By Carlo Munoz
Defense Secretary Robert Gates yesterday unveiled details of a Pentagon-wide restructuring effort designed to slash $100 billion in bureaucratic overhead costs and put DoD in a position to deal with an increasingly difficult budget environment.
Details of the plan focused on the consolidation and outright cancellation of a number of Pentagon programs and directorates, along with associated personnel, deemed redundant or simply unnecessary within the department structure.
One area within the department Gates took particular aim at was the significant role the contracting workforce had taken on, noting DoD has “become far too reliant” on contracted personnel “to perform functions that should be done by full-time [DoD] employees.”
To that end, Gates mandated that department’s overall staff support contracting corps be drawn down by 10 percent per year, over the next three years. Specifically, Gates ordered the Pentagon’s policy and acquisition directorates to eliminate a total of 270 contract support positions, with the Defense TRICARE Agency ordered to cut 780 non-DoD personnel.
In addition, the defense secretary also ordered the termination of 360 contracted personnel currently working for the Missile Defense Agency.
Those changes to the department’s cadre of civilian contractors will generate an estimated $6 billion in savings to Pentagon coffers, according to Gates.
Along with civilian contractors, Gates also proposed significant reductions to the upper echelons of the Pentagon’s uniformed and civilian staff.
Nearly 100 general and flag officer positions will be cut from the roughly 900 billets currently in place at DoD. “Of those, 28 are billets created after 9/11, primarily for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” according to Gates.
On the civilian side, Gates also ordered the cancellation of 200 senior executive service positions across the services and DoD.
While the savings generated from the senior personnel cuts “will be relatively modest,” Gates noted the move will result in a military leadership that will be “flatter, more agile and thus more effective organizations.”
Aside from these personnel reductions, Gates also recommended a three-year freeze on new DoD hires, which should generate an additional $5 billion in savings over the five-year span of the initiative.
“While new requirements may emerge that may require further staff support, those needs should be met by shifting personnel from other, less important activities within the organization,” he said.
The defense secretary also outlined major organizational changes to the department’s intelligence and combatant command structures.
As expected, the defense secretary followed through with plans to eliminate the office of the assistant secretary of defense for network intelligence and information, DoD Business Tranformation Agency, as well as U.S. Joint Forces Command. Gates first announced his intentions to shutter those organizations last August.
On JFCOM, Gates noted that even with the elimination of the command, “a number of missions” will be retained at various military installations in Norfolk, Va. That said, almost 50 percent of JFCOM’s mission portfolio will be reassigned from the Virginia area, according to Gates.
Regarding intelligence, the Pentagon also plans to downsize a number of the post-9-/11 DoD intelligence subcommands that reside within the global combatant commands, Gates said. To fill that gap at the COCOMs, the Defense Intelligence Agency will “surge support” to the various commands as needed, he added.
The funds generated from this overhaul will go toward the growing operational costs DoD has accrued in the decade-long wars in Southwest Asia. The Pentagon will funnel almost all of those dollars into repairing and replacing legacy weapons systems used in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to filling urgent warfighter needs via rapid acquisition of much needed combat systems (see related stories).
By financing those requirements internally, Gates has sought to alleviate some of the budgetary pressures the department is facing in its upcoming spending proposal for fiscal year 2012.
The DoD topline for FY ’12 will be $553 billion, according to Gates. While that figure is $13 billion below what Pentagon number crunchers had anticipated, the FY-12 topline does represent a three percent real growth, compared to the levels authorized by Congress in the most recent continuing resolution package.
However, the figure proposed for FY ’12 will represent the high water mark for defense spending for the next few years, Gates explained.
“The proposed budget plan will reduce real growth in the department’s topline in FY ’13 and in FY ’14, and provides zero real growth in FY ’15 and FY ’16,” he said. That path, Gates added, will result in a $78 billion reduction in spending compared to the five-year defense spending plan–known as the program objective memorandum in Pentagon parlance– completed last year.
“The Pentagon cannot presume to exempt itself from the scrutiny and pressure faced by the rest of our government,” Gates said. “We must come to realize that not every defense program is necessary, not every defense dollar is sacred and well spent and more of nearly everything is simply not sustainable.”