Good luck reforming the Department of Defense

No matter who President Donald Trump’s secretary of Defense ends up being, that person will be charged with disrupting the Pentagon to reform it and annihilating any vestiges of diversity equity and inclusion and wokeness.

But reforming and transforming the Department of Defense are aspirations, not actions. 

When the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed, the main threat to the U.S. and its allies vaporized. Yet, the U.S. made relatively modest reductions to its forces, cutting back by about 25 percent.

We have a few instructive examples of attempted reform. When Robert McNamara was President John Kennedy’s choice for secretary in 1961, he brought to the Pentagon, the “Whiz Kids.” In addition to relative youth and huge brainpower, this team believed that systems analysis, through intellect and rigor, could solve any problem and turn the management of defense into a more precise business. McNamara had served in World War II in the analytical branch of the Army Air Corps and later went on to be the first non-Ford to become president of that company.

McNamara instituted the Planning, Programming and Budgeting System or PPBS, which is still in force but with an added “E” for Execution. Many of the McNamara analytical reforms were rejected due to failures in Vietnam, where systems analysis did not work and brought false hopes for more Pentagon efficiencies.  

One of the most notable procurement disasters was the TFX, the TriService aircraft fighter that would be used by all three services. It was not. And like TFX, major attempts for reform did not work

In 1970, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt became the youngest chief of naval operations in the Navy’s history. A three-star commanding U.S. forces in Vietnam, Zumwalt vaulted over dozens of more senior admirals to the Navy’s top spot.

Zumwalt was preoccupied with three issues that drove his thinking. 

First, the Navy he would lead still maintained too many ships that had served in World War II and were obsolete, unfit for modern war. Second, in many areas, the Soviet Navy’s technological advantages and relatively new ships raised profound questions as to who might win a war at sea. Third, because of Vietnam, racial issues had boiled over in the services. Zumwalt feared naval mutinies were increasingly likely.

Zumwalt moved to re-capitalize the Navy by cutting about one-third of its fleet thereby freeing up funds for newer, more technically advanced systems. With those savings, he was able to add two more aircraft carriers to the naval inventory. 

Exploiting technology, Zumwalt placed more fighting power into cruise missiles. And under his leadership, The Exploitation of National Capabilities Program extended the Navy’s reach and dependence on space.  

To reverse the racial problems, Zumwalt made racial seminars mandatory in which sailors were taught to be blind to race, gender and nationality. Zumwalt also launched his famous Z-Grams that reversed certain rules on dress and other matters that were long obsolete and harmful to morale, from allowing sideburns to not rescinding the requirement that all junior officers carry swords.

Four years as chief of naval operations were not enough for all of Zumwalt’s reforms to take hold. He achieved perhaps half the most importantones in cutting the number of ships to modernize the Navy. But his successor, Admiral James L. Holloway, saw his role as steadying the Navy after Zumwalt’s disruptive tenure.

When Donald Rumsfeld returned to the Pentagon for the second time in early 2001, he had the distinction of being the youngest and oldest person to serve as secretary of Defense, having first held that position in the Nixon administration. 

The mandate from George W. Bush was to “transform” defense. Yet the administration had no clear idea of what transformation meant other than to allow more spending on missile defense that would come after Bush abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the centerpiece of the U.S.-Soviet strategic detente.  

The result was chaos. The brass had no idea what was wanted and Rumsfeld insisted on having the generals and admirals tell him what transformation meant. Reports and stories emanating from senior officials warned that because of this disconnect, Rumsfeld would be the first cabinet official to leave office.  

Then Sept. 11 intervened. And from a mortally wounded secretary, after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Rumsfeld would emerge as a brilliant minister of war.

The lessons are clear. Two secretaries of defense failed to impose the major reforms intended by their administration. A service chief was more successful. Five decades after Zumwalt, General David Berger, commandant of the Marine Corps, despite huge resistance by the retired Marine community, put in place Force Design 2030 that transformed the Corps. 

The next Defense secretary should learn from this history.

Harlan Ullman, Ph.D., is a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council. His 12th book, “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD:  How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large,” is available on Amazon.