http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/what-gates-plans-to-do-before-he-leaves-office.htmlA War Within
Robert Gates has one last, crucial mission before he leaves office, and it’s not in Afghanistan or Iraq. It’s in Washington—within the hallowed halls of the Pentagon.
by John Barry and Evan Thomas
...Gates himself is an unflashy, unremarkable-looking man. He lives in one of three houses in a military enclave in Washington, residing there mostly alone because Becky, his wife of 43 years, prefers to stay at their house on the west coast of Washington state. The secretary of defense does his own laundry, shopping, and cooking, and waters the flowers outside his house. Most evenings, he writes letters to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. The other two houses in the compound are occupied by four-star officers, and Gates has been known to raise an eyebrow at their platoons of personal staff rushing about...
These entourages are symbolic of a military leadership that, in the view of its civilian leader, is suffering from an inflated sense of entitlement and a distorted sense of priorities. If Gates has his way, the top brass will have to shed old habits and adjust to leaner times. Some of them will become civilians. The number of generals and admirals has increased by more than a hundred since 9/11, to 969 (and counting Reserves, roughly 1,300). Gates plans a first cut of at least 50. He intends to disband an entire headquarters, the Joint Forces Command, created after the Cold War with the noble aim of making the different armed forces work better together, but which has grown into a $250 million-a-year, 6,000-strong operation of questionable usefulness...
Asked by President Obama to stay on as defense secretary, he did not hesitate. In 10 hectic weeks in early 2009—with everyone involved sworn to secrecy to prevent leaks to Congress—Gates drew up a hit list of big-ticket weapons to be chopped in favor of programs that were less glamorous but more useful. He scrapped far-out missile-defense schemes and gave priority to near-term alternatives. He ended production of the F-22, the Air Force’s next-generation fighter, and also tried to cancel its C-17 transport aircraft—while pouring new money into drones. He stopped production of the Navy’s futuristic DDG-1000 destroyer and postponed its CG(X) cruiser while increasing the purchase of Littoral Combat Ships, useful for in-shore operations that are far more likely to engage the Navy than a full-scale sea battle (last fought in World War II). Demonstrating that no program was sacrosanct, he canceled the replacement for Marine One, the presidential helicopter. The new craft was so over-designed that, Gates says, “it was a billion-dollar helicopter in which the president could cook up a meal during a nuclear attack.” In all, Gates cut or eliminated 20 high-profile weapons, averting by DOD reckoning some $330 billion in future spending...
Gates is also looking to cut the Pentagon’s civilian bureaucracy, which has added a thousand new staff since 9/11. Around the time of the attacks, Rumsfeld reckoned that 17 layers of officialdom lay between him and a line officer. A recent internal study, Gates says, found that “in some cases the gap between me and an action officer may be as high as 30 layers.” (In 1948, when the Cold War began, the secretary of defense had a deputy and a staff of three supervising 50 employees; today, he has 26 political appointees running a staff of 3,000.) The outcome, says Gates, is “a bureaucracy which has the fine motor skills of a dinosaur.”... Gates, in less than four years, has fired at least 14 senior officers or officials, including a chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; two service secretaries; an Air Force chief of staff; and the commander of allied forces in Afghanistan. He sometimes fires people for simply not doing a good job, “unheard-of in government service,” he wryly notes...
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