Episode 707: Reforming the Pentagon for the 21st Century

Published Jun 8, 2024, 4:01 AM

Newt discusses the Pentagon, its history, and the challenges it faces in modernizing for the 21st century. The Pentagon, built between 1941 and 1943, is the second largest office building in the world and has 27,000 military and civilian employees. The Defense Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2024 provided $825 billion in total funding. Newt’s guest, William Hartung, a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, discusses the influence of large contractors on defense policy and the need for strategic thinking and reform in the defense system. They also discuss the rise of artificial intelligence and the increasing role of Silicon Valley in defense technology.

On this episode of New World. The home of the Department of Defense is the Pentagon. The Pentagon was built between September nineteen forty one and January nineteen forty three. It is the second largest office building in the world, with approximately six point five million square feet, including five floors above ground and two basement levels. About twenty four thousand military and civilian employees and three thousand non defense support personnel work at the Pentagon. The fiscal year twenty twenty four Defense Appropriations Act provided eight hundred and twenty five billion dollars in total funding. According to the bill quote, this bill makes new investments in our service members and military families, and strengthens our deterrent capabilities and global readiness. But when you were dealing with eight hundred and twenty five billion dollars and a workforce of twenty seven thousand and one building alone, how do you account for all the money that is being spent? And more importantly, how can the Pentagon be modernized for the twenty first century? Here to discuss this important subject, I'm really pleased to welcome my guest, Bill Hartung, Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible State draft. He has a new paper he just published entitled Private Finance and the Quest to Remake Modern Warfare. He also wrote the book Profits of War Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military Industrial Complex. Bill. Welcome and thank you for joining me on newts World.

Oh glad to do it. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

I think reforming the Pentagon for the twenty first century, and frankly, all of our national security system, including intelligence, state, to proven etc. Maybe the most important challenge for our survival. Can you talk a little bit about the history of the Pentagon and how it has either changed or not changed since it opened in nineteen forty three.

Well, I think going back to Eisenhower, there's been a tension between a sort of profit bureaucratic expansion and building the weapons we need. And so, you know, as I was concerned, he didn't think we needed a new bomber. The Air Force did. There was a major fight over that. He was accused of not building enough ICBMs. Ends up, they had many more than the Soviet Union, and his theory was, you know, you needed a balance. You don't want to break the bank, but you need these systems. You need some people felt like from the speech somehow he was against the arms industry. He said it was necessary, but that we needed a knowledgeable public to write herd on it. And so I think over time it's been a mixed bag. I think there's been a lot of amazing technologies developed. There's also been a lot of problems with cost overruns, dysfunction, and likewise, the morale of the troops has changed dramatically at different points. I think what's missing now is sort of balance. You know, when they announced the annual budget, you know, they brag about how much we're spending or they say, well, hey this is built in my district, but there's not a lot of discussion of is it the right strategy, are the troops getting the right training, how's morale? There are people who focus on that, but usually it's secondary. So to me, spending more money isn't the right measure. The measure is do you have an effective force and is it tailored to the threats you're likely to face.

I've said for years that it's fascinating that Depentagon, with twenty seven thousand people total, was originally designed to be running the Second World War, and it was doing so with manual typewriter, carbon paper and filing cabinets, and in fact, Beatle Smith, when he was the secretary to General Marshall, would run experiments with his junior officers and enlisted personnel to see how fast they could find papers for Marshall. That's nineteen forty three. Today we have iPads, smartphones, laptop computers, and I've been trying and I cannot get a good estimate. To find somebody to tell me the information exchange ratio between a manual typewriter with carbon paper and a laptop computer or a smartphone or iPad, But the numbers have to be in the order of almost a million to one. I mean, your capacity to send out and receive information to process it is in a different world. And yet with all of that innovation, we have twenty seven thousand people in a building that was designed for manual typewriters and carbon paper. I suspect if we were to shrink the Pentagon into a triangle and put the other two thirds of it into a National Defense museum, that we would actually have a more effective and more agile system than we do right now.

Well, and he could raise money on tourism from the museum. Bill Perry when it was defense sector. I think this is a real and not apocryphal, was asked, and he didn't realize he had a hot mic. How many people worked at the Pentagon. He said, well about half. Of course, if you cut half, you definite cut the right half. You're not the ones who are like helping troops deal with PTSD or value in technology with the expertise to do so. But I think there hasn't been really an evaluation either of the civilian personnel at the Pentagon or the contractors. When Robert Gates was to a defense he was asked, how many contractors work for the Pentagons? Not really sure, So I think there's got to be almost like an audit of what they have and what they need. But of course they can't audit their finances. And some of it relates to what you said. The computers don't talk to each other. Reuters did a study a couple of years ago and one of the offices they had to print the things and bring them down the hall because the two computers were not compatible. So you know, it's a sprawling enterprise. It's difficult to reform. But is the effort being made in a serious way.

