During the defense debates of 1960 and in nearly all the postwar years, there have been frequent calls for “crash programs” to accomplish one or more of the various projects which may at the moment seem to be required.
Obviously, some emergency programs have been necessary in the past and others will certainly be needed in the future. Such programs, however, should be adopted only after their true costs have been fully understood. It is therefore wise to analyze these costs carefully.
The costs of any military program are measured in the use of resources, which always are limited. Personnel, materials, facilities, and money are the chief resources which can be clearly identified. In each case, the inexorable operation of the logistic snowball sets up interrelated and regenerative effects in all these areas. These effects make the indirect costs mount perhaps even more rapidly than the direct costs.
In no case are the economics of scarcity more important than in personnel. Since emergency programs usually call for advanced technology, and since highly skilled technical personnel are scarce, the initiation of an emergency program invariably creates competition for this scarce commodity. Other programs suffer from “pirating,” and the going price of technical men is again boosted. This same situation applies to general management, to production personnel, and to skilled labor. This effect is further intensified by the fact that the research and development in emergency programs also usually require new tools and testing facilities. Perhaps the most expensive attribute of an emergency program is that production is frequently started on components before prototypes have been well tested.
The emergency aspects of the program will also create a great demand for overtime work with the consequent large increase in unit costs in every aspect of the work.
This regenerative snowball process stimulates monetary inflation, which in turn further increases the unit costs of other necessary programs. Since these established programs operate under rigid budget ceilings, the overriding priority of the emergency program forces cutbacks or cancellation in the other programs, which may be of equal or greater importance. In such instances, a large investment and years of development may be wasted. Moreover, curtailment of established programs creates frustration and exasperation in top planning personnel, which in turn accentuates inter-service competition for the dollar and makes co-operation more difficult.
In reviewing this depressing and frustrating situation, we find that the fault is threefold; we are dealing with the effects of intellectual immaturity coupled with superficiality of thinking and complicated by overcentralization of authority.
Intellectual immaturity produces contempt for theory, for history, and for sound military thinking. This attitude produces a superficiality which ignores the depth and importance of the study of strategy and of logistics. Men on the one hand have pursued the strategic will-o’-the-wisp of dependence on a single ultimate weapon, and on the other hand have succumbed to the lure of the cheap short cut, the quick, supposed dollar- saving at the expense of long-range economy and combat effectiveness.
When these mistakes are recognized, the crash program is expected to compensate.
But over-centralization is the chief enemy; it creates and intensifies the very ills it pretends to cure. In addition to increasing vastly a layered bureaucracy, it encourages the development of powerful principalities which tend to be dominated by men with authority but without responsibility, who interfere in the process of orderly, responsible management. This interference distracts our top men from their vital tasks of formulating critical concepts and making major decisions. It exhausts them mentally and physically in a weary round of repeated testimony and hearings both before the layered bureaucracy and the Congress. Over-centralization makes every mistake a big one.
There is no specific solution. However, several elements seem clear, which, if understood, will alleviate the harmful effects:
(1) There must be more concern for understanding the basic principles of strategy and of logistics, for this understanding is essential to improvement in the quality of our major decisions, particularly those related to new weapons and the balance of forces.
(2) Not only should we resist every proposal for further centralization of military authority in the defense system, but wherever possible we should decentralize our already over-centralized Department of Defense.
Finally, let us remember that preoccupation either with the spectacular or with the trivial tends to distract us from the fundamental. If our fundamental concepts and decisions are sound, there will be little need for emergency programs.
A graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy in the Class of 1922, Admiral Eccles commanded USS John D. Edwards (DD-216), served in the Office of Vice Chief of Naval Operations, and with Staff, Commander Service Force Pacific during World War II. From 1947 to 1951, he was on the staff of the Naval War College and in 1951 to 1952, he was Assistant Chief of Staff, Logistics, CinCNELM and CinCSOUTH. He retired in 1952.
Admiral Eccles is the author of Operational Naval Logistics and Logistics in the National Defense.
*This paper was prepared under the sponsorship of the George Washington University Logistics Research Project for the Office of Naval Research.