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Reduced funding—with no compensatory reduction in war fighting requirements—is perhaps the greatest challenge to the Marine Corps today.
DoN, and 9 cific “green
under Marine-only management. Such green programs11 j elude our personnel, their training (except aviation), gr°ul,j weapons and equipment (with associated maintenance a® support), and our bases and stations. _
Another 4-5% of the resources allocated within the partment of Defense for Marine Corps programs are ma® aged for efficiency in departmental, joint “blue-green' J
For centuries, examples from nature have illustrated perplexing real-world problems. One such analogy likens a mountain stream to a complex process. As long as rains come, the water flows, and rocks in a stream bed remain hidden. The rocks are there, but no one worries about them. When the rains fail, however, the water level falls, and the rocks begin to appear, creating a tolerable amount of turbulence. As the drought continues, more and more rocks emerge and obstruct the motion of the mountain stream. Eventually, enough boulders and rocks interfere so that the once beautiful brook now meanders, eddies, then stops flowing altogether.
If we substitute resources for water in this scenario, enough personnel, material, or money will make almost any management process appear free-flowing and efficient. Problems do exist, but by throwing enough money at them, we can keep them submerged. As resources dwindle, however, the boulders appear, and turbulence begins to hinder the process. To regain a smooth flow, we must pray for a downpour of dollars—or start moving some boulders.
The Commandant of the Marine Corps has statutory responsibility to organize, equip, train, and provide Marine forces to the Unified Commanders. The procedures and processes through which he obtains financial resources to fulfill these responsibilities are neither widely known nor understood. All too often, they are just taken for granted. We must look behind the scenes to discover how Marine Corps resources are obtained to maintain preparedness.
Armed with this knowledge, we must then set a course for the Marine Corps to follow in this time of decreasing resources and changing strategic circumstances.
Although elaborate and complicated procedures are followed during the budgeting process, we must never lose sight of the basic fact that our Corps receives its resources from U.S. taxpayers. Our citizens are our principal customers. Before congressional budget formulation moves to center stage, a complex process has taken place over many months within the Department of Defense. This process, known as the Planning, Programming and Budgeting System (PPBS), takes the nation’s overarching strategy, the services’ roles and functions, their long-range plans, and expected funds and translates them into a resource vision. From this vision, the annual budget proposals are ultimately drafted.
Central to PPBS is the Department of Defense’s issuing of Defense Planning Guidance and Fiscal Guidance. Using these two critical documents, the military departments and agencies develop six-year investment plans, formally known as Program Objectives Memoranda (POM), which represent proposals for the proper allocation of assigned funds.
Based on their respective POMs, the military departments and agencies prepare and submit an annual budge' to the Secretary of Defense, who integrates them into 3 single DoD budget estimate submission. The Office of Management and Budget incorporates the DoD submission into the overall presidential budget, which, in turn is submitted to Congress each January. The ball is then i® Congress’s court as the elected representatives and senators deliberate, adjust, and eventually approve the defense budget. This, basically, is the annual budget cycle.
Our naval forces provide an array of tailored capabib ties for our Unified Commanders-in-Chief to draw upo® for combat, as circumstances require. With two service* under its auspices, the Department of the Navy (DoN) >s unique among the military departments. Because the Secretary of the Navy has both the Navy and Marine Corf on his team, he must make resource decisions not only within but also between the two services. This situation presents a challenge, because constrained resources must be all0' cated carefully between the naval services. It also presents an opportunity- because of the potential efficiencies and synergies that exist.
It is difficult to identify accurate!) the total resources within the Do^ that support the Marine Corps. Ma1^ appropriations and naval programs clearly support either the Navy or tbc Marine Corps, but others are intertwined, crossing service lines making clear accounting difficult- n strict appropriation breakout by Navy or Marine Corps can be acco®1' plished, but that often fails to capW1* the end user of the resources. For e*" ample, monies appropriated by co® gress for both Marine and Navy ®’r craft are managed jointly in tl'L Aviation Procurement-Navy accoU®1 Despite this intertwining of the t", services’ funds, however, an es® mated “cost of the Corps” can t11 determined.
Since the early 1980s, the Mur>®‘ Corps has received about 14-F of the total funding allotted to 11% of these funds are earmarked for spe 1 Marine Corps programs in appropriatin'1
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Partrnental assets are managed by the experts, no mat- Miat uniform they wear.
