Robert Gates Speaks out against top heavy Pentagon Leadership

Yossarian

Forum Resistance Leader
I was reading in the WSJ the other day, being the only paper at my job for me to flip through. The author was pretty much commenting on the state of reasoning that Defense Secretary Gates holds seems to heavily resemble those views of President Eisenhower on the matter of military spending, even so to the point that he has a portait of the president behind his desk. He holds a strong point however, I do belive that the Pentagon has a very top heavy military leadership, being bloated at more that 1,000 generels and admirals (O7-O10) with over 400 deputy secretaries of defense.

With a bloated leadership, Honroable Gates also holds many of the same conservative traits of President Eisenhower, after making the bold statement of slimming U.S. defense spending of over 100 billion dollars from it's current situation of around 700 billion within the next five years.

Stating that for instance, programs like a current destroyer contract that he resently cancled, where the price tag was at around 3 billion per warship. Also stating that the staggering cost of the F 35 being in service by early in the next decade pretty much stating that the current projected fighter gap that will be experianced by the Navy and Marine Corps while the plane which is already behind schedule can be afforded, then put into service is well worth the wait, and the desecion to wait is finacially a sound one.

Being as many countries who are eyeing the F 35 for export sales, are now considering the cheaper but already proven F 18 in this hard economy, and with global defense spending in general on the decline. Honorable Gates followed to comment on the fact the U.S. military has over 3,200 aircraft of all types.

I myself personally think that the military leadership maybe a little bloated, in an assement of command that previous secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld conducted, concluded that the military leadership had 17 levels of command between him and a line officer. Even then that was complained about, now Honorable Gates concluded that there are now over 30 levels of command between him and the line officer in 2010.

So my dear fellow members I am looking for any thoughts or comments you may have on the matter of defense dollars and leadership size currently at the Pentagon.
 
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I think Sec Def Robert Gates is right.
There are too many useless places in the military where money is going to. Overpriced contractors, oversupply of General Staff Officers... ridiculously expensive hardware for roles that much cheaper platforms can perform and whose purpose is unclear.
I think he's doing a good job.
 
Agreed, I do not quite remeber the exact stats, but at the concluscion of Eisenhower's administration, there where only 48 deputy secretaries of defense, a far less general and admiral rated officers, for at the time a rather far larger military than today.

Eisenhower was also a staunch opposer to Congress continuely approving larger and larger defense spending, my favorite example of this, is his farewell address, on Jan 17 1961.
 
No kidding, he understood how the military worked very well, for obvious reasons, also he knew how the military connnected to the civilian policy makers at the highest levels also, and how the money flowed in the defense arena.

We have not had the privelage of having a President who can claim to have such extensive understanding of military affairs as well as a good solid politcal background fro quite a while now. I mean , Bush was in the Air Gaurd for a short while, but I do not think he saw much of how it related to Congressional expenditures on defense.
 
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