Viewed through the lens of partisan politics there is nothing wrong with the American military that money cannot fix. In early 1999 President Clinton added $112 billion to the Pentagon's five-year budget. Vice President Gore and Governor Bush want to add more. So do the Joint Chiefs. The Chiefs have their eyes on another $48-58 billion a year.

In this bidding contest there is only one place for the defense budget to go: up. A decade after the Cold War, the nation faces the prospect of spending at least $300 billion annually on defense -- 85 percent as much as the average during the Reagan years. However, it is mistake to think that this sum or even more will cure the Pentagon's ills. They are not the type that money can relieve.

The armed forces claim that reduced budgets and increased activity have eroded their readiness. But this explanation fails on both counts. Since the Gulf War the number of military personnel deployed in operations on any one day has averaged 40,000. Even when this number is quadrupled to provide for troop rotation, the total amounts to less than 12 percent of the force. This would not cripple an efficient military. In fact, taking into account all US personnel abroad (either deployed in operations or stationed at bases), a smaller percentage of our military is overseas today than during the halcyon 1980s -- 19 percent versus 24 percent.

Relatively speaking, money has not been in short supply either. Annual defense outlays during the Clinton years averaged only 20 percent less than during the 1980s, when the military was much larger. Measured per person, the Clinton budgets actually exceeded those of the Reagan period by 12 percent on average. Readiness spending per person during the Clinton years exceeded that of the 1980s by more than 30 percent.

Rather than being simply the result of either over activity or tight budgets, our military's woes reflect a resource management problem. Neither the Pentagon's tool kit nor its way of conducting its business fits today's problems.

Much of the concern about readiness has focused on assets that are in high demand but low supply -- like AWACs aircraft. These are being ground down. But the fact that they remain in short supply after years of hand-wringing suggests a failure to shape our military according to need.

Similarly, arrangements for sharing assets among the various military commands are not sufficiently flexible to meet today's requirements. Some parts of the military, like the Air Combat Command, have faced extraordinary operational demands, while others have been less burdened. The result is local "pockets of unreadiness". Recognizing this for what it is -- a management problem -- the Air Force began in 1998 to better distribute burdens across the force. But the process of change is not yet complete.

Efforts to par down our military's support infrastructure have also proved torturous. In 1997 the bi-partisan National Defense Panel (NDP) concluded that the infrastructure was still scaled to the large, long wars of the past. According to this year's Defense Department report to congress, the services maintain 20 percent more base capacity than they need. Maintenance depots, labs, testing facilities, schools, and hospitals all carry significant excess capacity. Meanwhile, efforts to centralize or privatize support functions proceed at a feeble pace. Estimates of the additional savings that a more vigorous process of "re-engineering" might achieve range from a few billion dollars to $20 billion a year.

Rather than adapt its tool kit to the world, the Pentagon views the world in terms of its tool kit. It remains too oriented toward very large contingencies, rather than the more frequent, varied, and smaller ones that prevail today. This is evident in the Pentagon's two-war strategy, which the 1997 NDP report derided as "a means of justifying the current force structure." The strategy prescribes being prepared to rapidly win two overlapping regional wars -- a very ambitious way of handling a very unlikely scenario. In effect, it makes one big war out of two medium-size ones. Current war plans are also pegged to a type of foe that has been in decline for a decade. The Defense Intelligence Agency forecasts that threats like that posed by Iraq in 1990 will shrink to 20 percent of their former size by 2005. However, while the size of threats has been receding, the warfighting requirements posted by the services have been growing. Since 1996 the Army has added 70,000 troops to its stated warfighting requirement. The Navy, too, sees future wars requiring more ships than those of the past.

Exaggerated war scenarios have a profound impact on requirements. The plan to procure 3700 tactical aircraft at a cost of $300 billion rests largely on these scenarios. Likewise, they figure in the Navy's desire to increase its fleet by 20 percent.

The war plans also distort readiness standards. For instance, two Army divisions received low readiness ratings in 1999 because they could not disengage from the Balkans, re-train, and re-deploy on schedule for the second war of the double-war scenario. Controversy now surrounds these divisions, but their poor rating was an artifact of our over-blown strategy. Because this strategy lays claim to most of our armed forces, even small contingencies seem to put readiness at risk.

These problems signal a failure to adapt our strategy and armed forces to changing conditions. There is blame enough to share among the administration, congress, and the services. But recrimination is no substitute for what we really need: a consensus for change. Unfortunately, the candidates find it easier debating how big a check to write for the status quo.

References and links

Budget and personnel figures and comparisons are derived from:
Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller), National Defense Budget Estimates for FY2001, http://www.defenselink.mil/comptroller/defbudget/fy2001/fy2001_greenbook.pdf

Statistical Information and Analysis Division, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, Military Personnel.

Other references and supporting documentation:
Carl Conetta and Charles Knight, The Readiness Crisis of the U.S. Air Force: A Review and Diagnosis, Project on Defense Alternatives, 22 April 1999; http://www.comw.org/pda/afreadtc.html

Congressional Budget Office, Paying for Military Readiness and Upkeep: Trends in Operation And Maintenance Spending (Washington DC: CBO, Sept 1997); http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=58&sequence=0&from=1

General Accounting Office, Defense Acquisitions: Reduced Threat Not Reflected in Antiarmor Weapon Acquisitions, GAO/NSIAD-99-105 (Washington DC: GAO, July 1999) http://www.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=gao&docid=f:ns99105.txt

GAO, Opportunities for the Army to Reduce Risk in Executing the Military Strategy, GAO/NSIAD-99-47 (Washington DC: GAO, March 1999) http://www.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=gao&docid=f:ns99047.txt

Dr. Lawrence Korb, "It's Time to Finally Cut the Defense Budget," Global Beat Syndicate, 25 October 2000; http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/Korb102500.html

Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, "Defense Reform: More Smoke Than Fire," Strategic Review (Fall 1998)

McInerney and Erik R. Pages, "Bolstering Military Strength By Downsizing the Pentagon," Issues in Science and Technology, Winter 1997; http://www.nap.edu/issues/14.2/pages.htm

Citation: Carl Conetta and Charles Knight, Bigger Budgets Will Not Cure the Pentagon's Ills, Project on Defense Alternatives Commentary. Cambridge, MA: Commonwealth Institute, October 2000. http://www.comw.org/pda/0011budget.html

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