The PPBS process has worked well, as the Depart- 0j.ent of Defense has attempted to retain a proper balance ^ Squired war-fighting and support capabilities. The plants and programming devices proved particularly effec- jj e trom the inception of PPBS in the early 1960s under ^emnse Secretary Robert McNamara through the fall of s^e Berlin Wall. The world and the threats to our national :tCUrity have changed marginally over the years, but our geategy has remained essentially constant. As defense bud- 10s ebb and flow, our resource allocation process al- h. s for incremental shifts—to share the wealth or spread e Pain.
sj^Vertheless, the global transformation that has occurred re the end of the last decade has mandated a complete ca| "*ing of our national military strategy. Technologi- a(lvances in capabilities (stealth and precision-guided
c°unts. Navy and Marine aircraft, maintenance, fuel, "Capons, and requisite naval aviation training structure comprise the bulk of these jointly managed funds. More 100 Marines are assigned by the Commandant to the N,avy headquarters staff (OpNav) and the naval systems c°mrnands to assist in the administration of these “blue- C|een” dollars.
Representing less than 1 % of DoN resources (but in- cative of the close bond between the Marine Corps and e Navy) is the final category of resources. These funds budgeted and expended by each service to support the °ther—commonly referred to as “blue-in-support-of-green” ald “green-in support-of-blue” dollars. The Navy provides PProximately 6,400 doctors, dentists, nurses, corpsmen, chaplains for direct support of the Marine Corps. In tUrn, the Marine Corps provides 6,200 Marines, orga- j^ed into security forces ashore and afloat, to support the avy. Maintaining separate Navy and Marine air systems 0ttimands, medical commands, or security force com- k ands would not make sense—in either war fighting or ^siness. Whether intended for Navy or Marine Corps use,
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munitions, for example) continue to be added to the nation’s arsenal. Crisis response, forward presence, and strategic deterrence now provide the basis for meeting the dangers inherent in this new world disorder.
Our earlier global threat has been supplanted by regional challenges. Both the world and our strategy are changing—and also is our defense resource outlook: President Bill Clinton has a clear mandate to reduce defense expenditures. The question for defense planners is no longer whether there should continue to be incremental resource shifts; rather, we should determine what major resource shifts are needed to maintain the required capabilities in this new era. The shift away from the Strategic Defense Initiative toward theater ballistic missile defense reflects such reallocation.
The Department of the Navy leads the way in responding to the dangers and opportunities of the post-Cold War era. In the fall of 1991, with our nation’s evolving military strategy as its guide, the Marine Corps conducted a rigorous assessment of its future role. Detailed program reviews and mission area analyses (with the full involvement of our senior leadership) validated our Corps’ traditional role as a naval expeditionary force-in-readiness. These assessments, noted in “. . . From the Sea,” comprise the framework for our future and correctly refocus the department from open-ocean war fighting to operating forward along the world’s littorals. As a team, we will supply naval expeditionary forces for peacetime influence projection, on-scene deterrence, crisis response, and power projection in joint conflict resolution. This will be manifested by presenting an unobtrusive offshore forward presence, performing as the tip of the enabling spear or fully participating in a sustained military campaign.
Postulating a new strategy is meaningless, however, without a rigorous assessment of the threat, required capabilities, and resource implications. With this in mind, the Department of the Navy has aggressively pursued the matching of resources with competencies identified in “. . . From the Sea.” Formerly sacred traditions are being reexamined, so that resources may be realigned in a more coherent, operationally oriented manner—cutting across all traditional naval warfare areas.
These new operational capabilities may not appear revolutionary, but they represent a significant departure from a spread-the-pain or proportional-cut mentality. Continuing the fair-share method of resource reductions between
duction in war fighting requirements—have left us ^
if
cuts need to be evaluated to keep from reducing
no end to the drought. Further, by praying for rain.
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allocations and business as usual. Only by removing
Security Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government-
the two services and across all war-fighting areas would only have guaranteed ineffectiveness and—ultimately— irrelevance.
As a former Army Chief of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor, observed in the late 1950s, “Strategy has become a more or less incidental by-product of the administrative processes of the defense budget.” In order to avoid a return to this role reversal of strategy and budgets, our civilian and military leadership must conduct a bottom-to-top review of the nation’s military structure and available resources.
