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Pushing a large marshmallow up a hill with a sharp stick . . .
The reasons commanders seek to avoid Pentagon duty are obvious:
First, the tangible results of an officer’s labor are not forthcoming. The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OpNav) works program objectives memorandum issues several years in advance. Nothing the action officer puts in motion now could conceivably reach the fleet during that officer’s tour in the Pentagon. Worse, the things a predecessor, and the predecessor’s predecessor, started years ago will not have survived the continual budget cuts and resultant downsizing efforts in their original form. If at all. The fleet-implemented program will be only a shadow of the originally approved and funded program. The action officer sees continual, piecemeal reductions of needed and approved programs every day.
These action officers devote their entire Pentagon lives to staving off runs against their programs, to trying to minimize the effect of funding cuts, and to preserving some semblance of operational benefit to the fleet. They know that their current work for the future will suffer equally under their reliefs. It is like pushing a 600-pound marshmallow up a steep hill with a sharp stick. It’s not very satisfying.
Second, the officer defending a program is all alone. There are only three other groups in Washington—enemies, neutrals, and bosses who would like to help but are too busy, really. The basis of the planning, programming, and budgeting system is Darwinian survival of the fittest. In theory, that is good: the most worthy programs will come out ahead in the competition for scarce dollars. In reality, though, instead of killing off the least necessary programs to ensure the survival of the ones we need most, we try to keep them all alive, and all become a bit sick. All the other acquisition program coordinators compete against the OpNav program coordinator in this effort, though they are friendly competitors, more interested in preserving their own funds than in raiding the coordinator’s.
The real enemies come in two shapes: government civilian budget analysts, and the combined forces of certain congressional staffers and purple- suited officers on the Secretary of Defense’s staff. The budget analysts have a charter to see that the funds are spent properly. They regularly decide on the combat value of programs the Navy has funded.
Then the real vultures descend.
These are the people with pet rocks they want fed. Their attacks take two forms: one is to force the Navy to provide funds to support their version of a joint program. You may recall the F-111 as a notorious early example of this. A variation is an attack to kill a Navy program perceived as competing with something the Air Force wants to procure. Both types of attack are shrouded with motherhood and apple pie. The frightening part of this is the degree of real power over the public purse wielded by unelected congressional staffers.
Program funding on any given day reflects:
- Changes in congressional priorities: Which way is the wind blowing today in Peoria?
- The concept of “good enough”; when congressional staffers or OSD analysts decide they need money to support their own pet rock, they will conclude that your program is already “good enough” (the term gold plating is heard about this time). So cut the budget; what is left is by definition “good enough.”
- Perhaps most insidious is the “undistributed cut,” or the mark “without prejudice.” The undistributed cut happens when Congress approves every line item in the presidential budget, at the requested level, then cuts the bottom line by $x billion. The liberals can go home and say “I slashed the defense budget $x billion,” and the conservatives can say “I saw to it that every item in the defense budget was approved at the level the President requested.” They are both right—and DoD is down by $x billion. How does the Navy take undistributed cuts? Usually by taxing each OpNav sponsor and systems command its “fair share.” The result is the horizontal cut, where program requirements don’t change—just the dollars. This means, of course, that the system or upgrade being procured becomes less capable, less numerous, or less well supported.
The “mark without prejudice” is a variation on this theme. In this case, Congress again decides that it wants to cut the budget but cannot identify any program that isn’t necessary and already minimally funded. So it marks one or more programs at random but “without prejudice,” so that Navy can “buy back the mark” by cutting something else of its own choice. That way, Congress is not the bad guy; the Navy chose to cut one of its own programs.
► Financial management: Theoretically, a case can be made for managing money by taking from overfunded programs and giving to underfunded ones. In practice, this means spend your money as fast as you can so you can take from others. If you don’t, others will take from you. Even though procurement money is good for three years, the program that has not spent a sufficiently high percentage of it after the first year (“expenditure below target”) will have its funds cut.
The third reason Washington duty is so arduous is the working conditions. The Pentagon is widely advertised as the world’s largest office building. It also must be the world’s dirtiest and most crowded office building. Papa- san’s hooch in the back of the Top Three bar in Olongapo is cleaner,
Proceedings / June 1991
I
righter, and more spacious that the cu°byhole accorded the average commander in the Pentagon.
* d also include clerical support (the ack of) under working conditions. ased on my observation, the Pentagon emPl°ys one clerk/typist for about ®veiy ten officers. Half of these staff le Various admirals’ offices at an approximate rate of one per star, and the 0,her half serve the lieutenant commanders and commanders in the tenches. If you look at the spaces, you 'vdl note that word processors outnum- er clerk typists by four to one. It’s n°t the clerk typists typing the memos, Point papers, talking papers, issue papers, letters, messages, and requests for tansfer. It’s the officers.
Finally, the bureaucracy is horren- °us. The Pentagon runs on paper. Mountains of it. The Pentagon houses what is probably the densest concentra- hon of flag officers per square foot in he free world. Every piece of paper that leaves OpNav is signed “by direc- h°n” of the Chief of Naval Operations.
Fy direction” authority is jealously guarded, as it should be. But the result ls that almost nothing leaves OpNav "'ithout a flag officer’s signature— regardless of the relevance of the Paper. This distracts the flag officer’s Mention and slows the flow of corre- sP°ndence unacceptably.
Decisions are pushed to the highest |^vel possible. I once briefed the Vice Chief of Naval Operations (VCNO).
F°r 30 seconds—literally. On his calender I was scheduled from 1437:15 to *437:45. This is no joke. It was a “decision” brief; I gave him a two- Sentence statement of the problem and a 0ne-sentence recommendation—on an obscure issue he had never heard of before. He accepted my recommenda- h°n, mostly because he did not have *be time to get involved with it. So why did I have to brief him? If the issue was not important enough to tie UP the VCNO for more than 30 sec- °nds, why would not some lowly two- s*nr make that decision?
Some of these problems have no ®nsy solution. But many of the most 'rritating harassments could readily be fixed. Flag officers need to show more 'nterest in fixing the problems, instead °f accepting them.
Commander Froggett is a systems engineer with I tburon Systems, a firm that develops software related to command and control. Before his 1988 retirement, he was assigned to the Cruise Missiles Project as Deputy Program Manager, Ship- Launched Cruise Missiles Program.
Proceedings / June 1991
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