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In his now-infamous "town meeting" with Iraq-bound
troops in Kuwait on Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
responded to one soldier's question on the availability of armored
Humvees by responding, "You go to war with the Army you have," then
proceeded to discuss plans for sending more armored vehicles to
Iraq.
This was pure sophistry.
Both the Army
and private industry have foreseen this need since 1992. The issue
is not why someone chose not to procure these vehicles, but why
the Department of Defense ignored a string of good people who clearly
saw a need for them.
Even today, 21 months after we invaded Iraq, the Secretary does
not understand the problem.
In one informative article assessing the bureaucratic reasons why
the number of armored Humvees and their production capability was
kept so small, Wall Street Journal reporter Greg Jaffe revealed
that at the time there were both Army and Office of the Secretary
of Defense officials who wanted to shut down the production lines
altogether (See "Cold War Thinking Prevented Vital Vehicle from
Reaching Iraq," March 19, 2004).
All that has been needed to fix this problem has been the go-ahead
from the Pentagon financial bureaucracy.
As the war in Iraq began just 2 percent of the 110,000 Humvees in
the Army were armored, yet the service had planned a cutback in
their numbers. Senior Army officials say that no one could have
predicted what amounts to a huge peacekeeping effort in post-combat
Iraq. Never mind that the Army had seen such a need in Haiti, The
Balkans and Somalia
that portended exactly what soldiers are facing in Iraq at this
hour.
But a private company saw it. In 1992, O'Gara-Hess & Eisenstadt
Armoring Co. built the initial armored Humvees on speculation, based
on what they saw in military operations in Panama and Colombia.
They put their money on the line because they saw the future. Why
did the DoD fail to support them?
Following the Army's departure from Somalia, the Marines that remained
behind to clean up were forced to hold the soldiers at gunpoint
to prevent them from shipping the Army armored Humvees out of the
country. Imagine that.
As it readied for Bosnia several years later, the Army frantically
called for more armored Humvees. By 1996, O'Gara-Hess & Eisenstadt
was producing 100 armored Humvees a month. So why did they stop?
At this point, a senior Army program manager tried to get the Army
to establish a peacetime production line for both armored Humvees
and armored trucks. He had seen a repetitive knee jerk whenever
the Army faced the equivalent of Iraqi insurgents throughout the
late 1980s and 90s.
The key here is that the Pentagon's Planning Programming and Budgeting
System did not believe the armored Humvee was a credible piece of
equipment, even in the face of the clear experience spanning a decade.
This system would not tolerate anyone making a decision to fund
it beyond a token level. They took the money and spent it elsewhere.
Even as recently as May 2003, the Army contended that the service
only needed 235 armored Humvees in Iraq.
It is important to understand the power of the financial wizards
in the Pentagon arena in determining the outcome of programs like
the armored Humvee.
The PPBS operates on what insiders call "workable lies." One of
its lies is that the system is so efficient at predicting the future
that any budget decision not founded on approved visions of the
future are not relevant. This lie enticed President Lyndon Johnson
into believing he could win the Vietnam War incrementally and by
"demonstrating resolve periodically." What this means on a practical
level is that if a program does not conclusively align itself with
one of these visions, the bureaucrats take the money.
A second lie is that there is no need for "programmatic insurance."
Since the system is so efficient at moving money if a program runs
into difficulties, money can be quickly moved from other programs
that have excess money to those that are having difficulties. With
this lie, a very common business practice is thrown out the window
as unnecessary. What this means is that if your program is not one
of the blessed few, it is a ripe target for reprogramming for a
multitude of reasons.
There simply is no room for an experienced officer or program manager
to choose to do something based purely on military operational experience.
In his article, Greg Jaffe noted a history of officers and civilians
in the Humvee program office who tried to find a justification for
this vehicle. But it was neither sexy enough for the future-vision
crowd nor high tech enough to capture anyone's attention. Thus,
the program was doomed to the painful "death by a thousand cuts"
in succeeding Army budgets. This is how the PPBS system kills a
program that is not in favor.
Even a service secretary cannot operate independently, no matter
his inclinations.
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Witness what happened in February 1988 to former Secretary of the
Navy
James Webb. As he recounted in a lecture later that year, Webb described
how he was striving to achieve the Republican Party plank of attaining
a 600-ship Navy. The Office of the Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)
removed ships from his budget submission. Webb again funded them.
The comptrollers, operating only in a budget world, again removed
them from the Navy budget. The end result was the resignation of
the Navy secretary.
Lesson: Even if the Secretary of the Army were to order the funding
of these armored Humvees, if the comptroller circuit did not understand
the (future) value of them and they did not fit the vision of the
future, then not only was the money at risk but perhaps even so
would have been his job.
One of the basics of the PPBS is that operational personnel must
review and validate all financial decisions. That is yet another
"workable lie." The reality is that the review by uniformed personnel
is cursory or done by those who have grown up in the comptroller
system and have succumbed to its groupthink. At most levels of review
the civilians wield great power because of their time on the job.
In a column in The Washington Post last May 9, David Broder described
how Secretary Rumsfeld was then facing a "McNamara Moment" in being
blinded by a "technocratic-bureaucratic … mindset."
What happened in Kuwait this week was your second wake-up call,
Mr. Secretary. If you wish to put your name in the history books
as more than just a sharp administrator, you need to can the PPBS
system once and for all. The rest of the federal government, which
had adopted it by the mid-60s based on its apparent utility under
Secretary McNamara, had dumped PPBS by 1973.
The rationale is simple and compelling: PPBS only works well in
a world where soldiers rarely fight real wars and rarely die.
Ultimately, the same guy who brought this nation the Edsel was the
guy who sent unarmored Humvees to Iraq. Only the blame will ultimately
fall on Don Rumsfeld.
[Have a comment on this opinion article? Sound
off in the Hot Issues with Defensewatch Forum.]
Lt. Raymond Perry USN (Ret.) is a DefenseWatch Contributing Editor.
He can be reached at cos1stlt@yahoo.com.
Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
©2004 DefenseWatch. All opinions expressed in this article are the
author's and do not necessarily reflect those of Military.com.
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