The new Department of Defense hierarchy has initiated an innovative, forward-looking, and operationally oriented approach similar to the Department of the Navy’s. The threats and dangers to our country are being reevaluated, and the contents of our military capability tool kit are being scrutinized and recalibrated. In addition to being prepared for regional conflicts and crises, our forces must be trained and equipped to conduct humanitarian operations—at home and abroad.
The Joint Strategic Planning System (JSPS) and the PPBS are conduits for implementation of the required course changes, and both systems have evolved and matured significantly since General Taylor’s day. They are the means, not the end, however—flexible processes requiring proper inputs (e.g., roles, functions, threats, and available resources) to produce credible products (forces and capabilities).
General Colin Powell relied on JSPS and PPBS when he began an effort to design a “Base Force” three years ago. Refinement, restructuring, and further reductions in the U.S. military posture continue today in the Department of Defense “Bottom Up” review. This fresh look at our security policy, force structure, and acquisition programs should be eradicating the piecemeal approach to resource reductions. It also should match needed military capabilities with scarce available resources. This matchup must occur. Department of Defense resources have plummeted by 31% over the past ten years, with no indication that this trend will reverse itself.
We cannot afford to squander tax dollars on redundant, irrelevant, or outdated capabilities. Reducing or eliminating a capability within one service, while simultaneously expending precious resources to develop it within another, would be wrong.
Today’s unprecedented opportunities and challenges are accompanied by risks. . . From the Sea” attempts to address these unknowns, while setting the course for the naval services. Our new strategic direction guarantees a continuing relevance in dealing with worldwide risks. Today, our Navy and Marine Corps team is uniquely tailored to meet the emerging regional dangers and challenges across the spectrum of violence. We stand ready to provide low-profile but powerful presence; extended, sustained, on-scene crisis response; precise, calibrated, readily reversible power from the sea; and initial kick-the- door-down capability for joint operations.
This wide range of options available to CinCs—from disaster relief through non-combatant evacuation operations to landing a Marine expeditionary force across a hostile shore—are relevant today and will be relevant to morrow. In an ever-changing world, some things nevf! change.
While the continuing relevance of our naval force has been established and institutionalized, it is but of piece of the equation. Having the proper mix of Marin# sailors, ships, planes, tanks, strategy, and doctrine meat1' nothing if our forces are not ready to go in harm’s way capable of performing any assigned mission. We m#1 never again tolerate the “hollow forces” of the 1970s.
Planners, programmers, budgeters, and command#1 must remain mindful that readiness and capability can not be measured simplistically. Resource allocation i" side and outside of the Department of the Navy must tah into account the entire picture. It is imperative that retain the right mix of carefully developed military #>' pabilities as we proceed into this new security environ' ment. However, fiscal realities demand increased scrutin! across all dimensions of our national security posture. W must shed repetitious, low-payoff, superfluous capabil' ties—such as those designed with the Warsaw Pact >! mind. Also, we must protect capabilities that meet tl" present demands of the National Command Authority Learning from the recent successes of our armed fore# we will continue to innovate, complement, and integral to achieve both resource efficiency and war-fightinge ficacy. We must never forget, however, our existi# strengths and should avoid the temptation to change change’s sake. .
The existing JSPS, PPBS, and ongoing “Bottom f|P review furnish the methods to convert strategy into ffl*)1’ tary capabilities. To ensure success, we must proceed ^j1 a clear vision of the future—without counterproducti'1 interservice rivalries and parochial interests. Our focus f war fighters must remain on capabilities required by otl( nation and not be guided by a fair-share-equal-pa1" mentality.
The recent reduction to the Fiscal Year 1994 bud# submission resulted in a $2.8 billion reduction for the partment of the Navy and a loss of 2,000 Marines for ^ Corps. Resource reductions—with no compensatory {C
reduced flexibility within our investment plans. Furthc
Fleet Marine Force to such an extent that the nation I “9-1-1” force-in-readiness finds it difficult to respond * and where it is needed most.
As we return to the mountain stream, our forecast se foolhardily hold firm to the old approach of fair-sl obstacles of parochialism and old-world thinking can _ restore the smooth flow of the stream and preserve 0 nation’s preeminent, effective military force.
Colonel Cooley is the Head, Program, Planning, and Develop1"1. Branch, Programs and Resources Department, Headquarters, M" Corps. Lieutenant Colonel Leitch recently served as Program DeVL ^ ment Officer at Headquarters, Marine Corps, and is presently a Na1"’