Crenshaw Consulting Associates
Business Advice with Integrity
I just published an OpEd piece in American Military News after looking at the FY 2019 DoD Budget again. I can’t believe we aren’t asking for more Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles. The Reason? We are going to build a new Land Attack Missile by 2028…..that’s around 10 years folks! Any bets on a 2028 delivery? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone? Anyway, I think the piece says it all, so I invite you to read it. Here’s the link to the article…..Closing the Tomahawk Line is Risky Business.
I’ve been meaning to put together one of those “What’s Out, What’s In” lists. Recently I was speaking at an event and I came up with an abbreviated list of outs and ins that I thought I would share. You know the list I’m talking about? The Washington Post usually puts one in the Style section in the week between Christmas and New Years…probably because all the highly-paid writers are off on holiday, so the hoi polloi stuck in the office get the task of putting one together. Lately the list has served as notice to me that I seem to have lost track of what’s hot and what’s not in the world these days. Here’s a link to this year’s list. I got about 10% of the items. Swedish Death Cleaning? What’s that? I did think the “Plastic Bags Stuck in Trees ⇒ Cardboard Stuck in the Gutters” was pretty funny, given the huge number of Amazon boxes in circulation. You could spend all day clicking on the links to try and understand the humor, but why bother when I’m about to give you a much easier to understand list? Feel free to send me some more and I’ll put them in. Here goes:
LPTA
R&D
Big IT Buys
Servers
Desktop
Single Awards
Last of the Boomers
Office
Multiple Services
Service Medical
Audit Prep
Pokémon
Continuing Resolutions
Fires/Floods/Hurricanes
2016 Presidential Election
Service Dogs
National Security Strategy
Performance Based
Innovation
Agile
Cloud
Mobile
Multiple Awards
Millennials/Xers/iGen
Flex
Shared Services
DHA
Audit
Poke
More Continuing Resolutions
Meteors/Earthquakes/Zombie Apocalypse
2020 Presidential Election (Already?)
National Military Strategy
OK. That’s all I could come up with on short notice, but it’s a fun exercise to think about what seemed to be so critical 365 days ago is all but forgotten now. Every time I do this exercise, I am reminded about the progression on leadership themes I have seen in the Navy since I was a midshipman. Let’s see if anyone remembers: Day-long Sensitivity Training, Management by Objective (MBO), Total Quality Management (TQM), Lean, Six Sigma, Navy Enterprise Model, Accelerated Learning, Business Process Reengineering. I can still see the TQM workshops with the red and white balls in my mind as well as watching videos of Demming droning on. I remember when it was declared that all SES and Flags should be at least a Brown Belt. I’m not quite sure what management fad we are in now, but if you have some ideas, please comment. By the way, I hope this page looks decent. It taxed my knowledge of HTML to get columns into the article…And harder still to get them to stop. By the way, for all you retired Flags and SESers, I will be happy to collect your brown belts and sell them on consignment.
This will be one of my briefest articles, but a couple of things have compelled me to write about service, sacrifice and the luxury of choice. First and foremost on my mind is the upcoming Veterans Day, a national tradition dating back to November 11th, 1918. The end of the “War to end all Wars”, marked by a cessation of hostilities between German and Allied forces, was put into force on “the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.” When President Wilson declared Armistice Day to be observed beginning in 1919, his intent was to have nationwide parades and events at 11AM on November 11th. The Congress eventually formalized Veterans Day in 1938, when it was declared that this date would be a time to honor American veterans of all wars. There was a time in the 60’s when there was a push for the big Federal Holidays (Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Columbus Day) to occur on Mondays, allowing for three-day weekends to encourage “travel, recreational and cultural activities and stimulate greater industrial and commercial production,” but it was confusing and in the end Veterans Day moved back to November 11th in 1978. I don’t know if Wikipedia is the final authoritative source on Veterans Day, but according to Wiki, the purpose of Veterans Day as we now celebrate it is to “honor America’s veterans for their patriotism, love of country, and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good.”
