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HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES,

INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE,

Washington, DC, Thursday, February 27, 1986.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:30 a.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Bill Nichols (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

STATEMENT OF HON. BILL NICHOLS, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM ALABAMA, CHAIRMAN, INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. NICHOLS. The subcommittee will come to order. This morning as we continue testimony concerning reorganization of the Department of Defense, we are pleased to have Dr. Harold Brown who served as Secretary of Defense in the administration of President Carter and has had previous experience as Secretary of the Air Force. He has recently written the book, "Thinking About National Security" which advocates many of the reforms that this subcommittee is proposing. He also joined five other former Secretaries of Defense in support of a number of reform proposals. Mr. Secretary, we are always glad to have you come before our subcommittee. You have many, many friends on this committee. We would be pleased to hear from you at this time.

STATEMENT OF HON. HAROLD BROWN, FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

Mr. BROWN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I am delighted to be here this morning. I want to make it clear that anything I can do to help the activities of the committee in trying to improve Defense organization I am most eager to do.

Rather than a long prepared statement, I thought what I would do is perhaps talk for 10 minutes or so about the general principles that ought to underlie Defense organization, my own views about some of the more important features of organization that I would suggest need improvement and how, and then, perhaps, give some brief comments on both the legislation that the House has already passed, H.R. 3622, and the staff discussion drafts that are now before you as the focus of attention by the committee. But mostly I hope that we could spend the time with me trying to respond to whatever questions you have.

Let me begin by noting that there are several overlapping but, nevertheless, separate, distinct goals involved in organizing for defense. We should begin, of course, by noting that organization won't do the job. You need the correct environment. You need good people. You need good direction to the Department of Defense by the President, the Secretary, and the Congress. But it's easier to make an organization work with good organizational arrangements

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than it is to try to fight the organizational arrangements in order to make the organization work.

The functions of the Department of Defense include, first of all, the need to plan and execute military operations in support of U.S. foreign policy. In dealing with that, you are dealing with the functions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the unified and specified commanders, the Secretary of Defense, and those parts of his immediate office that deal with political and military matters, and the interface between military operations, diplomatic activities, intelligence activities, intelligence needs, and overall national security policy.

A related and overlapping, but separate, issue is the force structure, which of course connects the national strategy, the military strategy, the force posture, military plans, and military operations. And the force posture in turn leads to the question of what do you procure, how do you train, and so forth?

Choices of force structure and the setting of priorities are matters in which, principally, the JCS organization is involved. To a lesser extent the unified and specified commanders, who deal with this year, next year, maybe the year after, but not 10 or 15 years from now, have to concern themselves with this issue also. So, too, do the military departments and military services.

When it comes to actually procuring what has been decided on as a force structure, that has been, and, in my judgment, probably should continue to be the function of the military departments and the military services.

In the public mind these things all blur together: procurement of $400 hammers; success or failure in the Grenada operation or Iran rescue attempt; advice on arms control proposals by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the President. Those all get mixed together. But they need to be dealt with separately and with understanding of what their relations are.

In my judgment, what is most needed to improve the Department of Defense organization is to strengthen the procedures and the organization that will provide a unified strategy, and joint planning and execution for major military operations. The smaller military operations have more leeway; you don't have to be organized perfectly in order to be able to overcome the resistance of 100 Cubans in Grenada. Operations on the central front in Europe provide less leeway because the United States will not be fighting with an overwhelming preponderance of personnel and materiel; quite the contrary.

In my judgment, activities such as unified strategy, and joint planning and operations, need to be improved. The way to improve them in organizational terms is to change the balance of influence and change the preponderance of inputs from the military services to the joint activities, such as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Staff, and the unified and specified commanders as opposed to military services, military departments, and the component commands.

In the case of force structure, budgeting, and procurement, I think some changes also need to be made, dealing with the relationships largely between the military services and departments on

the one hand, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense and, to a lesser extent, the Chairman and Joint Staff on the other hand.

I will omit, in my discussion today, the important other area of organization, that is, organization for national security at the Presidential level and in terms of the Congress. I could say those are above my pay grade, but instead I will say those are too complicated to try to tackle today. And I am not here to tell the Congress how to run its own business.

I think some substantial changes need to be made there. I think that the interagency process can also be improved. In my book, to which you kindly referred, Mr. Chairman, I do deal somewhat with both those questions. But the legislative issues before you have to do with changing the organization of the Department of Defense, and that is what I will concentrate on.

If we were starting the world over, my own preference would be to separate the service chiefs from the joint activities. That is to say, service chiefs would be service chiefs; they wouldn't be members of a Joint Chiefs of Staff. There would be a combined military staff headed by a chief of military staff. That organization would work with the Secretary of Defense and his office, be in fact part of his office, in order to do the planning and oversee the execution of military operations. Military planning would be done by this military staff beginning with inputs from the unified and specified commanders. These inputs would be reconciled by this staff. Then the execution would be overseen by the combined military staff and carried out by the CINCs, unified and specified commanders, or by designated task force for that purpose.

The chief of military staff and the combined military staff would be the staff of the President and Secretary of Defense in executing military operations.

Moreover, if we were starting over again, I suspect that we might not have service secretaries. Service chiefs would run their services, and you would be prepared, in the interest of simplification, to give up the political insulation which is usefully provided by the service secretaries. This would give the service chiefs clear indication that they were in charge of their service, but they would not be primary actors in the joint planning and operations.

