New Pentagon Leaders Expected to Play by Corporate Rule Book.

• Author: Book, Elizabeth G.
• Position: U.S. Department of Defense

Pete Aldridge, Gordon England, Thomas White and James Roche, the new faces that will define the Defense Department under the Bush administration, are expected to bring a new style of management to the Pentagon.

Serving respectively as undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics (ATL), secretary of the Navy, secretary of the Army, and secretary of the Air Force, these four nominees come directly from the private sector, but most have long histories of government service. Two of the four come from President Bush's home state of Texas.

The new members of "Rumsfeld's team," who had not been confirmed by the Senate at press time, will put the Defense Department back in the hands of defense hawks, according to Armed Services Chairman Sen. John Warner, R-Va.

"There has long been a need for increased accountability within the executive structure of our government to combat emerging threats," Warner said recently at a luncheon meeting on Capitol Hill. Warner is certain that the group assembled at the Defense Department is "the best team we've had on national security that I can recall since the Reagan days," he said.

These new leaders come to the Pentagon with long and varied resumes, but none is a stranger to Washington. Undersecretary of defense for ATL nominee Edward "Pete" Aldridge returns to government service from the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit organization, based in El Segundo, Calif. Gordon England, Bush's pick for Navy secretary, recently was executive vice president of General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas. Secretary of the Army designee Thomas White, a retired Army brigadier general, was vice chairman of Enron Energy Services, based in Houston. Incoming secretary of the Air Force James Roche was a corporate vice president at Northrop Grumman in Baltimore.

The extensive corporate expertise of the nominees has indicated to many inside the-Beltway observers that the "revolution in business affairs" at the Pentagon may no longer be an obscure theoretical idea, often scoffed at by government bureaucrats. Creating "business models" and working within a budget are not unfamiliar toil to these industry executives, according to a Washington insider who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Rumsfeld has made it clear that he wants the service secretaries and Aldridge to act as a board of directors, and he will serve as chairman," he said.

Aldridge became chief executive of the Aerospace Corporation, a...