It was 1994 when the Pentagon last engaged in a seminal examination of what it does, how it does it and why. In Pentagon-speak these issues are known in a neat shorthand as “roles and missions.”
At a Pentagon briefing today, two senior defense officials discussed how they will approach the new roles and missions work, outlining the seven main areas of focus. The one issue Congress told the Pentagon to study is whether there are unnecessary duplications of capabilities among and between the four services and other arms of the Pentagon. In addition, the officials told reporters that unmanned aircraft systems, intra-theater lift, cyber war, irregular warfare, Pentagon governance issues, and DoDs roles and missions in the interagency world.
Note that a senior defense official said that the analysis will be done within existing budget constraints. A senior military officer said that the combatant commanders will have a great deal of input during this effort because the department is looking at how the services and other agencies can work better together rather than as a food fight between services for resources and responsibilities. For example, Strategic Command will be a key player in the analysis done about cyber warfare and Special Operations Command will play a major role in the look at irregular warfare.
One of the sleeper areas may turn out to be the look at interagency roles. The senior defense official said the military has learned a great deal about how effectively it works with the other parts of the government since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, noting that the current structure was developed during the Cold War and may need changing.
Congress ordered the Pentagon to do this roles and missions analysis in its 2008 Defense Authorization Act. In addition to the long-standing Quadrennial Defense Review, Congress said that the military should analyze its roles and missions in time for the 2010 budget submission. That would bring it in about a year before the next QDR. Henceforth, the military will perform a roles and missions analysis before each QDR.
The last stab at this sort of thing was the Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces. The commission took a year to deliver its final report, Directions for Defense, to the nation, issuing it in May 1995.
– Colin Clark
This is long overdue but it is hard to see why it is best to do this in the waning days of a lame duck’s Presidential administration, rather than at the start of the administration of a newly elected President who would then buy in while he or she has the political capital, ability and an incentive to make major changes.
Did they accomplish anything in that 1995 review?
Not implying anything here, but does it seem appropriate that the same agencies that are doing what they do now are going to examine themselves? I don’t know if its realistic or practical, but wouldn’t having a completely objective entity looking at these things make more sense?
Enough with the reviews, let get to work, first the DOD should be abolished, its too big and unwilling to change, second too many chiefs, not enough indians. Third the review should be done by Military and experts outside the beltway who don’t have an interest in Military Defense companies, or functions. Finally, the Miitary has to grow up and begin to serve the interests of the Country over there individual Services. If they can’t do that i propose that the USAF, USA, USN and Married be disbanded and the United States Defense Force be institued. There mission would be to defense the Constitution of the US over those of the Political master. I’m wishing without hope that would happen.
Get rid of the service secretaries along with each service department, and consolidate all civilian control to the DoD. Everyone reports to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, with no middle-man.
That’s the way it should be.
The one thing that both Russia & China does that we don’t seem to be doing is that they DO NOT throw away or scrap their old weapons.China wraps her old fighter aircraft up & stores them in caves & are we really sure that Russia has scrapped her old ships,submarines,fighters,& tanks? You only need a certain quantity of quality weapons & a mass quantity of “shitty” weapons,that if your “quality” weapons defeat your enemy’s,your “shitty” ones will have nothing to stop them from overrunning their enemy.China,& Asia in general,has the capacity to raise 200,000,000 troops.How many of that number would actually be combat troops is unknown,but if they have a reserve number of that many troops,versus us only being able to raise maybe 2,000,000,in a weapons of mass destruction nuclear slug fest,chances are they’ll out last us due to attrition.having just under 200 F-22s will still have their hands full if our enemy has say 22,000 fighter jets,with a mixture of high end Su-27,MiG-31,& MiG-29 derivatives & upgrades & lower end MiG-25,MiG-23/27,MiG-21 space fillers.Our F-22s may be great,but they are not miracle workers.
As far as the whiz bang sci-fi weapons go(Tesla Howitzers,scalar electro-magnetic weaponry,that is if you believe such weaponry exists & performs as advertised),from what I hear,Russia has them,from as far back as the 1950s,& thus can afford to have shitty conventional weapons,because their “sci-fi” weapons trumps all.We put “quality(which is questionable anyway,judging by our current acquisition problems with the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle,Littoral Combat Ship,DD-21 Zumwalt Destroyer,& Coast Guard Cutter)” before quantity.The Russians & Chinese do not need all of their weapons to be quality,just enough.
I’m reminded of a line from the movie “Zulu Dawn,” where one British Soldier mentions about the difference between their “superior” weapons versus the Zulus(who greatly outnumbered them,& defeated the British,by the way).It goes,“bullets run out,spears don’t.” I bet,as long as they didn’t have body armor,I could defeat an enemy armed with rifles & other automatic weapons,just by using multiple bows & arrows.If I had proper concealment,& the enemy didn’t have whiz bang stuff like night vision,or if I had bow & arrows(I mean the good stuff,the modern bow & arrows,not prehistoric arrow heads) AND night vision,I could with the proper tactics,defeat guns.
As long as they throw out the Key West agreements of 1948, go ahead!
Test
i have an idea to maybe make troops safer when in a tank from snyper fire etc.. who do i contact!!