However, we are not starting over. The world can't be reinvented. Therefore, I think it makes sense as a major step, maybe not the last step but a major step, to proceed along the lines that this committee, the House Armed Services Committee, and the corresponding committee in the other body are moving along. Now, they're not identical, but they are certainly moving in the same direction. Some combination or some compromise between what you and the Senate committee are advocating clearly would be a major step forward.

In particular, with respect to to H.R. 3622, which deals with changes in position of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and related bodies, I would agree that making the Chairman the principal adviser to the President and the Secretary of Defense, putting him in charge of the Joint Staff, asking him to produce a set of program recommendations that are constrained by realistic budgets, to draft military strategy for the Secretary of Defense to consider, to reconcile the operational plans of the CINC's, to be the

staff for the President and Secretary of Defense in executing operations and transmitting orders to the CINC's or the task forces, all makes sense and would be a major step.

Rather than try to nitpick individual pieces of this document, I will say, in general, I think it makes sense. There are some items that I might have expressed differently, but I think it, in general, is the right thing.

I would urge one thing very strongly on the committee. That is to preserve the position of the Deputy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as set forth in that bill, assuring that he has precedence and that he functions in lieu of the Chairman in the Chairman's absence. When you get the service chiefs up there, ask them if they rotate their function among their various deputy chiefs of staff, when they're out of town or during a period of 4 months on any day when they're not in town? When the CNO is out of town during January, February, March, and April, does the DCNO Air act, and then during the next 4 months the DCNO for Surface Warfare, and the following 4 months the DCNO for Submarine Warefare? I doubt it. Why should it be so different with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs? You want one alter ego. There can be only

one.

I think this may turn out to be a critical issue in the debate because, whether you have or don't have a Deputy Chairman who really is an alter ego will be the real sign of whether you intend to change the way things now operate.

You might also ask the unified and specified commanders their opinion on this question. I have little doubt what their private and, I hope, public opinions would be.

OK, let me turn now to some of the items that are in the draft bills in very abbreviated form. I think it makes a lot of sense to increase the unified and specified commanders' control over their components and over at least a part of their resources.

There is a problem here. You have to make a judgment on the balance of how you deal with support. I must confess to some uncertainty as to whether it really is going to be possible or would be a good idea to put the issue of support up for bid among CINC's, the services, and the defense agencies. I think there is always going to be a gray area. What part of training is an appropriate function for the military services? What part of training is an appropriate function for the CINC's? Well, the joint training clearly ought to be CINC's. The exercises clearly ought to be CINC's, not the services. But there is going to be a gray area between primary training and joint training, probably.

I think there will be a problem if the CINC's become even more concerned with the details of the budget process than they are now. As things are now, as I understand it, the introduction of the CINC's into the resource process, which I made a start on while I was Secretary, has since been expanded. I think that is a good idea. But we fool ourselves when we think that having the CINC's on the Defense Planning Resources Council and giving them 10 minutes every year to come in and make the case for the resources they need is really going to do the job.

I think it makes sense for each of the CINC's to have an office in Washington. We established an office for the rapid deployment

joint task force headquarters in Washington and that served very usefully. I have been told by CINC's who were appointed after I left that they thought that was a good idea; and they tried to do the same thing informally. It would be a useful thing, I think, to at least allow it.

Again, I am not sure how much belongs in legislation. There is a lot that ought to be done that should not be prescribed in legislation. I take it that at least some of this is a way of surfacing these ideas and pushing the Defense Department to do what it ought to do by the threat that if they don't it will be legislated.

But let me say again, increased CINC's control over their components and a bigger say in resources can't really substitute for the Services. Service function is important for the esprit and the loyalty and the dedication that come from identifying with a service, which I think is extremely valuable, and indeed necessary, to military people. Also, service function is important because there is a certain unity about the things you have to do for land forces, a certain different unity about the things you have to do for air forces and sea forces. It makes sense to have a degree of matrix organization.

I would only caution that there is a balance here and that it does not make sense to expect the unified and specified commander to take the 10-year view or the 15-year view. He shouldn't. He should be thinking about how well he can do if he has to fight tomorrow or next year or the year after that. To distract him by asking what the world is going to be like 20 years from now is a mistake. That really needs to be done in headquarters and in the service organizations.

About the joint specialty that is suggested-I think that makes a good deal of sense. It really should have been done long ago, and it shouldn't have needed legislation. But if it takes legislation, by all means go ahead and do it.

The promotion protection or the assurance that promotion will not be adversely affected by a joint specialty, I think is very desirable. I myself have seen that, by and large, military officers recognize that the path to the highest levels is through serving your service and not through joint service.

You all probably know that I put in a directive shortly after becoming Secretary of Defense that directed that those officers who were promoted to general or flag rank, that is O-7, that had not had joint service would be given a joint service spot as their next assignment. I am sorry to say that, although that was a very good idea, it was not carried out very effectively. The services started to divine joint service as almost anything. Your bill certainly shows an awareness of what happened there. We did better than had been done before, but we didn't do well enough. That needs to be improved.

Finally, let me turn to the issue of service and military department organization. I believe that an integration of the military and civilian staffs would reduce the number of layers, could increase the effectiveness. I like the way you go at it. Again, I am not sure how much should be done by legislation. I recognize that the Navy has a somewhat different problem because the Department of the Navy has two services. Naval forces include the Marines as well as

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