Budget debate: resources should match the strategy.

• Author: Farrell, Lawrence P., Jr.
• Position: PRESIDENT'SPERSPECTIVE

* Defense Secretary Robert Gates in recent speeches has covered the waterfront of the financial challenges facing the defense establishment as well as the nation. He flatly stated that the United States is on a self-destructive path if it seeks to remain "militarily strong" while becoming "economically stagnant."

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With a budget of about $700 billion, the Defense Department is adding to our national economic problems with wasteful practices, overly large bureaucracies, and generous healthcare spending, Gates said, citing President Eisenhower as the conservative paradigm of fiscal and military restraint against which current practices should be measured.

Deputy Secretary William Lynn is now spearheading efforts to cut non-essential programs, reduce overhead accounts and improve efficiencies in the force structure and modernization accounts. The savings--in excess of $100 billion over the next five years--would be retained by the services and transferred to modernization and force structure accounts.

Within this budget discussion is Gates' criticism of the services' requirements process. The secretary has raised questions about the justification for the current number of carriers, large amphibious vessels, tactical fighters, C-17 cargo planes, the top-heavy military bureaucracy, burgeoning healthcare costs and an alternative fighter engine for the F-35.

He took the services, particularly the Navy, to task for a requirements process that asks for more than they need to do their jobs.

The subtext of these observations is that the services should reexamine current processes for determining their requirements for weapons systems.

But how does that really work? Are the services in fact guilty of padding their requirements?

The process works as follows: The services rely on the "national military strategy," buoyed by war games, exercises and analyses, to determine the size of the force that is needed to meet the threats that the strategy laid out. This approach is designed to give U.S. forces a decided advantage. Some have said our objective is to win 100 to nothing. While this is an exaggeration, we still do not want a "fair fight." That would result in lots of casualties on our side--an unacceptable outcome even if we eventually won. The service preference is for a low-to moderate-risk force.

In the Cold War, this planning process led to a requirement for 95 Air Force tactical fighter wings, 25 aircraft carriers, and a 600...