10 septembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
By: Aaron Mehta
WASHINGTON — U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper intends to implement changes from his review of Defense Department organizations on a rolling basis, rather than waiting until the review process is completely finished, according to the department's top spokesman.
Jonathan Rath Hoffman, assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, said Monday that there's “no interest” from Esper to wait until the review is fully done or the start of the next fiscal year to start implementing program changes, including potential cuts.
“It's going to be an ongoing process. If he makes a decision, it's not going to be ‘I have to look through everything and then make some decisions.' If he sees a program that needs to end or be moved, he'll make that decision as quickly as he can,” Hoffman told reporters. “He's going to make changes as we move forward. If he identifies changes that would save money, there's no interest in waiting until next year to start saving money.”
An Aug. 2 memo kicked off a departmentwide review of programs ahead of the development for the fiscal 2021 budget request. The goal is to find savings and drive a “longer-term focus on structural reform, ensuring all [defensewide] activities are aligned to the National Defense Strategy while evaluating the division of functions between defense-wide organizations and the military departments," per the document.
The so-called fourth estate of the department includes 27 agencies, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Information Systems Agency and the Missile Defense Agency. A September 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office estimated those agencies collectively have an annual budget of at least $106 billion.
Esper has acknowledged the review sounds a lot like the “night court” process the Army used to find roughly $25 billion in savings that could then be reinvested into new capabilities. But he has so far declined to offer a target dollar figure for savings.
"It's a long road. I'm spending two hours a week, 90 minutes to two hours a week on this in formal session, so we're just going to work our way through it week after week after week,” the secretary said Aug 27. “I'm looking for programs that don't have as much value relative to another critical war-fighting capability, absolutely.”
Hoffman described the process as starting with internal reviews inside the various offices, looking at what projects are ongoing. Those are cross-checked with assessments from others in the department that are looking to find cost-sharing or cost-saving options. Those are collectively provided up to the deputy secretary of defense before being presented at regular meetings with Esper.
Esper then “holds a review with all the parties that may have equities and go through it. I sat through one of these last week. He really digs into what are the appropriate roles, what are the appropriate missions, is there someone better or capable to hold this than the equity that has it now, is there better cost savings,” Hoffman said.
Some have questioned whether Esper's plans will run into roadblocks in Congress. On Monday, Hoffman stressed that the department has been keeping Congress in the loop.
“The secretary has been very adamant he wants to make sure Congress is fully informed,” he said.
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By: Mark Pomerleau The Army of the future will be leaner and that means junior officers will have more responsibility and more capability in their hands, a top Army general said Aug. 21. Lt. Gen. Theodore Martin, deputy commanding general of Training and Doctrine Command, said in future wars a platoon or company may be the unit that takes action. Martin, speaking at the TechNet Augusta conference, said that units have become smaller since World War I. Then, the U.S. military fought with huge field armies. World War II was fought with armies and corps, the Korean and Vietnam Wars were fought primarily with divisions, and the modern counterinsurgency wars have been fought with brigades, Martin said. With a potentially smaller, and leaner, structure, the junior officers that will command these units will have have capability within their power. “The type of assets that now reside at the brigade level, my grandfather ... if he were alive today [he] would be totally flabbergasted by what a colonel can bring to bear on the battlefield under his or her own authorities,” Martin said. Brigades today are led by colonels. In the future, Martin envision a lieutenant who will have grown up in a multidomain world with an education in the Army that is much different than that of today, and which prepared him or her for the future fight. Army leaders will expect that a platoon will take advantage of electronic warfare, cyber and information operations. This could mean the platoon will throw an electronic warfare grenade that will blind enemy mission command systems, jam radios and block similar attacks to keep friendly radios online. Then, as the platoon gets closer to its objective, perhaps they will send an email to the enemy commander saying something like their wife is cheating on them or their bank account has been emptied, as a way to create an additional distraction, Martin said. Martin acknowledged this vignette seems a little far-fetched, but in the multidomain battlefield “that's what we're going to be facing and it's a race to capability,” he said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/show-reporter/technet-augusta/2018/08/22/heres-how-one-army-leader-sees-the-future-of-war/