Reimagining Defense

Department leaders were talking a lot about reductions—in the size of forces and in the budgets of the armed services. With military operations over in Iraq and winding down in Afghanistan, the consensus was that it was time to take the country off its war footing and position it to address long-term shifts in the global security landscape. 

In March of this year, President Obama released a budget reflecting the new approach. Writing in Government Executive Media Group’s Defense One, editors Kevin Baron and Stephanie Gaskell said the proposed budget “cuts the size of the military’s ranks and cuts into most major weapons buying accounts, as expected, in exchange for, the Pentagon argues, maintaining technological advances and as much training and so-called ‘readiness’ as possible to allow the Pentagon to respond to unexpected conflicts.”

The problem was that even as the budget was being rolled out, unexpected conflicts already were arising: Russian troops were moving into Ukraine and a jihadist group that came to be called ISIS, ISIL or simply the Islamic State, was capturing territory in Iraq and Syria. By August, the United States was coordinating a massive campaign of airstrikes targeting ISIS, while desperately hoping to avoid putting boots on the ground again in the region. Meanwhile the country turned to the military to respond to yet another unforeseen threat: the spread of Ebola in Africa. 

Suddenly, the new security landscape looked a lot like the old one.

Soon enough, congressional Republicans were openly questioning the wisdom of trimming Defense spending. But at the same time, a war-weary public seemed unlikely to endorse the notion of giving the Pentagon a blank check.

In this issue, we explore how the Defense Department is responding to this dilemma. First, Defense One Global Business Reporter Marcus Weisgerber looks at renewed efforts to squeeze savings out of the defense budget by overhauling the procurement process. He notes that the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, Frank Kendall, isn’t a fan of the term “acquisition reform,” arguing that it’s not a one-shot process, but a long-term commitment to refining Pentagon purchasing.

Kendall also may be aware of the checkered history of acquisition reform efforts. And according to a new survey conducted by Government Executive’s research arm, the Government Business Council, Defense employees are skeptical that Kendall’s initiative, known as Better Buying Power, ultimately will be successful. 

In the second piece in our feature package, Defense One Technology Editor Patrick Tucker conducts an interesting thought experiment: Suppose you took the cost of just one F-35 Joint Strike Fighter—with an estimated price tag of $180 million—and applied it to some other project that might ultimately enhance national security. What could you get for the money? He explores possibilities in areas ranging from epidemiology to energy to automation. It turns out that even a slight shift in priorities in terms of the overall defense budget could have major long-term implications.

That’s worth keeping in mind as Pentagon officials ponder a world in which new threats always seem to be emerging, while the old ones just don’t seem to go away.