“I do solemnly swear or affirm (as the case may be) to bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America, and to serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and to observe and obey the orders of the president of the United States of America, and the orders of officers appointed over me.” 1789 Oath of Enlistment
While many veterans who served before 1973 may have been drafted and therefore not necessarily “volunteers” they still certainly sacrificed much in service to America. And many indeed volunteered to serve, even during the period when the draft was in effect. Since 1973 we have been an all-volunteer force and except for a few lean years, the Services haven’t had much trouble in filling enlistment quotas. I marvel at the extraordinary sacrifices our active duty, guard and reserve men and women in uniform make every day: risk to life in conflicts, separation from family and friends, careers put on hold, dangers at work, and countless others sacrifices that only they know. So I am proud to be among their number, although I am mindful that many have sacrificed so much more than I. They will be on my mind this upcoming Veterans Day. If you are looking for a way to honor those who have sacrificed much, there are many options….go to a Parade, give a homeless vet food and shelter, donate to a veteran-focused charity, etc. But for me, please don’t say “Thank you for your service.” As far as I’m concerned that’s a mindless phrase, a cop-out which allows one to feel good without having to commit anything. It’s expected and akin to saying “Bless You” after a sneeze. They are words spoken without commitment or consciousness by many who utter them. I would much rather hear, “I never served, but as a way of showing my gratitude for those who did, I work with homeless veterans at the local shelter”, or maybe, “Where did you serve and what did you do?” That shows interest not a clever, trendy reflex. And I would be OK with a “Thank you for your commitment America. I am grateful for your service.” At least put some thought and feeling in it!
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the president of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God..” Current Oath of Enlistment
I said I was going to be brief, so I better wrap up..The other event on my mind was the recent election of Representative Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House. I certainly wouldn’t want that job. But I was struck with his “demands” and how they contrast with the service our veterans rendered to our nation. They didn’t get an opportunity to bargain for weekends off to be with family or to say “I will serve, but only in CONUS.” Seems to me that he’s only going to be Speaker for a few years (probably less time than the average enlistment contract), so suck it up! Remember all those who don’t get a chance to spend weekends with their families while being shot at……a far cry from dangerous caucuses or risky debates in the halls of Congress. So it must be nice to have the luxury of choice and get credit for service without too much sacrifice as so many on the Hill are wont to do. I guess that explains why there is no “Congress Day” on our national calendar.
Here’s a way to honor our Veterans this year. Attend the Navy Safe Harbor Foundation Veterans Day luncheon at the Army Navy Country Club at the 11th Hour of the 11 Day of the 11th month: Click here to register.
I couldn’t help but chuckle as I followed the saga of “petroleum products” in the Shaw and Logan Circle areas of DC over the past few days. Those of you who have lived on a Navy ship (especially carriers) know exactly what I mean. Who among us hasn’t turned on the shower and basked in the smell of JP5 (Jet fuel used by Navy aircraft……basically expensive kerosene)? Heck, there was always a hint of kerosene in the water. This is the principal reason that internal parasites are not a problem for Sailors……the hint of kerosene eliminates them. (When I was a young lad growing up in the backwoods of Alabama, the standard remedy for worms was a teaspoon of kerosene. Check out the link) I’m sure there are a variety of other benefits, but I’m too lazy to look them up. Back to the JP5 laced water. 
We didn’t complain because we were glad to have water. By the way, for you youngsters, there was no such thing as bottled water back then. In the days before the all nuclear carrier fleet, ships were all too frequently put on “water hours” to conserve fresh water. Priority of water usage was First to the boilers, second to food, third to washing airplanes and finally to the crew for showers. The way in which ships made fresh water back then was by distilling fresh water from seawater using the “Flash Evaporators.” Even graduate engineering students had a hard time figuring out how those things worked ( and frequently they didn’t….hence “water hours”). In fact, Chief Engineers would mortgage their souls for an individual who knew how to make the damned things work…They were usually some salty petty officer who had done nothing all his life but coddle and coax fresh water out of the mysterious machines. These guys were the original “Scottie”, capable of performing all sorts of miracles with baling wire and silly putty . We were always told that JP5 was in the water because during flight operations the carrier tended to stay in the same general area seeking the wind, and consequently we would crisscross the wake and suck up all the flotsam, jetsam, sewage, dumped fuel and who knows what else. It was also rumored that salt peter was put in the water (I’ll let you figure out why).
