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It seems that we have a little falling out on the consolidation of military staffs and the secretariat. "The Department does not believe that the staff's, the service," et cetera.

And in the fourth area, dealing with defense agencies, you say there is, of course, still room for improvement in resource management operating relationships between the military departments, the defense agencies, and the specific and functional areas.

So, Mr. Secretary, we've been discussing maybe where we disagree, and maybe we ought to be looking at some of the areas where we do agree.

With that in mind, let's talk about the CINC's very briefly. We all agree that should push come to shove, and there be any type of war, the CINC's fight it, don't they?

Mr. TAFT. That's correct.

Mr. SKELTON. That's right. And these are the people that get the praise, the blame, or at least they have the responsibility, the duty of winning that war, is that not correct?

Mr. TAFT. Well, they, of course, report to the Secretary.

Mr. SKELTON. I understand that, but they win or lose the war? Mr. TAFT. They are the combatant commanders. They fight the

war.

Mr. SKELTON. That's right. So, during wartime these CINC's, of course, have control of their component commanders, don't they? Mr. TAFT. Yes, they do.

Mr. SKELTON. What's wrong with them having control of those component commanders, and having such an arrangement during peacetime?

Mr. TAFT. Well, as I mentioned, I think that they should have more control over them.

Mr. SKELTON. All right.

Mr. TAFT. How much more, what the terms of a new JCS Pub. 2 should be, we have not yet arrived at, and I think-I would like to wait for the JCS.

Mr. SKELTON. You mentioned that the CINC's have a limited perspective, which I'm sure is limited to their area. But they also should know, if they have to fight tomorrow instead of 6 months or a year from now, where ammunition should be stored. They ought to have say-so in that, shouldn't they? And they also ought to have at least the ability to recommend a certain type of trained people, certain type of airplanes, rather than basically what the services send them on a limited take-it-or-leave-it basis. And then comes wartime when they put on a different hat, and they own all these assets, and the ammunition may be in the most vulnerable spot, the ships may be in the wrong place, may have the wrong kind of mix of trained people. Don't you think they ought to have really more to say early on?

Mr. TAFT. This basically bears on the question of how we spend our money, for what type of training, for what type of equipment, and I have felt very strongly that the CINC's should participate more broadly than was ever the case in the past in those types of decisions, and they do so.

Mr. SKELTON. So maybe we're closer together in that area than others would have us?

Mr. TAFT. I should say that probably, and I'm the champion of the CINC's in this process. I have drawn them in a lot more than any of my predecessors have. And so in calling attention to their shortcomings on the global side, and I would also bring out, I think, on the R&D side, they would tend to be less aware, familiar with the requirements of, say, the year 2000 that we must be preparing for than they are familiar with ammunition and capability of troops today. That will be more their focus. This is another limitation that we need to offset by bringing in people with that con

cern.

Mr. SKELTON. Now, let me ask you, what independent research organization is being employed to conduct this study on the establishment of a joint duty career specialty?

Mr. TAFT. I'll have to provide that to you.

Mr. SKELTON. Would you, please?

My basic question is why couldn't you all do it? Why couldn't you folks do it rather than farm that out somewhere?

Mr. TAFT. I'm not familiar with the background except there is a study underway.

[The following information was received for the record:]

INDEPENDENT RESEARCH ORGANIZATION

The House Armed Services Committee, in its Report on the Department of Defense Authorization Act, 1986, tasked the Department to employ an independent research organization to study the advisability of establishing a joint duty specialty and related issues. A $100,000 appropriation was authorized by Congress to conduct the study. Separate in-house studies on this subject were, in fact, accomplished by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Services, and were included with our May, 1985, report mentioned earlier in this testimony. The committee apparently desired further analysis of this issue from an independent source.

Mr. SKELTON. OK, sir. Are you also familiar with the fact that the British have a joint warfare school where all the services send their officers, where they learn to work, plan and think together? Are you aware of that?

Mr. TAFT. Yes.

Mr. SKELTON. I would hope that you folks would take a good look at that. It might be a good place from which to start.

The-that's all here. Thank you.

