Rumsfeld: Will He Fix Modernization 'Bow-Wave'?

• Author: Book, Elizabeth G.
• Position: New Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld

Although Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld offered scant details on his plans when he was confirmed by the Senate in January, one item that is certain to be high on his agenda is how to support the current military strategy with the available resources, said Paul Richanbach, principal deputy director at the Pentagon's office of program analysis and evaluation. As it now stands, he told a recent industry conference, the Pentagon cannot sustain the current force and strategy without having to increase resources.

Today's military posture calls for being able to fight and win two nearly simultaneous regional wars.

Daniel Goure, defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, said Rumsfeld is inheriting a "$100 billion-a-year problem." There is a huge modernization backlog and "operations costs continue to rise despite every reform in the system," Goure told the industry conference.

Not only will Rumsfeld have to figure out what to do about the Pentagon's routine missions but, based on his confirmation hearing statements, he plans to sharpen the focus on emerging missions such as national missile defense (NMD), space and intelligence operations, as well as homeland defense, said Goure.

Space and intelligence, particularly, "could be a big chunk of change."

This administration has an incentive to rake action to fix the so-called procurement bow-wave, Goure said. The bow-wave refers to the Pentagon's inability to pay for all the weapon systems it has on the books today. If the necessary funding to avoid that bow-wave is not provided during Bush's first term, that wave will "come crashing down" during a second term, if he is re-elected, according to Goure.

The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that the defense budget needs to increase by $167 billion over the next five years to be able to fund the next-generation weapon systems.

Goure, however, expects an increase to be more modest. Procurement spending, which today stands at $60 billion a year, is likely to go to $66 billion by 2005.

Lt. Gen. Bruce Carlson, USAF, director of force structure, resources and assessment at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained that the current funding crunch stems, in part, from the Pentagon's inability to produce the savings that had been stipulated in the Clinton administration's 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review.

Those savings never materialized because:

* Cutbacks in the size of the force were nor achieved.

* The administration...