One of the facts of our times is that unification of the Armed Services is under way. Even a cursory review of the growth of the Office of the Secretary of Defense during the last 10 years confirms this. Every few months a new joint agency is established or another “single manager” is appointed. These organizations perform for the entire defense establishment certain services, and are staffed by all Services under the direction, or policy guidance, at least, of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Moreover, there is plainly visible in Washington a constant intrusion by the Office of the Secretary of Defense into the routine administrative activities of all the Services; first a demand for reports and data, then policy direction, and finally, in some cases, detailed supervision. All the forces at work, often stimulated by Congressional or Bureau of the Budget interest, are centripetal in nature, never centrifugal.
This is happening at a time when control of the sea is more important to the security of the United States than it has been since the early 19th century. A new dimension of submarine warfare within the ocean depths now provides a significant deterrent in the form of Polaris. There is, as well, a concurrent threat to our security in Soviet missile-carrying nuclear submarines. Meanwhile, the Fleet must still perform its historic—and growing—role of extending the nation’s power to all distant shores where smolders, and at times bursts into flame, the fire of world revolution.
It is one of the great ironies of our time that, as its mission is enlarged and its responsibilities grow, the Navy itself, as a recognizable, distinct official entity, is threatened with eclipse by a burgeoning, all-powerful Department of Defense.
It would serve no purpose here to attack or defend the process of integration taking place. Whether or not it should be happening is entirely academic; the fact remains that it is underway. It might then be useful to consider the matter objectively, to learn something about the people of that hydra-headed bureaucracy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and to determine what attitudes should be encouraged and what techniques might be adopted by naval officers on duty in Washington to assist them in performing their duties more effectively.
More significant than the quality of its people is the attitude of the men in the OSD. Here we find the key to many problems officers encounter in dealing with them. By the very nature of their duties and responsibilities, few men in the OSD have a real and personal identification with anything more concrete than the “defense effort.” This unhappy state of affairs, a lack of personal involvement with a group or a cause, is responsible for one of the most frustrating phenomena encountered in Washington— the tendency of OSD officials to ally themselves with the Bureau of the Budget or the General Accounting Office instead of with the Services.
In Defense, as in our national government, checks and balances are used to administer and to govern. It seems reasonable to have an independent office examine critically the financial needs of the government. For example, the Services must justify a budget, defend it, and then again justify expenditure. The Services argue for needed funds and the BuBud, acting for the President, examines and usually reduces expenditures. The result, while time consuming, can be a militarily sound budget only if the OSD co-ordinates and supports the Services. Support is needed to bring actual military requirements into approximate balance with available funds.
The public fiction has been preserved that the annual military budget reflects military requirements. Actually, a finite dollar limit for defense expenditures is established by the President and military requirements are adjusted to fit this limit. This apparently illogical procedure can result in a reasonably sound military budget; sound, that is, within prescribed limits, only if the OSD (Comptroller) acts for the Services. This is not always the case: at times the OSD Comptroller people seem to see themselves as the guardian of the nation’s purse, a role reserved by law for the Bureau of the Budget and the General Accounting Office.
Again, laws relating to personnel are, quite naturally, interpreted by the Services to gain the maximum benefit for their people. Periodically this interpretation is questioned and rulings on points of controversy are made by the General Accounting Office. In all these complex procedures one would expect the OSD not only to recognize the special problems and needs of the Services, but also to support them in their inevitable differences of opinion with BuBud, Congress, and the General Accounting Office. But this, in many instances, does not happen. The OSD often tends to ally itself with those who would diminish combat readiness in the name of economy, or reduce a long-established benefit to military personnel.
A fairly recent example of the curious lack of allegiance and support by OSD is the controversy over payment for food consumed by the crew of a military aircraft during flight. The law which authorizes flight rations to be paid from government funds is applicable to the Navy only; consequently Air Force and Army fliers have had to pay for their own food consumed during operational flights. When this matter was being considered for co-ordination, the Bureau of the Budget, quite naturally, desired that the proposed new legislation not include free flight rations for anyone.
