personal. Now I don’t want to make myself sound like a saint, but as a civilian DoD employee for five years, I was always very conscious that I had a responsibility to be mindful of taxpayer dollars I was spending. I experienced — anecdotally and systematically — just how atrociously, rigidly wasteful and yet astoundingly petty the Pentagon can be. In other words, the way the Pentagon spends cash is downright goofy.
Here’s an idea of where I come from: Yours truly got to spend about two months in Australia working security for a bilateral U.S./Australian war-gaming exercise. I was rather surprised when the government computer reservation system insisted that I stay at the four-star hotel in Sydney at somewhere like $350 a night, when the perfectly acceptable three-star, $150-a-night alternative down the street was available. Now I enjoyed the feather pillows and mints, but would have preferred to swap them for the cheaper hotel plus my inexplicably denied business class airfare on the 26-hour trip.
Then there was my counterterrorism watch center office — completely renovated and upgraded by 2003 to actually resemble something close to the set of 24. Trust me, it was awesome — you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a brand new LCD TV, and I had three classified computer networks at my desk, something almost unheard of throughout DoD. Cost to taxpayer? $5 million. And it would have been a good investment, too, had the Base Realignment and Closing Commission not decided to close the office by 2011.
The FY2011 budget, released yesterday, won’t correct any of those, ahem, anomalies soon. And my experiences have ingrained enough skepticism that I don’t do cartwheels when the Pentagon announces — as it did this year — that “this budget did not defer hard choices, but made them.” As small-time as my stories are, they’re symptomatic of a well-established culture that isn’t going to change with one document. I think it’s probably more accurate to say, “this budget did not completely defer hard choices, but started the process of trying to change the DoD’s culture and the way it spends money. And that’s really tough.”
Though inefficient spending will continue on large and small scales, the Obama administration’s budget priorities are finally focused on the military’s most immediate needs. After eight years of Rumsfeld’s appalling financial sleight-of-hand and willful suspension of reality, Secretary Gates has actually paid necessary attention to funding personnel and equipment needed to compete in the wars we’re in. Rumsfeld’s obsession was technology — he thought whiz-bangs and gadgets could win our wars so soldiers didn’t have to! Then came Afghanistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan (again), which proved that technology could kill a lot of stuff really fast, but that winning the peace required more boots on the ground than he bargained for. So after extended deployments that have exhausted our troops and worn out their equipment, this budget dedicates funding to address the shortcomings of the Bush administration.
The budget’s other highlight addresses how the Pentagon does business. A serious Cold War hangover, Rumsfeld’s technological focus, and two wars have created a race-to-the-bottom culture where defense contractors pitch highly complex systems as cheaply as possible. The industry has conditioned itself to underestimate cost and development time and are amazingly left to evaluate their products’ own successes — hardly a recipe for optimal competition in the best interests of the taxpayer. This budget begins the process of taming that lion:
Our objective is to achieve predictable cost, schedule and performance outcomes based on mature, demonstrated technologies and realistic cost and schedule estimates. We are also implementing initiatives that will increase the numbers and capabilities of the acquisition workforce, improve funding stability, enhance the source selection process, and improve contract execution. Our intent is to provide the warfighter with world class capability while being good stewards of the taxpayer dollar.
It’s a wonderful notion, albeit one that will probably take a generation’s worth of acquisitions to truly implement.
I’ve obviously left out so, so much about this budget. It is encouraging to know that the administration appears in tune with what our military needs, and what the taxpayer can reasonably support. Turning an aircraft carrier takes a long time, and it will be years before we get a read on how well the new mindset is taking hold.
