Politico: Gates plays offense on acquisitions
By: Jen DiMascio and Craig Gordon
He was brought in as a sort of closer for the Iraq war — to oversee the surge for two years and then return to private life, where Robert Gates had created a comfortable, rewarding career as president of Texas A&M University.
But the stories from the front lines bothered him. Soldiers in Iraq who needed the eyes in the sky of unmanned drones. Troops who died in armored vehicles that weren’t armored enough.
From his E-ring perch at the Pentagon, Gates saw the problem as twofold. It took too long to buy the equipment troops really needed — and the Pentagon was buying some of the wrong equipment altogether, costly Cold War weapons to wage next-generation warfare.
So when President Barack Obama asked him to extend his tour of duty, Gates set about to change things — with a $534 billion defense budget that killed or seriously scaled back more than 50 weapons systems.
No service was spared. Congress squawked. And Round One went to Gates.
But now, what’s next for next-gen? Can Gates really change the cumbersome and complicated defense acquisition process — to buy the right stuff, in the right way? Many have tried. None have truly succeeded.
And Gates has no illusions about the difficulty of the task before him, spokesman Geoff Morrell said. To really cement any reforms, Gates will have to make the changes stick in the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review of Pentagon policy, the Nuclear Posture Review and the budget for fiscal year 2011.
Fiscal 2010 “was the first crack, but there will be multiple at-bats,” Morrell said. “He knows he’s not there yet.”
Even people who are rooting for him aren’t confident he’s going to make it.
Like many who’ve studied the endless billions in cost overruns at the Pentagon, Bernard Finel, senior fellow at the American Security Project, contends that the real problem remains that the wish list for each weapons system grows and changes, adding cost and complications to the process.
“Until you get some handle on that,” Finel said, “your proposals are window dressing.”
Others question Gates’ methods. He’s been willing to fire those in the military services who disagree with him as he tries to place acolytes of his “newer, faster, better” mantra through the building. And he’s shown little patience for the defense budget dance on Capitol Hill.
“That is exactly what [Donald] Rumsfeld did: He cut the Congress out of the action, he tried to dictate to the services and, pretty soon, the knives were out and reform fell by the wayside,” said defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a think tank that brings in donations from major defense contractors.
“As long as Gates has the strong backing of the president, he can force change,” he said. “But I don’t think he’s going to reform the culture. So it will eventually revert back to what he did not like.”
In 2007, when soldiers were dying in up-armored Humvees from improvised explosive devices, or IEDs — roadside bombs, the insurgents’ weapon of choice — Congress came up with more than $20 billion to buy an imposing new kind of vehicle with a specially designed V-shaped bottom that would deflect bomb blasts.
Gates created a task force to ensure that the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles would get out to troops quickly, rather than having their plans or production slowed by Pentagon red tape.
Then when troops needed better intelligence to break up IED production networks, he drew up another task force that rapidly bought the Predator drones.
Gates is using that task force now to push manned surveillance aircraft — the C-12 Huron — into theater. And he’s following up on MRAPs too, pursuing a new version that can navigate the Afghan terrain, because the existing MRAPs are too large and cumbersome.
Those were piecemeal efforts. Gates’ first real crack at institutionalizing a new way of doing business at the Pentagon came with his budget blueprint. He sequestered top generals with a nondisclosure agreement, drew up a plan to significantly alter or kill more than 50 weapons systems, and let it fly on April 6.
He gored the ox of the Air Force, forgoing an attempt to buy another 20 F-22 Raptors that the service had pressed for years. He stunned Army officials who’d briefed him numerous times about the usefulness of their Future Combat System vehicles in irregular wars. Gates sent them to redesign a new set by this fall. And he took out the Navy-run presidential helicopter program after its budget had doubled.
For all the complaining in Congress, lobbyists worry that most of the Gates’ budget changes will stick. But because Gates had telegraphed his moves in a series of speeches and articles, few were surprised by any individual cut.
“He laid out his priorities and strategic direction. That meant the debate is taking place on the ground he wanted to be on, rather than program specifics,” said Dov Zakheim, a former Pentagon comptroller who’s now a defense consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton. “People can disagree about elements, or about the whole approach, but they are reacting to him. That was very brilliantly done.”
But that budget wasn’t only about the process. It was about the products, too — an early attempt to shift spending from fighter jets and heavy armor into the weapons Gates believes will be needed for wars to come.
He’s put forth the idea that the next U.S. war could involve both conventional warfare and an Iraqi-style insurgency at the same time — a “hybrid war” where troops could face an enemy, like Iran, that could employ roadside bombs and ballistic missiles at the same time.
Thompson, the defense analyst, said Gates is pushing a 50-50 concept — that 50 percent of U.S. forces should be geared to fight high-level traditional warfare and 50 percent to fight irregular or nontraditional warfare (made up of 10 percent geared specifically to irregular warfare and 40 percent that can do both).
And Thompson said it’s not all just buying Predators, better body armor and sophisticated new communications gear, though Gates is devoting increasing funds to those purchases. “They have found that everything from B-52s to helicopters can be turned into effective counterinsurgency weapons, with the right kind of communications strategy,” he said.
Communications between Gates and his generals, and between Gates and Congress, have improved since the Rumsfeld days. But many point out the end results have been similar.
“For all the talk about how Rumsfeld was brusque and dismissive, Gates has actually cut off a lot more heads than Rumsfeld ever did,” Finel said.
So with military brass willing to wait out the latest twists and turns from a new administration — and secretaries of defense facing a term in office of just a few years — can Gates make it stick?
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, thinks Gates’ changes have excited the next generation of leaders. Even if there’s pushback from the Pentagon’s top brass, he sees an opportunity.
“It’s remarkable how he’s shaken up the status quo but in a military-friendly way,” Cooper said. “I see more hope for reforming the Pentagon than in a good long time.”
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