At this point one would expect the OSD to support the Services in not only retaining this traditional and well deserved benefit for the Navy, but extending it to the other Services. Quite the reverse, however, happened. The Services found themselves lined up against BuBud and OSD. Similar cases are on record in such areas as substandard housing, air conditioning of buildings, and other matters related to health, comfort, morale, and habitability. At one time, for example, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Defense (Properties and Installations) would not approve the air conditioning of military family housing in certain parts of Texas where the Federal Housing Authority would not underwrite a building mortgage unless the house was air-conditioned.
This apparently anti-military bias of some OSD officials does not, of course, represent all OSD activities. There are a great many able and dedicated men in OSD who make a tremendous contribution to the efficiency of the Services. But it happens often enough to reveal a baffling problem in human relations and one that serves to disrupt the relationship of many officers with the offices in OSD with whom they must work on a day-to-day basis.
It can be assumed, of course, that a similar unwarranted prejudice against civilians exists on the part of some officers who resent the intrusion of any outsider into matters they conceive to be purely military. When this sort of an officer becomes persona non grata in OSD, it is not too difficult to accomplish his transfer. Conversely, however, the removal of a civil service employee who offends the military is rarely feasible.
There is one major block to a sympathetic understanding by OSD people of military needs and requirements and that is the well established stereotype that all the military services, aside from certain obvious and superficial differences, are essentially alike. This delusion results in a naive clamor for uniformity of administration which, according to the second Hoover Commission and the more recent Symington Report, would be the key to tremendous economics in national defense. Several Congressmen are addicted to this theory and thump for a single service, single uniform, etc. Less extreme views are held by most responsible civilian officials in Washington, but enough of the idea of uniformity has rubbed off on the OSD to provide the Armed Services with endless headaches.
We who have spent most of our lives in uniform know that forcing all military people into the same mold would not be practicable, but we fail to realize that our civilian associates naturally have no such perception. Even our brothers-in-arms in the other Services are often ignorant of the essential differences. It sometimes surprises those outside of the Navy to realize that the Navy and Marine Corps have a major task in supporting the Fleet, and that roughly half of all Navy personnel are serving in this Fleet. In contrast, the Army between wars has normally been shrunk to relatively small forces in the field and is prepared to expand enormously and quickly by calling up the reserves.
A typical Air Force or Army enlisted man lives with his family on a post, provided with the housing, schools, and recreational facilities that compensate for his modest take-home pay. This is in sharp contrast to the typical Navy man who serves at sea in a ship or aircraft squadron, finding his own housing among civilians ashore. The Navy does, of course, have a shore establishment where men live on the station, but for the average sailor, this is the exception, not the rule. Among junior officers of the Services the contrast is even more acute; almost all newly commissioned naval officers report to the Fleet where they face at least four years of continuous deployment—which means a severe deprivation of home life for those youngsters who marry early. They can plan on getting home at night only 25 per cent of the time, or one year out of four. Compare this with the situation facing a newly commissioned Air Force or Army second lieutenant who reports to a base or post ashore and it is apparent why retention rates of junior officers are so much lower in the Navy.
A directive some years ago from the White House concerning joint or combined staff duty as a prerequisite for flag or general officer rank illustrates the confusion that can arise when the actual differences in structure, mission, and operation of the Services is not appreciated. Superficially, especially from an Army point of view, it seemed logical to ensure that all flag and general officers have joint or combined staff duty sometime in their career before promotion. Traditionally, the Army has always put its brightest and most promising officers in the General Staff Corps and grooms them for high command by repeated staff assignments. Operational duty with troops in the field for these selected officers is important, but is relatively infrequent due to the relatively small size of the standing regular Army.
The Navy, however, has had quite a different philosophy because most of the top officers were needed in the Fleet or to fill important posts related to Fleet support in the Navy Department. Hence, a flat dictum that joint or combined staff duty is necessary for promotion, inspired by the best of motives, is impossible for the Navy and the Marine Corps to implement sensibly. In the Marine Corps, for example, if all available joint or combined staff billets for colonels were filled for a year’s tour of duty only about 25 per cent of all colonels could be accommodated. The Marines then, to obey the order, would have to drastically increase their staff billets or resign themselves to preselecting their general officers at the junior colonel level. Both of these solutions are, of course, too harmful to combat readiness and morale to be considered seriously. The Navy’s situation in this regard is similar to that of the Marine Corps.
