Commentary: A letter to the new Defense Secretary

To: Donald Rumsfeld, incoming Secretary of Defense
Re: Penetrating the Pentagon Fog

Dear Mr. Secretary: Welcome back to the bear pit! If you pedal one of those in-house tricycles through the Pentagon like you and Bill Greener did during your first tour as Defense Secretary, you'll see lots of changes. For one thing, the Pentagon is more of a labyrinth than ever. Because of a multiyear rehabilitation, you'll find corridor after corridor blocked off when you try to go outside the mainstream--an apt metaphor for what you will be up against when you try to restructure the armed forces for the 21st century. When Bill Cohen took over as Secretary from Bill Perry in January 1997, he didn't stray far from the mainstream. He concentrated instead on building bipartisan support for high defense budgets, even though the United States had no big war to worry about. He started off saying that $250 billion a year plus inflation was all the money he could get from Congress. He changed his mind and persuaded President Clinton to kick the Pentagon budget up to its current level of almost $310 billion. But he did not make the tough choices, such as killing off some of those big weapons designed for the Cold War. He is leaving that to you. From now until you finish this second tour as Defense Secretary, the defense think tanks--funded as they mostly are by the military-industrial complex--will tell you the sky will fall unless you spend billions on this or that weapon. They will not put the "may be hazardous to your health" labels on their products. My advice is to ignore the reports of the think tanks, as well as the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, which is an exercise in self-justification by the armed services that takes entire chunks of forest just to supply the paper on which it is printed. Rather than try to wade through your in-basket of paper or try to stay awake through all the view-graph briefings that Pentagon officials are primed to give you, call in people who you really know for face-to-face chats. Make sure none of their zero-defect superiors are present. Want to know how ready today's combat units are to fight tomorrow morning? Call in a succession of sergeants major and Navy chiefs from combat units and ships. These enlisted leaders wrestle with readiness problems every day, and they'll know-not the brass. Better yet, become an overnight hero to the enlisted force by setting up an office near your own, where people from the field or the fleet can come in for two weeks of temporary duty to brief you and your staff on how it really is out on the point. Remember that Cohen and Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had to eat their glowing words about readiness before congressional committees, because they didn't know what was really happening in the field. Want to know why young officers, including many of the best and brightest, are leaving the armed services at the first opportunity? Call them in six at a time and ask them. Do the same thing with senior cadets at the Air Force Academy, West Point, and Annapolis. If you ask what they worry about most, they will cite micromanagement by their superiors, broken down airplanes and vehicles, and slumlike living conditions. Pay and retirement, which the Joint Chiefs focus on, is near the bottom of these officers' heartburn lists. These young men and women are not looking for money, but challenge, fulfillment, and fun. Want to do something bold and useful about the tactical aircraft problem President-elect George W. Bush has promised to address? Ask retired Adm. Bill Owens, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to assemble a small panel of test pilots and engineers from Maryland's Patuxent River Naval Air Station and California's Edwards Air Force Base. These experts, whom defense executives historically have ignored, can study whether a version of the planned Joint Strike Fighter-one that could take off from a short stretch of deck or runway-could revolutionize the combat operations of all four services. By the way, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps still have separate air forces. And even at this late date, they still can't talk directly to each other or to units on the ground. This has to be something of a national disgrace. Want to send out a loud-and-clear message that you want to break the molds of stale thinking in the military-industrial complex? Then call in the Pentagon's in-house heretics for half-hour conversations--and no longer. These impassioned patriots make valid points, but they can go on and on. Your truth squad should include Chuck Spinney, from your own analysis shop, who will explain the death spiral that aircraft procurement is in; Gen. Jack Keane, the blunt-speaking Army vice chief of staff, who will tell you a searing tale about repair bills; Col. Doug Macgregor, who is trying to break the Army's iron phalanx of thinking about how big its fighting outfits should be in this new century; and Maj. Don Vandergriff, who will hold forth impressively on why the officer promotion system is a disaster area. And don't forget Paul Nitze, the one-time nuclear enthusiast who now believes we would be stronger and the world would be safer if we threw away all our nuclear weapons. I could go on. But you get the idea. Break some Pentagon china this time around.