Pentagon bracing for yet another round of turf battles.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: DEFENSE WATCH

Does the United States need two land armies? Must each branch of the military operate its own air force? Why does the military have multiple agencies in charge of cyber-security?

These and other notoriously touchy issues about the division of labor within the Defense Department have, in years past, triggered turf battles that would make Machiavelli proud.

Now the Pentagon is bracing for yet another round of infighting in preparation for a congressionally mandated "roles and missions" review that must be completed by early 2009.

In its wisdom, Congress decided that it is now a good time to launch one of these reviews--which historically haven't accomplished much substantive reform in the way the Defense Department apportions resources among the services.

The deadline for this latest roles-and-missions study happens to coincide with the due date for the submission of the 2010 Pentagon's funding request. This can only be seen as a warning to the services to prepare for serious budgetary trench warfare.

But Pentagon officials already are cautioning that this review is not supposed to degenerate into a money grab.

"It's an assessment of roles, missions, and assigned functions," said one senior military official who did not want to be quoted by name. "We think that we've modeled this somewhat successfully in the Quadrennial Defense Review."

Congress directed the review in the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act in order to identify "unnecessary duplication of capabilities and efforts across the department's components."

A more plausible explanation for why Congress ordered the review is that lawmakers became frustrated by the pettifoggery witnessed among the military services in recent years. Exhibit A: The constant bickering over whether the Air Force or the Army should be in charge of operating surveillance drones in war zones. Exhibit B: Air Force and Army squabbles over the procurement of new cargo aircraft.

Maybe if the services had resolved these issues amicably instead of airing their grievances on Capitol Hill, Congress might have chosen to spare the Pentagon the drama of a major roles-and-missions review.

In addition to unmanned aircraft and cargo planes, the review will examine cyber-defense responsibilities among the services, irregular warfare missions, internal Defense Department governance and interagency roles.

But the larger subtext to this entire review obviously is how they will decide what constitutes "unnecessary...