ice rivalry dimension blown all out of proportion to what is really going on.' The European reception of the Marine casualties raises questions about this interpretation, however. An Army doctor told the Air Force that he did not believe the distribution of casualties "could be defended, medically, morally or ethically." Given these problems, what might be done about the Joint Staff? General Jones had this suggestion in 1982: 5. The Joint Staff should be made responsible directly to the Chairman rather than the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a body. In addition, we must improve the experience and military education levels of officers serving in joint assignments and provide greater incentives and rewards for distinguished joint duty. This will require removing the legislative restrictions on the Joint Staff and establishing joint procedures for selecting, schooling, insuring enhanced promotion and assignment opportunities, and managing the careers of those officers best qualified for joint duty. Actions are already being addressed by the Joint Chiefs to properly manage well qualified joint_officers as a valuable national asset; repealing the legislative constraints on Joint Staff duty will allow sufficient flexibility to do this job properly. His recommendations closely parallel those of the Brehm Study, which advocated the creation of a "joint sub-specialty"-a joint career duty track which selected officers would follow in conjunction with assignments in their own Services. The Brehm report recommended: 1. Improve the preparation and experience levels of Service officers assigned to the Joint Staff and other Joint activities such as the Unified Command headquarters. Establish in each Service a Joint duty career specialty open to selected officers in grade of O-4 and above. Such officers should be nominated by the Service Chief and approved by the Chairman, both for selection in the specialty and for assignment to Joint duty positions. The officers should be educated at Joint schools and should serve primarily in Joint duty positions, but should also return periodically to their parent Services for field assignments to maintain_currency. Perhaps half of the 4,600 positions on the Joint Staff and in other Joint headquarters should be filled by such officers, thus retaining an essential mix of officers with varied backgrounds (including command experience) on these staffs, and also assuring that the Joint headquarters do not become isolated. Service promotion boards selecting officers for promotion to 0-5 and above should have appropriate representation from the Joint Staff or other major Joint headquarters. Written guidance should be furnished to the promotion boards that states explicitly that the selection process should: (1) emphasize the advancement of the best officers in all specialties including those in the Joint specialty; and (2) recognize the importance and value of Joint duty experience. MODERNIZING THE MILITARY DEPARTMENTS One source of the problems encountered in achieving jointness in operation, effective readiness, and clarity in the chain of command can be found in the current structures of our Military Departments-the separate Army, Navy, and Air Force. Many critics contend that, particularly in the Services, the desire to acquire new weapons and hardware tends to drive and dominate policy, since the Service chiefs primary motivation is to make their individual services the best-equipped and most capable. Yet this desire can govern defense policy, in part because of the current approach of placing organizationally weak civilian Secretaries in temporary and nominal charge of tightly-knit and clearly-structured Military staffs. One often hears in debates on these issues the principle of "civilian control." Nowhere is this issue more pertinent than in the current structure of the Military Departments. To many analysts, the service chiefs are left without adequate checks on their expected, and even desirable, goal of promoting service interests at the expense of other interests. Politically accountable civilians might be expected to bring the perspective of Administration policy, and even that of a wider national interest, to Service management if they were strong enough vis-a-vis their Military staffs. Yet the current system isolates the civilian Secretary, minimizes his control over the professional military, and then adds further inefficiency through outdated excessive layers of management personnel, many of whom are superfluous. Many recent studies confirm the problem of excessive layering in management. A recent report issued by the Senate Armed Services Committee reports: A problem area that has frequently been identified is the existence of two separate headquarters staffs (three in the Navy) in the Military Departments: the Secretariat and the military headquarters staff. Critics believe that this arrangement results in an unnecessary layer of supervision and duplication of effort. This criticism must be considered in the context of the numerous staff layers that are involved in virtually every issue having multi-Service considerations: substantial staffs at one or more field commands or activities of each Service, the large military headquarters staffs, the Service Secretariats, the staff of the Secretary of Defense, and often the staffs of one or more unified or specified commands and the Joint Staff. It is a generally accepted principle of organization that unnecessary layers of supervision result in delays and micro-management and are counterproductive and inefficient. Additionally, while duplication of effort within an organization may be useful at times, if that duplication of effort does not result in some specific benefit to the organization, then the duplication is unnecessary and inefficient. Many other studies have sounded the same theme, according to the SASC report. In December 1960, the report of the Committee on the Defense Establishment, chaired by Senator Stuart Symington, identified this issue as a problem and emphasized the need to minimize the duplication and delay growing out of the present multiple layers of control... (page 7) Similarly, the Report of the Blue Ribbon Defense Panel in July 1970 found: There also appears to be substantial duplication in all Military Departments between the Secretariat staffs and the military staffs. (page 38) The April 1976 report of the Defense Manpower Commission cast the issue of duplication of effort in a large context: