Gates should start with himself...

 "Among Gates's apparent targets for major cuts are the private contractors the Pentagon has hired in large numbers over the past decade to take on administrative tasks that the military used to handle. The defense secretary estimated that this portion of the Pentagon budget has grown by as much as $23 billion, a figure that does not include the tens of billions of dollars spent on private firms supporting U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The defense contractors, who populate new office towers throughout Washington's suburbs and have been a major driver of the local economy, are a significant source of budgetary bloat, Gates said. "We ended up with contractors supervising other contractors -- with predictable results," he said in the speech Saturday.

Gates rattled off examples of costly bureaucracy inside the military, as well. A simple request for a dog-handling team in Afghanistan must be reviewed and assessed at multiple high-level headquarters before it can be deployed to the war zone. "Can you believe it takes five four-star headquarters to get a decision on a guy and a dog up to me?" Gates said to reporters Friday.

More than two decades after the end of the Cold War, the military still has more than 40 generals, admirals or senior civilian equivalents working in Europe. "Yet we scold our allies over the bloat in NATO headquarters," he said."  Washpost

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Gates is right.  The armed forces are loaded up with too many generals and admirals.  There is feather bedding everywhere.  The money taps were turned on in Republican days and have been opened even wider in the present administration.  The armed forces are structured now to support a forward leaning aggressive foreign policy in which the expectation is clear that finesse counts for little and massive brute force and large troop commitments are the pattern.  A COIN strategy in Afghanistan that relies on so many soldiers for what the generals would clearly like be an indefinite period is the very emblem of this kind of thinking.

Headquarters have multiplied remarkably in the last 20 years.  Bush '41 once said that he lacked the "vision thing."  Today's armed forces are burdened with far too many flag officers and SESs who are unable to even imagine "the vision thing."  As a result the processes of equipment acquisition and creation of new doctrine have been relegated to huge committees, endless paper and expensive endless experimentation.

Gates' statements about multi-layered civilian contracts would be more impressive if he were not guilty of the same thing.  He has a number of "pet rocks" for which this outrage does not seem to apply.

I can name a few but I will leave it to you gentle readers...  pl 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/08/AR2010050802495.html

Comments

[walrus]

Col. Lang, at the risk of offending you I have to ask: "What if the Generals and Contractors instead decide that Gates has to go?"

I also have to ask: "What if a (retired) General decides to stand for President?"

To put it another way, is the military industrial complex powerful enough to resist Gates tender ministrations?

[JK Pearson]

Perhaps you should suggest that Gates emulate the Brits - and occasionally shoot an admiral to encourage the others?

[crf]

You might like reading David Colqhoun's blog. DCscience.net

[samuelburke]

these military minded men have no idea how broke our nation is, and they certainly will not be told by the patriotic americans in congress..whether the senate or congressmen or any other govt dependent bureaucrat.

what america needs is a few good men.

Ron paul comes to mind.

[Brian Hart]

The generals will volunteer to trim the living wage and health benefits of the enlisted personnel now that civilian unemployment is so high. A sad commentary on current affairs.

[William R. Cumming]

Now seeing possible team of Jeb Bush and a 4-star becoming the Republican ticket. The others are unable to grasp the nature of coalition warfare that is the lifeblood of modern politics.