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MCU students do drinking bird for SECDEF.
Gates kicks off tour of military war colleges

By William H. McMichael - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Apr 13, 2009 20:49:23 EDT

The budget proposal angered defense contractors and certain congressmen. But it drew no objections Monday from a group of officers it could affect the most — the military’s future generals and admirals.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates flew from the Pentagon to Quantico, Va., Monday morning, making the first of five visits to military war colleges and a training center in order to explain the thinking that went into the controversial budget proposal he announced Apr. 6.

Contractors, already expecting bad news, blanched when they heard Gates’ plans to end production of the Air Force F-22 fighter, spike the Air Force Combat Search and Rescue helicopter program and the VH-71 presidential helicopter program, boost funding of unmanned aerial vehicles, cancel the vehicle portion of the Army’s Future Combat System, and other big changes.

At the same time, Gates said he wants to continue funding the end-strength increase in the Army and Marine Corps, increase the size of Special Operations Forces and to ramp up spending on unmanned aerial vehicles — all viewed as “war fighter-friendly” initiatives.

As such, the 20 fast-rising officers attending Marine Corps University who met with Gates — drawn from all four military branches — voiced no specific objections to the plan during their roughly 50-minute question-and-answer session.

Instead, the questions were more strategic in nature: whether combatant commanders have enough input into budget decisions, whether the State Department and USAID are growing in expeditionary capability, whether individual troops will continue to be sent to the wars to fill specific jobs, and how much the Pentagon should be relying on contractors and reservists.

Gates reiterated that his reformist proposal aims to get rid of waste and to institutionalize the needs of today’s war fighters, whose needs have generally been supplied via supplemental spending rather than in the base defense budget.

Asked if he thought Congress would be a “help or a hindrance” in the budget reform effort, Gates said that in terms of jobs, far more will be created by the F-35 program’s growth than would be lost in the F-22 program. But, he noted, “That doesn’t solve the problem of people in particular localities, in particular states. And so … I expect there’ll be a lot of pushback on that score.

“There is an overall sense on the Hill that there is a need for acquisition reform in the Department of Defense,” Gates told the students, all field grade officers. “Too many programs overdue, over budget and poorly managed. It is hard to argue on the one hand the need for acquisition reform covering the entire department and then say, ‘Oh, but except for my little program over here, which is over budget and overdue, but still is really necessary.’

“So I think there’s a certain logical inconsistency in that that I hope will work in our favor.”

Gates said he’s fully aware that some of the changes he’s proposed are huge. “When you have as many programs affected as we will be sending up there, I think it becomes a more daunting challenge,” he said.

Less controversial is the plan to allow Army and Marine Corps end-strength growth to continue. While Gates said the Marines are focusing their increases on skills such as intelligence and explosives ordnance disposal that are in short supply, he said that the practice of sending so-called “individual augmentees” to the war theater to fill various jobs will continue.

“My view is that at least as long as we’re fighting these two conflicts simultaneously, that there will still be individual augmentees,” Gates said. But in the future, he said, the Pentagon and the services should “plan for it and train for it.” That way, he said, “We know where those resources are.” He also said that all of those taking on such assignments should be allowed to apply for joint experience.

“If we’re gonna have it for a long time … then let’s stop doing it ‘onesies and twosies,’ and figure out how to do it in a more orchestrated, meaningful way that also provides some opportunities that help advancement for those who get pulled off to do that kind of thing.”

Afterward, Gates emphasized that his proposed budget wasn’t just about trying to cut waste. “The proposals I have made are … about how we think about warfare in the future. It’s about the role of the services. It’s about taking care of our people. So there are some fairly far-reaching concepts behind what we’re doing here.

“How do you institutionalize, in the Department of Defense, support for the war fighter?” Gates asked. “How do you move toward more effective management of our systems? How do you move from joint operations to greater joint procurement?”

When a post-discussion visitor remarked that his commitment and obvious desire to oversee such an ambitious agenda would seem to be an indication that the sole holdover from the Bush administration is planning to stay on for “quite a while,” Gates interrupted with, “Forever,” then broke into laughter. The likely length of his stay was quite the Washington parlor game when President Barack Obama announced that Gates would stay on, but the talk has subsided.

Seated and in shirtsleeves, Gates seemed at ease with the officers — a sense underlined by the choice lines he fired off:

“I’m just trying to get the guys who fight the wars a seat at the table.

“What I’ve tried to do is go after programs that either were ridiculously overpriced or over budget.”

In deciding he wants to kill the $6.5 billion presidential helicopter replacement program, “I had the privilege of telling the president he’d really enjoy the privilege of riding in an $800 million helicopter, and he wasn’t too enthusiastic about that.”

When some in the Pentagon argued that blast-resistant Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, shouldn’t be bought because the Iraq war would be “over in a few months,” Gates said, “My attitude was, to hell with it. We’re going to buy all we can build, and we’re going to send them all to the theater, and if I got them all left over at the end of the war, and there’s no use for them, but it saved a bunch of kids’ lives and limbs, then it’s worth every dime we spend.”

On lack of oversight on contractors in the war efforts and within the Pentagon: “When we started, for example, looking at training, nobody knew, in the Pentagon, what the hell was going on around the country, in terms of contractors.”

On greater reliance on the National Guard and reserves since 9/11, and the lack of a concrete plan to do so: “It’s one of these things that sort of happened by inches. … My worry, particularly when I first got into this job [was] have we done a bait-and-switch on the Reserve Component?”

In the past, Gates said the combatant commanders would send their requirements to the Pentagon. “But based on what I hear, it was hard for them to see that they ever had an impact,” he said, drawing chuckles. “I’m trying to be as diplomatic here as possible.” He said the “CoComs” had a bigger voice this time around.

Gates won’t likely get a much tougher grilling Tuesday at Fort Rucker, Ala., where he’ll visit helicopter pilots and enlisted crew members at the U.S. Army Aviation Center — an effort to underline his budget emphasis on growing rotary-lift capability. Those sorts of questions might be awaiting Gates Wednesday, when he’ll talk with students at the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.


Posted by: Besoeker 2009-04-14
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=267579