In twenty twenty three, the Pentagon failed its sixth annual audit in a row. And the audit actually is of twenty nine subaudits in the department. Seven of the twenty nine actually passed in twenty twenty three, which was the same number that passed in twenty twenty two. Why is it so hard to get an effective audit?

I wonder a little bit about incentive. There's this phenomenon at the end of the year, if you haven't spent your money fast enough, you spend it in the last month because you don't want to lower budget the next year. Being an auditor is in the career path to leadership at the Pentagon, and I wonder about some of the as people age. I mean, you know, when I was growing up, probably into my late twenties thirties, there was no internet. I had to learn how to use a laptop. I lost the entire manuscript of one of my books because I pressed their own button. You know, have people been trained properly in this level of technology and why hasn't it been knitted together? And I think a lot of times it's pulled into what's viewed as the kind of glitzier things like big ticket systems and so forth. But if you can't keep track of the money, it's hard to track fraud. It's kind of a foundation of good business practices. They've also cut back contracting officers, who oversee whether the companies are putting some money in there that they don't deserve. I think I've seen this in other businesses, where people like to do the fun stuff, the substance, the policy, and they don't pay attention to the nuts and bolts of what makes it possible they have an effective organization, you know, like accounting.

When you think contractors, back in the Eisenhower there were a lot more contractors than there are now. As late as the Reagan era, there were about fifty major contractors, and its shrank so that today basically you're down to five big contractors lackeyed Martin, RTX, Boeing, General Dynamics, and North of Grumman, who dominate most of the procurement budget. So you have these huge corporations matching up against a huge bureaucracy in ways that virtually preclude smaller businesses from competing and being successful.

Yeah, I mean, even just the paperwork is too daunting for a company that can't hire a contract specialist or a lobbyist who knows the ropes because they used to do acquisition at the Pentagon. And also the bigger firms they tend to be clumsier and less innovative. They're good at lobbying for contracts, but they're not as good at executing them. So in that sense, the push for emerging tech and new entrants is logical.

West August, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks launched what she called the Replicator Initiative to develop new high tech weapons, and I think in the absence of very significant reforms, you have to worry about the recent track record with the F thirty five, which took twenty three years from conception until it was finally approved for full right production. Twenty three years.

Yeah, I was around when they started that. They're calling it the Joint Strike Fighter, and you know McDonald douglas's been on it. They don't exist anymore. They got observed by Boeing when it came out. They said, well, this is going to be a new form of procurement. It's going to be cheaper, it's going to be quicker, it's going to revolutionize the way we buy weapons, which is kind of what we're hearing about Replicator. That doesn't mean we'll get the same result. It just means you need to back up that rhetoric with performance.

There ought to be some ability to set as a goal having a procurement system inside the cycle time of technology, because otherwise you're always going to be procuring the last generation technology and you're already in some ways be facing block obsolescence even before you get there.

A lot of systems Now it's not f thirty five levels, but it's many years, sometimes five to ten, and so at that point, you know, sometimes they have to retrofit newer technology than what they originally anticipated. That's a challenge. I think the kind of twofold thing is how to move more quickly so you've got the current technology, and how to make sure it's going to work, what's the way to test it? That doesn't forever, but it gives you a gauge of whether you're influenting things that are going to do as advertised.

Isn't the rise of artificial intelligence going to make Silicon Valley and the various companies that resemble and grow out of Silicon Valley. Even more important, it's a real shift from sort of the Ford Motor Company General motors generation to suddenly dealing with people like Google or other systems that are generating these enormously expensive and very sophisticated methods of computation. But isn't that almost an inevitable direction if we're going to maintain cutting edge military capability.

Yeah. Well, I'm told by people in the sector that those companies are more hospitable to tech people to work at, and that the ways that the big companies work just don't appeal. Just the actual day to day rules rags, you know, how they work. And some of the big firms that bought up innovative firms in cyber other areas, the innovative output just plummeted. So what I mentioned in part is w Secretary Hicks has said we're going to build these things in large quantities. And we've heard a lot about the software piece, But you know who's going to build them? Is it usual companies, is it others? I'd like to hear a little bit of that end. And also, it's much more lucrative to work in the private sector on these things than in the Pentagon. So how does the Pentagon make sure they can evaluate it. I think there's challenges and also the question of complex software and how do you kind of make sure it's built with redundancy so it doesn't fail at a key moment. But I think that's certainly where things are heading. I don't know how quickly. There's actually a kind of manifesto that Andreil, one of the big companies, has on their website. It basically says, thank you, Lockeied Martin, you served us well in the Cold War. Now step aside and we're taking over, which I'm sure thrills the executives at Lockheed Martin.