Other related issues also come to mind…Navy Showers. Because water was scarce, one was required to take a Navy shower. Here’s how to take a Navy Shower:
The alternative to a Navy shower was a “Hollywood” shower…..In order to luxuriate in a Hollywood shower, one had to do some prior planning and smuggle a regular shower head onboard. Showers normally had a handheld jobber with a button one pressed to unleash a fine water mist. These didn’t work too well because often there wasn’t enough water pressure to make the blasted things work. Anyway, in order to enjoy a true Hollywood shower, one would remove the standard issue shower head and replace with the regular shower head, and assuming there was water, you could splash away…..At least until the Master at Arms (also know as the XO spies) caught you. On one ship I was on, if the Master at Arms caught you taking a Hollywood shower, you had to carry around a rubber duck until you caught someone else taking a Hollywood….which you could then transfer to the most recent offender. I not too sure that the Navy still polices the showers, so this is probably not a problem now….In fact with unlimited amounts of nuclear power, reverse osmosis water plants and the like, I’m guessing water isn’t that much of a problem any more….
Enough of that. Maybe on another slow news day I’ll write about more quirks of my past Navy life.
Anyway, here’s wishing you all the happiest of Holiday Seasons and a prosperous New Year.
Lou
Only in the DoD acquisition world would this sound like a good deal! But before we cast too many arrows at the acquisition community, I must admit the idea is mine. I developed this idea over the course of years of working in the Bizarro World of DoD ship financing. You remember Bizarro? 
It’s the world where everything is backwards….the name of the bizarro world planet is Htrae (so clever!) and the world is square. As I recall, it was featured occasionally in Superman comics in the 1960’s. One of the mottos in Bizarro World was ” Us do opposite of all earthly things.” Bizarro bonds were a hot item on Htrae because they were “guaranteed to lose money.” So I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to make the analogy here.
As I learned during my time as Chief Resources and Requirements Officer for the Navy, the normal things you learned about economics don’t necessarily hold true when it comes to buying ships. My initial experience was during my first year on the job. We were working on balancing the budget and were about $400 Million off. The staff proposed that we slide the purchase of a ship we were buying for the Army called the LMSR (contrary to popular belief, the Army moves primarily by sea, not air). The price tag was about $400 Million and the staff had determined that we could stand to slide it a year. “Sounds good to me!” I answered, happy at the prospect of putting a bow on the $130 Billion Navy budget and delivering it to OSD just in time for Thanksgiving. By the way, that’s how you make sure that you don’t get rejected right away…..Submit something just prior to a big holiday so no one is around to grade your work. This rule works in a variety of scenarios:
Anyway, I’m sure you have your own sea story that would make mine look minor. But back to the LMSR caper……
A few days after the decision was made, the staff came back and noted that since we slid the ship a year, it’s going to cost more…..I don’t remember how much, but it was around $100 Million or so. “Really?” I commented. ‘Oh, yes,” came the reply, ” money will cost more the next year, we have shipyard loading issues that we will have to pay for, the cost of steel is going up, blah, blah blah.” So I began to understand that the economics of shipbuilding were different. I formulated The Shipbuilding Entropy Rule: “Nothing ever costs less. NO matter what you do, it will always cost more.” You buy less, they cost more. You cancel the buy, you still have to pay the overhead. You remove capability, it costs more to redo drawings. Its all very counter-intuitive. This became very clear to me during the following year’s budget build when the staff came back and said “We made a mistake. We have to move the LMSR back to the original purchase year.” “Fine,” I replied, “No harm, no foul.” Sensing it wasn’t “Fine“, based on the furtive glances between the staffers (an admiral sees a lot of those looks in the Pentagon) I asked “What’s wrong?” Turns out, if we moved the ship back into the original purchase year, it added another $100 Million to the cost! Whadakknow? We essentially did nothing and paid $200 Million not to do it! That, my friends, is Bizarro accounting!
Anyway I could go on and on about this, but I want to get to the reason I chose the title of this article, One for the Price of Three.
The DDG-1000 (AKA CG(X), Arsenal Ship, Zumwalt Destroyer, DD21, DD(X), etc) was originally intended to have a buy of around 32 ships or so. 