Three layers [OSD, Service Secretariats, and military headquarters staffs] at the Department of Defense (DoD) executive level involved in manpower and personnel policy, planning and programming, and to some extent, operations, appear to be excessive. Given the basic nature of the Department of Defense, two layers-Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the Services [military headquarters staffs]-should suffice... (Defense Manpower: The Keystone of National Security, page 89) The Departmental Headquarters Study, submitted in June 1978, also focused upon layering in the top management headquarters of the Military Departments and its associated redundancy and duplication. In this regard, the study stated: .. we believe that layers should be reduced when their number produces duplication rather than a needed diversity of views. (page 45) In his book, Thinking About National Security, former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown argued that within the Military Departments there is a need To reduce the number of levels in an overly layered managerial structure. . . (page 208) The unchecked power of the services chiefs can also weaken the expression of the Joint perspective the ability of the combatant commander to prepare his forces for combat missions and other uses. Many of those who have served as unified commanders have described the restraints that result from this fact: Gen. Bernard Rogers, commander in chief of the European Command: "There is an imbalance between my responsibilities and accountability as a unified operational commander and my influence on resource decisions. . . . There remains in Washington a preeminence of service goals in the program and budget process.' General Nutting of the Readiness Command: "There is an imbalance between my operational responsibilities and influence over resource decisions. . . . The system as it is presently constituted depends inordinately on cooperation and goodwill in order to function-which is to say the present system contains internal contradictions." Admiral Crowe, as commander in chief of the Pacific Command: "On occasion the results of major service decisions, not previously coordinated with me, have affected my ability to execute [my command's] strategy. . . . In the field of logistics, except for the influence I am able to exercise in the development of service program priorities. I am dependent on my component commanders not only to compete successfully for sustainment resources within their service [plans] but also to represent me in balancing and distributing stocks, ammo, petroleum, etc., in locations and ways that support my theater strategy. Therefore, until the (unified commanders) have a greater input into general logistical matters, the unified command's plans and strategy remain largely dependent upon the degree of service chief support my component commanders and I are able to obtain.” Finally, the lack of a coherent policy and strategy foundation for service programs has grown endemic. This has already been noted in relation to the weaknesses in the Joint Structure. But it is probably true also that the currently ineffective approach to civilian controi allows this to happen. Two recent National Security Advisers to the President have entered ringing indictments in this regard. Zbignew Brzezinski: My own experience in the White House, working closely with President Carter, was that our military establishment has become, over time, increasingly unresponsive either to the pressing threats to our national security or to effective presidential direction. Henry Kissinger: By contrast, the inevitable and natural concern of the service chiefs-with their competitive and often mutually exclusive mandates-is the future of their services which depends on their share of the total budget. Their incentive is more to enhance the weapons they have under their exclusive control than to plan overall defense policy. The military organization of the Department of Defense should be revised. The powers of the chairman should be strengthened, his staff augmented and missions should be related to actual tasks. REVIEWING THE DEFENSE AGENCIES The Defense Agencies have their origin in Public Law 85-599, the Defense Reorganization Act of 1955. This act contains a provision stating: Whenever the Secretary of Defense determines it will be advantageous to the Government in terms of effectiveness, economy, or efficiency, he shall provide for the carrying out of any supply or service activity common to more than one military department by a single agency or such other organizational entities as he deems appropriate. This act recognized in statute the practice, already underway, of combining some of these functions under one agency. The National Security Agency had been created by Executive Order in 1952. After P.L. 85-599 was enacted, the Defense Nuclear Agency was formed from the old Armed Forces Special Weapons Project that was created in 1946. Their authority continues to this day to be based on the authority granted to the Secretary of Defense to create and specify their functions. The propensity to create agencies to centralize the management of many functions common to the services has resulted today in eleven agencies not under the command of the services or the JCS. These are: Defense Security Assistance Agency National Security Agency Defense Contract Audit Agency Defense Intelligence Agency Defense Investigative Service Defense Logistics Agency Defense Mapping Agency Defense Nuclear Agency Defense Communications Agency Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency These agencies have grown over the years to employ more than 80,000 personnel, possibly more, and to control significant operating budgets. Although the current Administration has placed these agencies under the line control of various Assistant Secretaries of Defense, in the past they often have reported directly to the Secretary of Defense, and operated with a low level of policy control. Critics claim that they have too little accountability to the joint structure or the combatant commanders. Some Members of Congress, as well as some officials of the Department of Defense, have taken note of the proliferation and increasing power of the independent Defense Agencies. They were intended to reduce duplication and save money. Yet some analysts and observers are now suggesting that in some cases the agencies have been inadequate in providing the services they were created (16) |