I just watched the Boeing spacecraft finally get launched after weeks and weeks and weeks of trying to get at work, and you compare that with SpaceX and the routine launch of things, and you're just talking about two different worlds. These large corporations are as bureaucratic as government, and aggressive lean entrepreneurial companies just dance around them. It seems to me.

Yeah, there's different theories on how Boeing has come to this point because they're having problems on all fronts, their defense and their civilian. One theory is they moved at a certain point from being run by engineers who understood the technology, a little more cost concern and then sort of money people who just wanted to maximize shareholder value and so forth, and put less emphasis on watching how the technology has being developed. I think the emerging firms, my one concern is like they can do amazing things, but is there a limit. They seem to think they can do almost anything, and I think there's got to be a counterbalance to that. But certainly in some areas they've demonstrated they can move much more quickly, and there were skeptics of SpaceX and so forth. So it's to be evaluated.

As we go your paper Private finance and the question we make modern warfare. You do see a dramatic increase in venture capital moving into this space, trying to find startups, trying to find the kind of fast growth companies that might both make a difference and make a big profit. That's a relatively new development, isn't it.

Yes? Actually, Well, going back to Ash Carter, the late Ash Carter, maybe a decade ago, he did kind of an outreach campaign to Silicon Valley because there had reached a point. Although there was military money that helped create Silicon Valley, they were moving faster, they could make more on commercial products. They didn't like to impentent on paperwork. They had some folks who just didn't want to work on military things. So Carter did kind of a charm offensive. And also there were some shifts in leadership people who are more interested in military issues. So it's really maybe the last four or five years. Pentagon has a Defense Innovation unit that has a Silicon Valley office. They're starting a strategic capital entity within the Pentagon. They've talked about streamlining regulations and so forth. I don't know how far they've gotten on that. And once Secretary Hicks gave her a big speech on this, she sort of hedged a little bit because said, well, of course we need the existing systems as well, and I think we don't. I mean, aircraft cares are very vulnerable. There's a lot of things that could be put aside for new approaches, and my fear is that because of vested interest, they might try to do both, which I think would just slow and confuse the process.

There's just a lot of things out there where you see people trying desperately to hold onto the past. There's a great story that was in a book by Colonel Johnson called Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers. In nineteen forty, after the German army had run through Poland and run through Belgium and the Netherlands and France, General Marshall, who's the head of a war department on the military side, asked the Commandant of Cavalry what they had done to rethink the role of cavalry given the rise of tanks, etc. And the guy came in and he said, you know, we've studied this a great deal and we have concluded that what we need is trucks that can take the horses close to the ford edge of battle so that they are totally fresh when we get there. And Marshall at corner Johnson's version. Marshall looked at him and said, this has been enormously helpful. And as he left, he turned to Beetlesmith and said, I want you to retire him as of five o'clock today, and I want you to close the office of Commandant of Cavalry because they couldn't adapt to a world that clearly was making everything they had done obsolete, and I think some of that going on. If you really look out at the kind of breakthroughs we're seeing, it's going to be a very different kind of combat, particularly when you get to big countries engaged in big combat. It's going to be a lot more space, it's going to be a lot more the use of artificial intelligence and self guided systems and what have you. And I think that not just us, the Chinese, the Russians, everybody. It's really hard for people who spent their entire lifetime getting really good at something to then recognize it maybe that's the past, not the future.

Yeah, there's been historical examples. After World War Two, when the services felt like there was going to be a big investment in nuclear weapons. The Navy had this idea for super carriers they could plunk a ballistic missile ont they were like much larger than existing ones. They did't make a lot of sense, but everybody was throwing out their ideas. I think with respect to the new emerging issues, the Army is less relevant to dealing with China, I believe, But they're investing in long struct missiles and so forth. Well, you know, do those have to be operated by the army, let's clear, you know. So, yeah, I think there's a kind of a notion to justify what you have. You strap on new technology to an existing platform when that's not really the best way to use it. There's going to be a lot of that going on.

From your standpoint, what are the key steps we should take to fundamentally reform the defense system and move it into a much more dynamic and much more effective system.

Well, I think there's two issues. One is what's our overall strategy. Do we want to be able to fight Russia, China, or on North Korea or on terror or is there a different approach where we set clearer goals and fewer missions. That's something that's barely debated in the Congress. There was a whole hearing on how to move on our nuclear strategy and the majority of the members bragged about weapons built in their state. They didn't engage the issue. So we have to deal with that, and part of that is influence bureaucracies of the entities that profit from this, and somehow they've got to become players in the debate, not attempt to control the debate. And so I think probably different regulations for when and how you can go from the pentagon to industry, how much money you can throw at the members who make the decisions. When you do studies, make sure you've got some independent actors, not just the companies that will build whatever the study recommends. And I don't think it's easy to do that, and you can't kind of dictate that completely tells people what to do. But I think more transparency. Part of it is I think education, I think, and sort of people being more motivated to think about these things. I think most people feel like, well, the experts will handle that, or they think, yeah, the system's problematic, but you know, what can I do about it? And there's dissenters inside the system who don't always get heard. I knew some of the folks who helped develop things like the F sixteen and the A ten, which operated well over time, weren't so complicated they couldn't feel them. And their point was a lot of it is your people. Are they well trained and do they have systems that are going to operate when they need them? You know, the F thirty five, at some points less than half of them are able to even fly because of all the maintenance issues.

