Would you invest in a business that failed its last five financial audits? Would you donate to an organization that had not passed an audit since 1990? Absolutely not! But in the United States, taxpayers are asked to contribute seemingly unlimited resources to our national defense without ever really asking how the money is spent.
To put this in perspective, last year the United States gave more than $877 billion to the Department of Defense, which is almost $600 billion more than China, the next highest-spending nation. Despite unprecedented levels of spending, much of our military equipment is outdated or useless. My friends and colleagues that are in special operations units do not even use the tactical equipment they are issued because of the poor quality. Instead, they spend their own money to buy gear that works.
As of two years ago the United States had 1.2 million active-duty military personnel and 778,000 reservists. But in my two decades of military service, I was at times a part of understaffed and overworked units that had to stretch to the limit to accomplish our mission. More often I observed a military that was bogged down in bureaucratic make-work, useless taskings, and wasted resources. In my last several years of service as a member of the reserves, I spent far more time in seminars in which I learned about the dangers of extremism in the military than I did training to do my job as a Judge Advocate or in basic combat skills.
There has not been a meaningful or realistic debate about the size, structure, and appropriate balance of our military forces that was not dominated by the self-interest of the defense industry since the Vietnam era. Now we live in an era where the Pentagon fails every time there is an audit and Congress still votes to increase defense spending.
Many meanwhile advocate for a larger active-duty military force, even though the same Congress has not issued a declaration of war since the end of World War II. This reality is largely absent from the national conversation about military policy. News media outlets are instead fixated on the “recruiting crisis” impacting our military, which is said to impact readiness and national security. The risk is so great, according to some, that they have started to advocate for a return to the draft.
Many want more service members and larger budgets while ignoring the fact that the Pentagon has not passed an audit in three decades. What if the greatest threat to our military readiness and national defense is actually waste, fraud, and a bloated bureaucracy?
No more blank checks
Most politicians advocate for writing the Department of Defense a blank check for military spending. It is not a question of whether or not the Department of Defense budget should increase: they believe it always should, but they consider it merely a question of how much it will increase.
Because of the way the military is funded, units are punished if they do not spend every single cent of their budget. As a military leader, I was expected to spend every penny in my budget. If I did not, rather than being rewarded for efficiency and ingenuity, I would get punished the following year with a smaller budget and fewer resources.
Every year at the end of the summer the military plays the same game with taxpayer dollars. Every leader is tasked with coming up with a plan to buy things and expend funds so that their budget is completely spent, and some are even asked to come up with creative ways to spend more so they can receive leftover or “fallout” money from other units that did not spend all of their budgets. As a field grade officer, I watched one office buy multiple enormous flat-screen televisions for conference rooms no one used, as well as new computer monitors for every desk, regardless of how old the monitor being replaced was or whether we even had the personnel to sit at the desk. At the same time, I was told I could not receive firearms training or qualify with a weapon even on an annual basis because it was not in the budget.
As a military leader, I was expected to spend every penny in my budget. If I did not, rather than being rewarded for efficiency and ingenuity, I would get punished the following year with a smaller budget and fewer resources.
The inefficiency and waste extend beyond service members in uniform. When I was deployed, in one unit alone there were a half-dozen civilian contractors each making more than $100,000 a year to sit in an air-conditioned office and do a job that was typically done by a single sergeant. The worst part is that we had a sergeant deployed to our installation to do the job.
While many Department of Defense civilian employees are dedicated and hard-working, those that are not are extremely difficult to fire or hold accountable. Like other government employees, they can take advantage of a system that allows them to work a nine-to-five job, take an hour for lunch, enjoy eleven paid federal holidays, earn a generous pension, and never be expected to do more than accomplish the absolute least amount of work possible. That is when their work is even measured or monitored.
Understand that as a retired officer and veteran, I love our military and those who serve, and I am and will forever be grateful for their sacrifice. But we must not continue to ignore the waste, fraud, and abuse in our military system or we will continue to see a decline in our military readiness and compromise in our national security, even amid ever-increasing budgets feeding a bloated and outdated military bureaucracy.
More reserves and less active-duty
As of September 2021, less than 15% of active-duty military personnel were in “combat-related” positions while the remaining 85% were in support portions. Actual “combat” positions in today’s military comprise less than 10% of the overall force. While support personnel are critical to the operational success of any military, I have serious questions about the size and balance of the military.
A shift in focus toward a smaller active-duty military and a reliance on reservists is consistent with our history as a nation. The concept of the “citizen-soldier” began in the French and Indian war and continued into the twentieth century. Even as American foreign policy broke with earlier tradition and our military began to be used to project force across the globe, reserve units have played a critical role and proven capable of achieving operational success in World War II, the Korean War, and Desert Storm.
While support personnel are critical to the operational success of any military, I have serious questions about the size and balance of the military.
There is significant value in encouraging a national culture where citizens recognize a shared obligation to support our national defense; a large and robust reserve component, and a smaller active-duty force, would encourage that culture. Done properly, this would reduce military spending, solve the recruiting crisis, and have the potential to restore a sense of obligation among patriotic Americans such that when a real need arises, those capable of serving should be prepared and ready to defend our nation. A beneficial side-effect might be a more cautious and realistic approach to getting involved in the “foreign entanglements” that our founding fathers warned us about.
Reform and renewal
This type of change is not easy or fast. It requires an honest assessment of our military needs and capabilities. It requires Congress to dig in and place national security and the needs of the American people ahead of campaign donations from the military-industrial complex. It requires an effective budgeting process and a refusal of politicians and the military to play political games.
The place to start this change is with accountability at the highest levels. Any leader in the Department of Defense whose organization cannot pass an audit should be held accountable and replaced by a leader who is willing to effectively manage the personnel, equipment, and resources they are given.
It is time for our political and military leaders to stop hiding behind ambiguous statements and euphemisms. The future sustainability and effectiveness of our military depends on it. If politicians are serious about national defense, we need to consider significantly cutting the Pentagon bureaucracy and shifting to a military that has a larger reserve and smaller active-duty component. The smaller and more agile active-duty component should be focused on combat-trained and effective personnel, and the reserves should focus on having well-trained and effective support personnel that can be activated when there is actual military necessity.