They became so expensive and the requirements bounced around so much, we began advertising it as a fire support ship vital to the survival of the Marines during amphibious assaults. As such, we only needed about 10-12, just enough to support the number of amphibious ready groups (ARGS) we had at the time. The Marines were happy about that, even though they preferred to have 2 per ARG. I even went over to the Hill with my Marine counterpart extolling the virtues of the DDG-21 as the perfect fire support ship for the Marines. But once the Marines realized that the cost of the ship was so high that it would probably limit the amount of other stuff they could buy, they dropped it like a hot potato…..they would much rather have the 360 V-22’s than 24 DD(X)’s. So in the space of about a month we changed our tune from”vital” to “not so vital.” Now that they are $3 Billion a copy, we are only building 3 of them and I’m not sure there’s a real requirement out there. As my Grandmother said when she got her first taste of champagne in one of those dinky champagne flutes at my son’s baptism, “That’s not enough to wet my whistle.” So it is with DDG-1000 IMHO. The real requirement as far as I can tell is to have something for Bath Iron Works to build ( they will build all three) so they can stay in business in order to address industrial base concerns. Hence the title of the article.
I propose instead of spending $9 Billion for 3 ships we don’t need, why not pay the shipyard to build it, take it apart and then build it again? It keeps them busy. The Navy doesn’t have to shoulder the Operations and Maintenance costs necessary to support a ship class of 3 ships, and we don’t have rustle up the personnel and training facilities which must be specially developed on this one-of-a-kind weapons systems. Heck, we will save money by doing that! Of course, this idea only works on Bizarro World.
That, by the way, is how Bizarro JosBanks works too. You pick out one suit and pay for three!
What a world, what a world!
I received several comments after I published my last article on “Leadership in the 21st Century” and I appreciate all the comments. In that article I commented on the recent case involving a former Commanding Officer of the Navy’s elite flight demonstration team, the Blue Angels. After consulting, conferring and otherwise hobnobbing with my fellow former Wizards, I thought I might offer up just a few more comments on the subject before forever holding my peace on the subject of Capt. McWherter and the Blue Angels. There was a lot going on there besides just the failure of judgement of the CO, including limited oversight by the Navy and the absence of an Executive Officer senior enough to step in and provide some advice and counsel. More on that later.
I was struck by a recent Gallup Poll which once again found the Navy as the least prestigious of the Services. I’m not sure what that means since most of what Mr. and Mrs. America think about the Services is a product of their own (the Services’) PR machines. Wasn’t it the Navy that successfully extracted the Captain of the Maersk Alabama? Wasn’t it the NAVY SEALS that terminated Mr. B. Laden? Wasn’t it the Navy that was first on the scene providing relief during Hurricane Katrina, and Indonesia and Japan? Doesn’t the President always ask “Where are the carriers?” whenever something goes wrong in the world? Doesn’t the Navy run the White House mess? Isn’t it CAPTAIN Kirk, not Colonel Kirk? Jeez , what do you have to do to become the most prestigious Service around here? I know……..Sponsor a race car that wins the Daytona 500! Or make a cool commercial about killing dragons and rescuing damsels! Or lose track of a couple of nukes!
The notion struck me that part of the problem is that the Navy is too transparent. We not only advertise when we relieve Commanding Officers (don’t think that the other Services don’t relieve their share of Commanders) but we also come clean when we relieve senior enlisted advisors. You just don’t hear much about that from the other Services. Of course it’s a big news item these days and I liken the problem the Navy finds itself in with regards to negative publicity to the problem I have on the golf course…..Once I’m in the woods, it’s almost impossible to get out. Either I schwack another tree in my current thicket, foolishly trying to thread the needle between a couple of obstructing trunks, or I wind up in the woods on the other side of the fairway because I gooned up my attempt to pitch out. Why I don’t just pick it up and take a “Snow Man” when I wind up in the woods I’ll never know. That’s where the Navy is right now, in the trees and trying to pitch out.
This openness puts us behind the eight ball in my humble opinion….On the other hand, I think being open about our problems is not all bad. At least it shows we are aware of the problem and attempting to deal with it. But what exactly is The Problem? Is it that the Navy has a crisis in leadership? I don’t think so……in fact I know that’s not the problem. With close to 300 ships, 50 or so aviation squadrons and probably at least 100 shore commands, we actually have very few COs that break the event threshold. In fact, you could write 100 good stories for every bad one…but that doesn’t sell papers.
