Pentagon resource wars: why they can't be avoided.

• Author: Sledge, Nathantel H., Jr.
• Position: Viewpoint

The reward of the general is not a bigger tent, but command, said Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Command, in Justice Holmes' time, was represented by brigades, regiments, divisions, corps and armies. The Navy equivalents were task forces, battle groups and fleets. Today, it seems that the historic focus on command has been supplemented by obsession with the acquisition of tens of billions of dollars. The resource war, described in This War Really Matters by George C Wilson (2000), dominates the thinking of flag officers and senior Pentagon officials alike, just as fund raising and reelection dominate the thinking of politicians.

Because of the persistent competition among the services for resources, the pattern of service spending behavior has not changed over time, and it's there for all to see. The spending of the last decade was not unexpected or uncharacteristic because, like the rotation of the four seasons, it followed a predictable pattern. When war came the services followed former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's motto of "not letting a good crisis go to waste."

But even in a time of crisis, the services yielded to their identities, culture and virtually unchangeable plans and programs, into which they had invested much time, political capital and energy.

In any given era, the relative priorities of readiness and modernization go back and forth. The highest priority varies among the areas of manning, training, recapitalization, retrofitting, upgrading, buying new, reorganizing, or developing and acquiring next-generation systems. Whatever is the highest priority follows the bank robber Willie Sutton's logic--it's where the money is.

Only when identities are validated and existing plans and programs are realized do the services concern themselves with the exogenous environment. Even war itself must not divert attention from unmet needs, no matter how old or outdated they are.

During fearful times and war, the need to change course becomes more compelling and the services' dissonance collapses. Then they relent and embrace plans to allocate funds to emerging needs, particularly in cases where the pursuit of additional capability preserves or increases funding.

As the budget expands, money becomes less an object (an independent variable), raising the specter of moral hazard, mismanagement and complacency. The services then scramble to spend more money than they are prepared to absorb, propping up weak programs that should have been allowed to die and launching dubious science experiments that never should have been green-lighted. Refusing funds is rare.

When crises fade and wars end, the services, ever focused on the resource war, fight to ensure the inevitable budget reductions are minimized to preserve readiness and modernization accounts, or whatever is the highest priority at the time. The drums of outrage and indignation beat loudly as each service warns of catastrophe if their budgets are reduced too much or at all. The services eventually shed people, infrastructure, systems, and capabilities they do not deem critical to their futures. What is left is, to a large extent, what is already in their plans, and what is in their plans is whatever is critical to their identities and helps them win the resource war.

It has been said that money doesn't change people, it...