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Report calls for roles and missions debate

Mention “roles and missions” around the Pentagon, and brows furrow as the battle cry goes out: Protect the turf!

A new report from a House panel on the topic hopes to jump-start the arduous process of breaking down those sorts of walls — not only within the Pentagon, still operating largely under a Cold War construct that is grappling with new concepts such as cyber-warfare, but in an intelligence community that is dealing with the complexities of tracking shadowy terrorists around the world, and a State Department that is shifting gears from “genteel diplomacy” to demanding volunteers for provincial reconstruction teams.

The word “report,” however, suggests not only discussion but conclusions. This one contains more questions than answers and is meant not as a blueprint but a clarion call for philosophic and cultural, as well as systemic, change. The contents include a New York Times column on the “Dictatorship of Talent” and even reprints Army Lt. Col. Paul Yingling’s controversial Armed Forces Journal essay, “A Failure in Generalship.”

“It is not something that is necessarily going to result in legislation,” said Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia, ranking Republican on the House Armed Services roles and missions panel. “We don’t even call for that. It’s more a brainstorming sort of thing.”

But just as the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act mandated greater service interoperability — controversial at the time but now the foundation of all Pentagon operations — the panel seeks a 21st-century effort to cut across departmental lines, eliminate redundancies and become more effective.

“It is time to reform our national security institutions,” states the panel’s March 6 report, six months in the making. “Not to score political points, but because the world has changed and continues to change. The institutions that served us well in the Cold War are still too focused on that conflict and not enough on the uncertain world we actually face.”

And the time is right, said Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., the panel’s chairman. “The winds of change — you can hear them if you’re listening.”

The report’s discussions and essays — all readably short — fall into three broad categories: interagency coordination between the defense, state and intelligence communities; procurement, management and strategic vision; and interservice rivalry over which branch of the military does what.

It often reaches no conclusion, instead offering food for thought.

For instance, which entity should do nation-building? The military, so good at getting places fast and imposing order? Or the State Department, with its understanding of political culture? Or perhaps a new agency? Yet once that’s created, the panel asks, “won’t they look for more and more countries to build? When does nation-building become imperialism?”

The report criticizes the defense planning and budgeting process, noting that in past 30 years, each service’s share of the defense budget has changed by less than 2 percent.

“That’s almost a statistical indictment,” said Cooper, “There had to be times, years, when we needed a lot more money in one pot than another.”

Then there’s the problem of redundancy. For instance, the Army, Navy and Air Force each have their own unmanned aerial vehicle programs, and operate them differently.

“Our increasing defense budget allows each service to pursue its own program,” the panel states. “But when resources become scarce, we will have multiple programs each based on a different strategic goal. Our elected leaders will either have to pick one program and hope it matches our strategic needs or under-fund all of the programs.

“Only by making the hard strategic and budgetary choices now can we optimize unmanned drones for the future,” the panel continues. “Allowing service rivalry to determine the answer creates flawed answers.”

The panel didn’t let Congress off the hook in terms of redundancy, either. The report notes, for instance, that the secretary of Homeland Security could be called before 86 different committees and subcommittees of Congress.

The report ends with a closing shot across the bow, titled, “Recruiting the Best and the Nerdiest?” The panel, noting that the Pentagon’s computers are attacked about 35,000 times a day, asks if the military is able to recruit the best minds in computer science in order to defend itself.

“Many of these students have tattoos and body piercing,” the report blanches. But “at the extreme, it may take a new concept in our military to succeed in the cyber fight. A new military specialty, or even corps, may be necessary in order to instill and maintain the values that computers demand.”

The recruits, the panel suggests, would “speak the language of computers,” be able to make limited repairs and “most importantly,” preserve the integrity of Defense Department computers, “even from well-intentioned generals.”

Download the full report

Discuss: The report