Another dramatic example of the incongruity of lumping all the Services together in implementing a White House directive is the recent order reducing the number of military dependents living abroad. No responsible official in the OSD—including Army and Air Force policy planners whose job it was to advise the Secretary of Defense—apparently had a clear understanding of the difference between the Army and Air Force on one hand and the Navy and the Marine Corps on the other in regard to their dependents living abroad.
The Army and Air Force normally send their people abroad accompanied by dependents except for a few thousand men in Korea, Okinawa, and Iceland. On most of the really isolated posts, such as early warning radar sites in the Arctic, civilian contractor personnel are hired at high salaries. The Navy and Marine Corps, in contrast, normally deploy their men abroad without dependents. The Sixth and Seventh Fleets, with only a very few exceptions, leave their dependents home and this deprivation of home life is one of the major causes of the Navy’s severe problems in the retention of junior officers and critical enlisted ratings.
Despite these radical differences, however, the return-of-dependents directive was initially implemented by assessing each of the services a pro rata reduction based on the actual number of dependents abroad. Whatever justification there might be for returning some of the thousands of Army and Air Force dependents from their large concentrations in hard currency countries abroad, it was illogical and extremely damaging to morale to apply the same rules to the very small numbers of Navy and Marine Corps dependents, most of them in soft currency areas.
Here, again, the stereotype of uniformity served as blinders for the OSD officials whose administrative decisions can have such a marked effect on the combat readiness of the Armed Services.
It is a common fallacy, even among the general public, to believe that all military aviators are essentially the same and that great economies could be achieved by organizing all aviators in one group or service. Some civilian officials in the OSD, supported by Air Force officers, often subscribe to this doctrine. The facts are, of course, that Naval and Marine aviators are first and foremost seagoing naval officers and combat infantrymen respectively, not as a matter of tradition or pride alone, but because this basic qualification is vital in order for them to perform their highly specialized duties efficiently. Similarly, an Army aviator is first and foremost a soldier. These essential differences, well known to most Naval, Marine and Army officers, are quite commonly unappreciated on the policy-making level of officials in the OSD.
The diffusion of authority not accompanied by responsibility is another phenomenon of the OSD which poses a problem to officers of the Armed Services assigned to duty in Washington. A professional military man is accustomed to a close link between authority and responsibility—a division officer, a company officer, the commanding officer of a ship or station, all wield great power and authority over their men but are held strictly accountable in terms of efficiency, safety, and combat readiness.
In the world of business, this same sound principle of management is considered optimum. The local manager of a chain food store or bank is given much independent authority, but is held strictly accountable for making a profit. In the higher echelons of the defense establishment, however, it is apparent that a marked separation has occurred. The Chief of Naval Operations, for example, faces a growing and increasingly formidable array of civilian officials who assume no responsibility for the combat readiness of the Fleet yet who have the authority not only to say yes or no, but, increasingly, to say how.
The rationale for this proliferation of irresponsible supervision has traditionally been civilian control, accentuated by the budgetary process and the stupendous cost of modern armaments. Many thoughtful officials, however, both military and civilian, are viewing this matter with growing concern. Even the routine administrative operations of the Services are becoming, in the OSD, subject to more and more layers of co-ordination, policy direction, and detailed supervision. The Wall Street Journal of 7 December 1960, makes the following editorial statement: “The trouble is not merely that there are staffs upon staffs, secretaries upon secretaries, or committees upon committees; more vital is the fact that command responsibilities have been diffused and almost destroyed.”
As responsibility in the OSD seems to be obscured by bureaucratic growth so does the assumption of more and more authority by lower and lower echelons proceed apace. Fourth and fifth echelons of administrative authority in the office of an Assistant Secretary of Defense now grandly direct the Service Secretaries to take appropriate action or to submit a new series of reports. Often these reports appear to accomplish no real purpose and may cost thousands of dollars to produce —dollars not available in current budgets.
This is perhaps the best argument against the kind of extreme unification advocated by the Symington Report. A huge monolithic structure would so diffuse responsibility that necessary changes and innovations would be difficult to make and the responsibility for major delays or mistakes would be impossible to fix.
