The Glade 4.0

ABILENE, Kan. — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates challenged some sacrosanct Pentagon spending practices in a speech on Saturday, directing both military and civilian officials to find cuts in their overhead and operating costs and then transfer the savings to the fighting force.

In the speech, given on the 65th anniversary of the World War II victory in Europe, Mr. Gates said the Pentagon was wasting money it will no longer get, and he focused on targets as diverse as the cost of military health care, the large number of generals and admirals and the layers of bureaucracy involved just to send a dog team to Afghanistan.

“The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, opened a gusher of defense spending that nearly doubled the base budget over the last decade,” Mr. Gates said. “Military spending on things large and small can and should expect closer, harsher scrutiny. The gusher has been turned off, and will stay off for a good period of time.”

Mr. Gates, a carry-over cabinet member from the Bush administration, has already canceled or trimmed several dozen weapons programs, with long-term savings predicted at $330 billion. Now he is looking for complementary cuts across the Defense Department’s civilian and military bureaucracies, the overseas headquarters and their operating costs.

The goal is to convert as much as 2 percent or 3 percent of spending from “tail” to “tooth” — military slang for support services and combat forces. The money is “needed to sustain American’s combat power at a time of war and make investments to prepare for an uncertain future,” he said.

While this may not seem like a significant savings in the Pentagon’s base budget, which stands just below $550 billion for next year, cuts of any size are certain to run hard against entrenched constituencies.

Mr. Gates said the nation owed quality health care to those in uniform, their families and veterans, but pointed out that members of the military health care system have not been charged increases in premiums for 15 years — even though the program’s annual cost has risen to $50 billion from $19 billion a decade ago.

“Health care costs are eating the Defense Department alive,” Mr. Gates said.

Mr. Gates’s critique of top-heavy headquarters overseas was underscored not only by the date on which it was given but also by the location of the speech: the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum here. In his talk, Mr. Gates questioned why, two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Defense Department “still has more than 40 generals, admirals or civilian equivalents based on the continent” of Europe.

Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander in Europe during World War II, in his farewell address as president warned the nation of the menacing influence of an emerging “military-industrial complex.”

Mr. Gates also took aim at the Pentagon bureaucracy. “Another category ripe for scrutiny should be overhead — all the activity and bureaucracy that supports the military mission,” he said, citing an official estimate that overhead makes up about 40 percent of the Pentagon budget.

“How many of our headquarters and secretariats are primarily in the business of reporting to or supervising other headquarters and secretariats, as opposed to overseeing activity related to real-world needs and missions?” Mr. Gates asked.

He suggested moving toward a system “where two-star deputies become one-star deputies, assistant secretaries become deputy assistant secretaries — to create a flatter, more effective and less costly organization.”

For example, a commander’s request just for a dog-handling team to be sent to Afghanistan “has to go through no fewer than five four-star headquarters in order to be processed, validated and eventually dealt with,” Mr. Gates said.

The Defense Department’s spending on day-to-day operations and maintenance costs about $200 billion annually, twice as much as 10 years ago — even when not including costs in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. The largest increases have been in administrative support and infrastructure.

“Very rarely is the activity funded in these areas ever fundamentally re-examined — either in terms of quality, type or whether it should be conducted at all,” Mr. Gates said.

Mr. Gates, who was asked to stay in the job at the end of the Bush administration, has pledged to President Obama that he will serve at least through the end of this year. Asked whether he would be around long enough after that to push through his proposed reforms, Mr. Gates replied, “We’ll see what happens.”

I'm hoping for a major sweep of people that sit around managing people who manage people who manage people who.. do something or other.

Gates is one of the few people who can pull this off. If Republicans cut spending, they are no longer the party that is strong on defense. If democrats cut funding, well, God help them. But here's a man who is on the inside, who was hired by a Republican and kept on by a Democrat. He's actually laying it out in terms that make sense (overhead costs) rather than just saying Pentagon funding cuts.

This is great.