Well, I wanted to move to a point about Lockheed Martin and how they shape US defense policy and the whole notion which eisen Awer talked about of a military industrial complex and your book Profits of War from twenty twelve in your mind, to what extent are the large contractors controllers of strategic choice at least as much as the uniform bureaucracy.

You know, In terms of our overall policy, I think their role is much more limited. But in terms of what we build and to some degree, our strategy that I think they have more influence because they'll be on advisor your bodies. They'll have an insight line to the people writing the specs and monitoring their work. But the thing is that if you get attached to something like the F thirty five or the aircraft carrier lobby coalition, you're making the system very rigid. So it's hard to cut back. But it's also hard to introduce new technologies. I think that's maybe the biggest influence. It constrains our ability to think more broadly about strategy, what weapons to build, and to some degree, if you don't have the right systems, it's hard to fight in the correct way. In some of these conflicts.

Have you seen developments, whether in Ukraine or the Middle East that have surprised you about emerging systems.

Well, it's interesting, it seems sort of double edged. There's certain systems like the javelin that have performed quite remarkably in Ukraine. But the Wall Street Journal did analysis of some of the small drones coming from the startups, and the Ukrainians said, well, they're kind of brittle, they're kind of expensive, and they were actually buying Chinese drones that were cheaper and more reliable. So I think there's still a mindset of more technical capability is better, but sometimes it comes with more maintenance, more vulnerability. I think there's going to be an issue now with supply of Ukraine because I think the Russian systems are inferior, but they can crank them out, and I think some of our systems they're superior in terms of performance, but it takes longer to produce them. So there's going to be a whole reckoning on that front. And it does kind of harken back to some of the military form ideas. Build something that's viable, that works, don't put too many bells and whistles, make sure people know how to use it may be superior to just technology for its own sake.

I think that part of that is sort of an American model. Sometimes you can do adequately for not very much money, but to do brilliantly is really expensive.

Yeah, and sometimes it's just a different war than you expect. I mean, improvise explosive devices interacted so much damage to our troops even though we had the targeting the aircraft and so forth, and the threat came from another direction.

Bill, I really want to thank you for joining me. Your new paper, Private Finance and the Quest to Remake Modern Warfare is available now on the Quincy Institute for Responsible state Craft website at Quincy i nst dot org. And I really appreciate you taking the time focusing your exportability and helping think about the kind of large changes we need if we're going to keep America safe. So thank you very much for being with me.

Yeah, I'd love to have this kind of conversation on the Hill. I mean, I know there's people who know it, but it doesn't happen enough.

I think that's right. And when I was a very junior member, we created the Military Reform Caucus because I had some pretty impressive people, I mean Dick Cheney, Sam Nunn, a whole range of people, Gary Hart, and our theory was that Reagan would get the extra money because that was the momentum, and I and Weinberger knew how to do that, but they wouldn't necessarily spend it very well. And so we really worked for about five years on how to reform things, and CSIS, the Center for Strategic International Studies, played a big role in helping funded and putting together the think tanks and what have you. And out of that came the Goldwater Nichols Reform, which most people today would think was a very useful move towards a more integrated military, but as a sign of how things work when we propose tho it, every active duty four star opposed it, and Secretary Weinberger opposed it, and President Reagan opposed it, and we had to all may just win because it was clear things weren't working. Then people said, you know, you just got affect something. And I think we're going to end up in a similar kind of situation where the rate of change is going to be so great that we need people like you helping us actually think it's not about money, it's not about power, it's not about lobbyists smoothing over dinner. You actually have to have some people who think and who come up with ideas.

I'm also for more thinking of think tanks, you know, as opposed to just pushing out positions.

I appreciate so much you as a citizen helping develop these kind of ideas, and I hope people will take seriously the need to have the kind of both hearings on Capitol Hill, but also informal breakfast and lunches and dinners and conversation places where members can get caught up on these kind of ideas. And I appreciate the work you've done and the amount of your life you've spent trying to in our national security requirements.

Well, it was great talking to you.

Thank you to my guest, Bill Harton. You can get a link to his paper, Private Finance and the Quest to Remake Modern Warfare on our show page at neutworld dot com. Newtworld is produced by Gingish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at Gingrish three sixty. If you've been enjoying newts World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now listeners the neut World concenter for my three free weekly columns at gingristhree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm newd Gingrich. This is neut World.

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