Editorial: Rumsfeld team has admirable goals, but forgot to ask the military about them

Aviation Week & Space Technology 01/31/05

His patience apparently exhausted by a series of Quadrennial Defense Reviews (QDR) that so far have each collapsed into interservice bickering and laundry lists of projects, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had his staff of senior Pentagon civilian leaders launch a preemptive strike on military planning. The resulting array of proposed cuts--which contractors and senior military leaders are sarcastically calling the Bush administration's Christmas gift--would affect weapons systems as varied as the stealthy F/A-22 fighter/attack aircraft, the V-22 tiltrotor transport (see photo), the DDX advanced destroyer and the Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine.

We certainly would not suggest that once a weapons program is underway, it must go forth as planned, regardless of any changes in the world at large or in the nation's priorities. Indeed, we admire much of what Rumsfeld has done toward transforming the military into lighter, faster, more networked forces.

But this is an Alice-in- Wonderland approach to defense planning: "Verdict first, trial later." The secretary's gang of program cutthroats has reversed the traditional decision-making process by announcing six years of budget cuts that would reshape the military just as the services and civilian staff in the Pentagon begin what is to be an exhaustive review of likely threats, strategies to counter them and the resources needed. The "bottom-up review," as QDR was once called, thus becomes a "handed-down reaction."

It requires a certain amount of hubris for a group of a half-dozen people to think they can figure out matters as complex as the entire defense posture of the U.S. for years to come. But this supercilious cabal of insiders, after receiving virtually no buy-in from the military, then turns around and seeks the armed services' analysis to back their a priori decisions.

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But that's not the way the rejiggering is being presented to the military. The services are being told that the new budget is the template for the new force structure and they must make the pieces fit together.

Not sure this makes sense to me. Why bother to spend the huge amount of money that QDR costs if you already know the programatic changes that will result? We need to take a hard look at the technology/program pipeline. We are getting pretty thin out there. The 7-8 years necessary to bring a new program online, is a large barrier to us being prepared to replace the B-52 on short notice, for example.