Mr. NICHOLS. Mr. Secretary, let me talk to you just a little bit about this staff business.

We have about 400 officers on JCS staff over there. And we continue to hear from time to time from witnesses that an assignment to JCS staff is the kiss of death. Nobody wants to go to the staff, particularly a hard charger who has stars, stripes, somewhere in his vision someday. He gets away from his branch, and he's sort of lost, and promotions don't come about.

One of the services in testifying before us some time previously, I believe, frankly admitted that they were not able to send their best officers to staff duty, that they had, because there are commitments around the world, needed those best officers on-as line officers and duty officers.

I'd like to know specifically what changes are being made in that particular department. I guess one thing that concerns me is it appears that the changes in the law that we passed in 1984 have been ignored. One of those changes required the selection of joint offi

cers by the JCS Chairman from the list of nominees submitted by the military departments. And yet the committee received a letter, which I will put into the record later, indicating that they really do that when they want to on some sort of a selective basis rather than the way we had set out in the 1984 bill.

And I wonder if you'd just discuss that a little bit because some thought is being given to trying to upgrade that staff duty. I think you would agree with me that it's tremendously important duty, and we ought to do everything we can to try to make it seem more important, appear to be more important, or certainly is more important to an officer that would be assigned there. It's not the kiss of death.

Some have suggested that perhaps we ought to set up a second MOS. Perhaps there's an infantry branch officer, an artillery branch, an engineer officer in the Army. He might have a second branch, and that would be staff duty. And over the years he'd go to various schools that would equip him to be a keen, bright, sharp staff officer. I'm not married to that, but that's one of the suggestions that's come to the committee.

Also, it's been suggested that we ought to do something to be certain that these officers on staff duty are not overlooked for promotion.

And I just wondered if you have any ideas on that. I believe you concur with me that that's an important issue, and that both the Senate and House committees ought to look at that in whatever bill we're preparing.

Mr. TAFT. Well, Mr. Chairman, I do agree with you that it is a very important issue. Some of the steps that we have taken, I have set out in my statement. I agree with you also that we need to take at least those steps to improve the quality of the people nominated for these joint positions, and to assure they're connected because of the point you mentioned, to assure that when they return to their service that they're not penalized, or suffer because they haven't been checking a different box.

Mr. NICHOLS. Let me ask you, do you share with me that perception? You've been in the Pentagon. You're an old rat in the barn over there. You've had staffs come and go. You've managed them. Is that your perception?

Mr. TAFT. I have certainly heard that said, and I guess all I can say is that we work very hard-because OSD duty is frequently said to suffer from this same liability-to counter it. We look after people who go back to the services, if we can, to make it clear that if they did a good job for me, for instance, or for the Secretary of Defense, that we consider that to be extremely important, and that the Army, or the Navy, or the Air Force, should consider it to be extremely important also.

Mr. NICHOLS. Well, now beyond just putting that in his efficiency report while he served with you, what further are you doing to try to see that this man not be passed over by virtue of the fact that he was away from his branch and he may have been forgotten over the 3 or 4 years that he served?

Mr. TAFT. Well, I think that the main thing you can do in this area is to watch the progress of these people. If they are good people that we get from the services-no matter the fact that

they've been in one slot-if they do a good job for us they will do well when they return, and there are plenty of records of that.

Each of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has substantial and significant joint duty in their records. It didn't ruin their careers. General Wickam, for example, I know was the senior military assistant to the Secretary of Defense for 2 or 3 years. He was the Director of the Joint Staff. It didn't seem to hold him back. Admiral Crowe had a lot of joint duty. So the people who are going forward do go forward.

What we have is a natural tension between a system that in the joint arena we require people who have particular service expertise. We do not support the development of a purely joint core of people. We think the Joint Staff operates better because it's made up of people who must inter-operate with each other, but who are grounded in a particular service's discipline and have that expertise. Likewise, we think after a person has joint duty that that makes him a better person when he goes back to his individual service, and that the individual services benefit from having had people go back to them with joint duty.

