Inside Defense
March 4, 2010 -- Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn is proposing a set of sweeping management reforms aimed at significantly increasing civilian control of the military services by giving the defense secretary more leverage in determining which weapon systems to develop and buy -- prerogatives now largely the domain of the service chiefs.
Central to this previously unreported effort is a proposal to immediately launch a new “front-end assessment” process, a major analytic effort that would permit the defense secretary to issue explicit guidance as soon as May on specific programs he wants cut, modified or boosted in the Defense Department's fiscal year 2012 to 2017 spending plan. If adopted, such guidance would come seven to eight months earlier than when the defense secretary normally weighs in on service investment matters.
Lynn, according to Pentagon officials, as soon as this week is due to seek Gates’ blessing for these management reforms, which also include the creation of a new senior corporate deliberative body called the Planning and Resources Board. The new approach would require very early in the planning process new capability areas assessments to set the agenda each year for which part of the Defense Department's investment portfolio to scrutinize.
“Some of the stuff we're talking about, if they did it, would make for significant changes,” said one source familiar with the proposal. “And the department doesn't take to change that readily.”
Indeed, Defense Department officials said the Pentagon bureaucracy has weathered some intense organizational and process overhauls in recent months -- including a major restructuring of the policy shop and ongoing efforts to implement last year's weapons acquisition reform law. These officials question the military’s ability to absorb another round of major changes.
Still, what Lynn is advancing is a reform that civilian leaders have long sought. In 2004, Pete Aldridge, a former Pentagon acquisition executive, issued a report calling for sweeping changes to DOD's requirements and acquisition process. Aldridge diagnosed a problem that Lynn's proposals are designed to address.
“The resourcing function focuses senior leadership effort on fixing problems at the end of the process, rather than being involved early in the planning process,” Aldridge wrote.
Pentagon officials say the window to affect the next six-year investment plan is getting smaller with each passing week. In January, the services began work on their program objective memoranda (POMs), proposals due to be submitted this summer to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
“Time is of the essence,” said one source who noted that Lynn had hoped to have new management reform recommendations in place to influence the FY-11 program review last fall. “That got overtaken by events. If you're trying to interdict the [FY-12/17 POM] process, you've got to move fairly rapidly now because the services will start to [move] along their own direction in the absence of guidance otherwise. Those things get harder and harder to turn around as you go downstream.”
Lynn wants to make adjustments to the process in order to “apply secretarial leverage early, rather than reactively at the end of the annual cycle,” according to a Pentagon source familiar with the concept.
One thing Lynn is looking to reform is a portion of the planning, programming and budgeting system introduced decades ago by Charles Hitch, the Pentagon's comptroller in the 1960s under Defense Secretary Robert McNamera. The PPBS system, which has been modified over the last four decades, was created to allow senior Pentagon leaders to make decisions based on explicit national interest criteria, not compromises between the military services; simultaneously consider needs and costs; pick and chose from among explicit, balanced and feasible alternatives; and develop a multiyear financial plan that projects the consequences of current decisions into the future.
One source familiar with Lynn's proposed reforms said that an overarching objective “is to go back to some first principles” associated with the establishment of the PPBS process, which was predicated on increasing civilian control of the military departments.
Lynn's proposed management reforms were drawn up by Robert Soule, a defense expert at the Institute for Defense Analyses (DefenseAlert, June 3). Soule was the Pentagon's director of program analysis and evaluation from 1998 to 2001; at that time PA&E – now called the office of cost assessment and program evaluation -- reported to Lynn, who was the Pentagon comptroller.
On Dec. 11, 2009, Soule formally presented his recommendations to the Deputy's Advisory Working Group, chaired by Lynn. Pentagon officials say Lynn largely accepted the management reforms, particularly the recommendation to move quickly to affect the FY-12 to FY-17 POM process.
Accordingly, Lynn would like Gates to immediately direct six “front-end assessments,” each of which would examine a wide capability area that cuts across service and agency lines. The goal is to begin this spring -- rather than in November and December -- to influence the shape of the military services' fiscal year 2012 to 2017 investment plans.
The proposed reforms could allow the Pentagon's top two officials to make “some major decisions early in each annual cycle” in order to produce “a realistic and agile defense program that balances immediate, mid-term and far-term user needs,” according to a source familiar with the effort.
In particular, Pentagon sources say, Lynn wants these assessments to look at “cross-cutting trades” that traditionally have been the most difficult types of moves for civilian leaders to impose on the services because they involve reducing capabilities and moving key missions to other services.
The services have eyed these candidate front-end assessments warily, unsure of whether to nominate areas that include the capabilities that are most important to them or to advance lower priorities, according to service officials.
Sources in recent weeks said that no formal list of capabilities has yet been advanced for consideration, but that notional capabilities discussed include rotorcraft survivability and availability; how to deal with loose nuclear weapons; ground force structure and modernization; cyber operations; communications vulnerability; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; personnel support for irregular warfare and stability operations; strategic nuclear forces and ballistic missile defense; electronic warfare; maritime support to irregular warfare; brigade combat teams; special operations forces; and general purpose forces roles and responsibilities.
The proposed enhancements Lynn has endorsed would include five sets of changes, according to sources. First would be the creation of the Planning and Resources Board, utilizing a construct that bears resemblance to how the White House National Security Council is organized. The PRB would have a high-level “principles” group chaired by the defense secretary and including the highest rung of civilian and uniformed leaders. In various configurations, it would replace current committees including the Large Group, the Extended Large Group, the Senior Level Review Group, the Defense Senior Leaders Conference and the Deputy's Advisory Working Group.
The reforms also would establish a number of new activities earlier in the PPBS cycle. Between December and January, the PRB would perform wide-ranging capability area assessments that would be used to nominate issues for front-end assessments.
Those assessments, which would be conducted during the first few months of the calendar year, would be “major analytical efforts” to address issues the defense secretary and deputy secretary want examined. Also during the spring, the secretary would issue program directives rendering decisions on front-end assessments that the services must incorporate into their future year defense plans. Those program directives would be reinforced by fiscal guidance issued to the services.
Next, the defense secretary would issue planning guidance that would subsume the Guidance for the Development of the Force and be integrated with the Guidance for the Employment of the Force, according to sources. This guidance would be updated annually, with major overhauls in years when the Pentagon completes a congressionally mandated Quadrennial Defense Review.
The guidance also would “establish an expectation that the [future years defense plan] is a realistic, fully funded plan that will be executed, with maximum program stability, rather than a database that is recreated annually,” according to a source. -- Jason Sherman
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