Turning the Battleship

Secretary Gates’s announcement of fundamental changes in Pentagon budgeting and procurement broke into three areas: personnel, the battlefield and procurement.

In the first, there was little with which to disagree. Gates institutionalized recognition in the budget that – unlike the old draft Army – America’s all-volunteer force (AVF) is a force married with children and that it is a force at war. The AVF requires support for the families to retain the highly skilled, professional and motivated soldiers that Gates called, “America’s greatest strategic asset.”

Secretary Gates’s announcement of fundamental changes in Pentagon budgeting and procurement broke into three areas: personnel, the battlefield and procurement.

In the first, there was little with which to disagree. Gates institutionalized recognition in the budget that – unlike the old draft Army – America’s all-volunteer force (AVF) is a force married with children and that it is a force at war. The AVF requires support for the families to retain the highly skilled, professional and motivated soldiers that Gates called, “America’s greatest strategic asset.”

And so they are, but the AVF has been undermanned and undergone tremendous physical depletion and psychological trauma. Not by any means a “broken army,” or a “hollow force,” it needs and deserves to have its existing “people” needs addressed.

The new budget will fund the planned growth of the Army and Marine Corps, and halt reductions in the Air Force and Navy. It will recognize that with improvements in battlefield medical care, soldiers who would not have survived earlier conflicts return from Iraq and Afghanistan with critical, long-term injuries including traumatic brain injury (TBI), amputations and post-traumatic stress (PTSD).

Secretary Gates noted that, “Programs to directly support, protect, and care for the man or woman at the front have been developed ad hoc and funded outside the base budget.” Medical and family services had been funded largely in supplemental appropriations, making long-term planning difficult for medical and military personnel and making families insecure in their belief that the military would provide for them in their time of greatest need. This helps.

It does not address, nor can it, the issue of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical care and long-term assistance to veteran families – the Pentagon budget is limited to active duty personnel. And it should not erase the bad taste in our mouths over the President’s attempt to push veterans’ long-term battle-related medical problems off onto private insurance to save money. The Pentagon and the VA have to create a seamless transition for the soldier from active duty to discharged veteran, “to care for him who shall have borne the battle,” as President Lincoln said. The Pentagon is not exempt from the process.

Which brings us to the next point. Secretary Gates wants to “rebalance” Pentagon programs “to institutionalize and enhance our capabilities to fight the wars we are in today and the scenarios we are most likely to face in the years ahead.” He called the changes a form of additional “support for the soldiers.” Some – increases in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, including additional UAVs and helicopter crews – is clearly true in the context of current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But “it’s for the soldiers,” cannot become a catch-all for everything from sweeping changes in Ballistic Missile Defenses to canceling weapons procurement to new deployments. Secretary Gates will have to present a coherent vision of present and – most important – future threats to have traction with Congress and the American people as he tries to turn the Pentagon battleship.