Now, when you encourage that type of in and out process, which we do, you naturally have to watch that the people who are managing the personnel systems assure that there aren't penalties attached to service in one or the other side. It's a difficult job. It's a cultural matter. It's not something that is subject to legislative remedy overnight.

I would say I think we are working on it and have done better. We can do better in the future and the steps that are outlined in my statement, I think, have an impact. You're talking careers here. You're talking 3, 4 year assignments. And it's easy to take an anecdote from a guy who might have had a joint job and not done very well lately, or as I just did, to take an anecdote of a fellow who had a Joint job and ended up as Chief of Staff. We're not going to arrive at a conclusion based on that. It's going to have to take cultural commitment by the services.

I see it coming. It's not there. It's not been there before, as much as it should be. It's working.

I've talked at great length on this subject with the Chiefs who really have much more expertise in these personnel management systems than I do, and with Admiral Crowe, and I would very much encourage you to talk with them about it because they can tell you how it looks to them, and they know what it's like from the inside.

Mr. NICHOLS. Mr. Hopkins.

Mr. HOPKINS. Mr. Taft, the last report on the defense agencies, of which I'm aware, and as a matter of fact, which the subcommittee is aware, concluded that no one knows whether defense agencies have increased efficiency and effectiveness. But on page 8 of your statement you state that defense agencies in most instances have resulted in increased efficiency, reduced duplication of effort, and improved resource utilization. How do you know that, Mr. Taft?

Mr. TAFT. Well, I think that what we have found is that where we have a joint common item, for example, in DLA, or a service, in the case of communications, that all the services use, that if you don't consolidate, if you leave all three of the services to purchase

or provide that item for themselves, they will tend to duplicate the efforts of each other, and that that will result in waste.

We've done this in intelligence at the executive branch level in the development of the CIA and in DIA for defense intelligence, and it seems to me that that has got to be a more efficient way of gathering intelligence for the Department than having each of the individual services do it.

We do it in communications. We do it in common item purchasing such as fuel, various things that everybody buys a lot of through the DLA. We do it in mapmaking. Basically common activities. And it seems to me that that is an area where, if you do it in a single entity, you will have that efficiency. The precise measures were undertaken at the outset when those agencies were established over the course of the last 20, 25 years, and proved out. It is a good thing always to check, to the extent that it's possible, to see that you're still getting those efficiencies and economies. I believe we are.

Mr. HOPKINS. Mr. Taft, I believe-staff can correct me on thisbut I think a colleague of ours, not a member of this subcommittee, but a member of our full committee, Mr. Courter, is going to introduce a bill to undo all of that. That was, I believe, put together in the 1950's, or-here's a copy of the bill now. Has this already been introduced?

Mr. TAFT. Yes; it has.

Mr. HOPKINS. I understood he had a bill relating to the Defense Logistics Agency. Does it relate to the mapping?

Mr. TAFT. I'm sorry?

Mr. HOPKINS. Also to the Defense Auditing Agency.

Mr. TAFT. Defense Auditing Agency, but then we have four or five others that it does not relate to. But we do not agree with that bill, and for the reasons essentially that I gave. We see, logically, the opportunity for savings in combining the overhead and joint common buying power that the Defense Logistics Agency, for example, has in an area like fuel, or any other area that it operates in.

Mr. HOPKINS. Let me ask you, Gramm-Rudman comes stomping in here and says that the service Secretaries have got to be eliminated, entire bureaucracy has to be eliminated.

Would it work, in your view, if instead of service Secretaries there were Under Secretaries of Defense for the Army, the Air Force, and Navy? And would you favor strengthening the service Secretaries vis-a-vis the service Chiefs?

Mr. TAFT. I think that the present system of the three military departments is a wise one. There are a lot-it obviously has its roots in history, but it is a lot for each one of those services to manage, and the consolidation of them to actively be in the Department of Defense solely as headed by Under Secretaries would not, it seems to me, improve the opportunities for the management of those services.

There are advantages to retaining their individual service identities from all sorts of points of view, not just for the efficiency of operation, but for morale and esprit, and things that matter a lot.

There is not any case, that I'm aware of that has been made, that these are not capable of being run very well, and I would

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