Big business has found a means of avoiding much of this process of proliferation by subdividing large corporations into manageable segments. The Buick, Chevrolet, and Pontiac Divisions of General Motors are good examples. There is a reasonable relationship between authority and responsibility—Buick may be almost independent, but unless the operation is successful in terms of profits, there might be a new set of Buick executives in office next year.
Whatever may be the shape of the DOD in the years to come—quite apart from the theoretical arguments for or against a particular plan for reorganization—the professional officer today on duty in Washington faces several dilemmas. Some of them are suggested by the discussion above, while others are more subtle. For example, how can he reconcile his early allegiance to a particular weapon, such as carrier aircraft, destroyers or submarines, and his Service devotion as a sailor or Marine, with the larger views and broader horizons expected of an officer who must, to be useful in working with the OSD, identify himself with the total defense effort?
It is a matter of the first importance for an officer coming to Washington to understand the great changes that are taking place in the over-all defense effort and particularly the Navy. The historic mission of the Navy, control of the seas, is the same, yet in the Polaris submarine the Navy has brought into being a new dimension of warfare, the optimum deterrent which is playing such a vital role in filling the missile gap. The agony being suffered by the Navy in getting money for men, ships, and conventional arms is a reflection of this great pioneering into undersea operations while maintaining an adequate limited war and ASW capability.
Thus the Navy, in the course of events and not because of any greater inherent virtue than the other Services, has been drained of excess personnel and materials. It operates on a lean and austere basis and is, unfortunately, much more vulnerable to budget cuts “across the board.”
A more obvious major development in the nation’s defense effort is the transition from manned aircraft to missiles as the major offensive, deterrent weapon. This, of course, does not portend the demise of air forces, as some of our Sunday supplement military critics seem to imply, but it does mean that the Air Force, for example, as the number of bombers decreases, will be able to concentrate on some of its less glamorous missions, such as the transportation and close air-support of troops. While the Marines have historically been the brushfire fighters, the world, in its current social and political revolution, now promises the possibility of too many brushfires for the Marines to handle alone. The Army’s role in limited war must be fully supported by the Air Force in order to give this country the limited war protection it needs. President Kennedy’s recent directive increasing our troop-lift capability is a timely recognition of this need.
The two examples mentioned above of changes underway in the large defense picture are relatively obvious because they are military and deal with familiar facts and forces known to even the casual student of military matters. There are other significant changes underway, however, that are based on social and economic forces at work in our society. One of these changes involves the profession of arms. Military men have historically been detached, as a profession, from the main stream of American life. They lived between wars in small numbers on their posts or manned a tiny Fleet and came into prominence only when mobilization for war brought them a major role in world events. Since World War II, however, there has been a marked change. A large defense effort, costing the nation a major share of its tax revenues, seems destined to be with us for the foreseeable future. This has made the profession of arms an integral part of American life, responsive to the interest, curiosity, and criticism exercised by our citizens upon all major institutions. This explains, of course, the pressure from citizen’s groups and the Congress for economy, consolidation, and the introduction of economical management and business practices into every facet of defense.
This is the rationale for the Office of the Secretary of Defense—a vital, legal instrument designed to administer the defense effort as economically and as efficiently as humanly possible. If this administration falls short at times, it is important to remember that the men who staff the OSD are well motivated and sincere people who have a duty to eliminate the waste that has, does, and inevitably will exist to some degree in all large enterprises, such as the military services.
The importance and expense of national defense portend a marked change in the conduct of foreign affairs. It is no longer possible to separate foreign relations and defense; every aspect of our intercourse with the world affects our over-all strength in some respect. There must be the closest rapport between State and Defense, and this is underway on many levels. One example is the recently inaugurated program of exchanging senior Foreign Service officers and military officers between the Departments, not as liaison men, but as full fledged participants in their new assignments.
An officer ordered to Washington must prepare himself for a professional environment that may be foreign to any of his previous experience. Perhaps the first requirement on his part should be the assumption of a positive attitude, receptive to the acquisition of unsuspected information, new impressions, unexpected stimuli. Most of us are victims to some degree of our prejudices; too many of these can make duty in Washington frustrating and disappointing. Our allegiance to carrier aircraft, submarines or destroyers, for example, can provide useful operational knowledge where this rare commodity is most needed, but it can also serve to foment discord and dispute. A successful man in any profession must grow, must broaden his horizons, increase his knowledge and understanding. A naval officer must, even as a junior officer, identify himself with the whole Navy, not just the weapon of his choice. As a senior officer he must similarly identify himself not only with the Navy but with the whole defense effort of his country.
This does not imply that fighting vigorously for a Navy point of view is not often necessary; it does mean, however, that this effort is more effective if all aspects of the controversy are understood, including the rationale of your opponents. It is always wiser to build your case on the over-all national interest rather than on a seemingly narrow partisan approach.
In reacting to an OSD interest in matters that might appear to be purely a military or operational function, it is important to be objective. If the OSD (and certain committees of the Congress) seem to have an insatiable appetite for data on personnel utilization it is well to look at our own Navy with an open and enquiring, not to say critical, mind. Can we justify the thousands of sailors who perform permanent mess duties ashore? Could not a few minor technological advances reduce appreciably the number of men in the Fleet who perform the dull, repetitious tasks of chipping and painting, scrubbing paintwork, etc? Can it make any sense to a civilian to observe some of our naval bases composed of several independent commands all jealously guarding their minor prerogatives, functions and components? Answers to these and countless other questions are rarely clear cut and simple to obtain, but the important point is that they must be asked. If we do not ask them of ourselves, then we cannot justifiably resent others doing so.
There are times and occasions, of course, when sincere efforts on the part of OSD to coordinate efforts and save money are exceedingly ill-advised and a positive menace to national defense. Most of these concern the civilianization of logistics or support operations such as the procurement of weapons or the organization of communications. What appears to be good business practice may be very poor defense practice. Somewhere in between the newly mined iron ore and the steel missile in flight the military man must have control. The exact location of this control is the subject of considerably controversy.
A naval officer’s major contribution, in addition to his operational knowledge, can be the courage to stand up and, when he considers it necessary, to remind his civilian associates and superiors that the object of the ball game is not saving money or achieving efficiency, but is deterring and defeating the enemy in total or limited war.
A naval officer reporting to Washington for duty with or in the OSD must be, of course, a good seaman or a good airman, but he must, in fact, be much more besides. He must have some knowledge of good management, not only as reflected by effective naval leadership in the Fleet, but as needed by a successful business administrator. This includes some knowledge of accounting, budget procedures, and Civil Service regulations, for example. The Dean of the Navy Management School at Monterey has reported the initial resistance of many of his students to learning about such unfamiliar procedures, for example, as those outlined in the Navy Civilian Personnel Instructions. Yet these young officers, who have spent their time flying planes or operating ships, are eventually persuaded that their future holds quite a different life as they become more senior—more of it ashore than at sea and most of it concerned with all aspects of efficient management.
We should face here, and accept gracefully, the dissolution of one of the Navy’s most cherished traditions—that skill in going to sea in the Fleet is the only really important goal of a naval officer. There is no doubt, of course, that an officer is nothing if he is not an able seaman, highly skilled in Fleet operations. But for senior officers, many of the most difficult and challenging assignments will be ashore.
It is in working with the OSD that the critical importance of many duties seemingly unrelated to the Fleet will become evident. There are few quick rewards, as there can be for superior performance at sea—no heartwarming “well dones” from a Fleet Commander for winning the “E” or completing a successful foreign cruise. But the stakes can be higher in the OSD for a job well done; the long range effect on the Navy of seemingly minor decisions and rulings can be immense.
The Pentagon paper mills, like those of the gods, grind exceedingly fine, but the results can be an important weapon for the Fleet or a substantial personal benefit for Navy people. In the jungles of Washington bureaucracy there are many strange pitfalls which are as real a hazard as rocks and shoals are to mariners. Both the rewards and the hazards are welcome stimuli and can make duty with the OSD a professionally profitable and personally enjoyable experience.
“This government is too great and good to be destroyed.”
Captain Philip Sheridan, U. S. Army