I’ve commented before on abusive leaders, so I won’t beat that dead horse. The Navy and DoD have reacted to lost nukes, out-of-control Commanding Officers and other misdeeds by increasing ethics training, establishing an ethics Czar ( and a very capably one I might add), and adding ethics courses to Prospective CO schools and Senior Enlisted schools. But in the end, by then what is there to train? Someone is going to stand up in front of a class of prospective Commanding Officers and say……Don’t have sex with your XO, don’t use counterfeit casino chips, don’t fake your death to escape from your bad marriage, etc etc? I don’t think this will have much of an impact. It’s focusing on what not to do…….not what to do. The striking thing about almost all the heinous infractions that appear in the news is that none of them are questions on the margin. They are about personal failures by people who should know better. No amount of training will fix that. What we can do is:
The bottom line: Let’s spend more time on how to succeed in command,instead of how not to fail. There’s a big difference.
I know. I know. You are asking what can this article possibly be about? Well, it’s all about the DoD budget (the Dream) and sequestration (the Nightmare). I’ve been talking to a few budget folks over the past week and asking how is this year compared to others in terms of pain. The universal answer has been “Not so bad this year.” But soon all our dreams of finally getting some sanity in the budget process will give way to the nightmarish and forgotten process known as Sequestration. It’s been quite a journey to get to where the DoD budget is today. Despite all the dire warning about sequestration, all seems to be well for now. There’s some squeaking from the fringes about cuts to force structure, BRAC, pay and benefit cuts, rising health care costs, etc. There are still some struggles going in within the Navy about how many carriers and other combatants the Navy can afford. The Air Force is struggling to make ends meet by removing the A-10 from the battlefield, and the Army and Marine Corps are wrestling with end-strength reductions. Seems like a normal day in DC. I mentioned it’s been quite a journey to get here, and an improbable one at that. Let’s just review the history in case visiting Aliens would like a quick briefing (Do you think they would believe it?) or you want to explain it to your grandchildren.
August 2011. The President signed the Budget Control Act of 2011. The debt ceiling debate was in full swing but the BCA saved the day ( or so we thought). It did a few things:
December 2011. Oooops. The “Super Committee flopped” so the arbitrary cuts demanded by sequestration loomed for next year’s budget.
February 2012. DoD Budget for 2013 ignores sequestration.
December 2012. DoD finally starts planning for possible 2013 spending reductions demanded by sequestration.
January 1, 2013. The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 delays sequestration to March 1, 2013, and cuts some of the sequestration caps.
March 2013. Continuing Resolution funds Government till end of September 2013
October 1-16, 2013. Government Shuts down.
October 16, 2013. Congress passes the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2014 which funded the Government through February 2014 (actually it extended the debt ceiling limit)
December 26, 2013. President signs the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 which restored $45 Billion of sequestration cuts in 2014 and $11 Billion in 2015 by adding sequestration cuts to 2022 and 2023.
It this any way to run a railroad? No wonder nothing works right and everything the government does costs more. There’s no stability to allow for any sort of long-range plan. But you all know that. The point of all this is that through a series of improbable event, we have managed to kludge together funding to keep the US in business (such as it is). But there’s nothing in the works that I know of to fix 2016, the budget that being build right now in the Pentagon. And just like a scene out of Ground Hog Day, DoD is putting together a budget that ignores sequestration. Here’s a chart right out of the DoD 2015 Budget Briefing. Notice that there is no mention of sequestration (except to exclude it). 
Now here’s a rough chart (I’m sure the numbers are off slightly) of what sequestration funding levels are relative to the DoD budget. Notice it’s $115 Billion out of round through 2019. That’s how much money the Pentagon is stuffing into the budget over sequestration spending levels. 
The only point of this little tale is to impress upon you how important it is that we get this fixed. We can’t keep grinding our people into the dirt with endless budget drills which make no sense. There are three possible strategies to deal with the situation IMHO:
Where do I come down?…..What the heck….let’s go for number 1. It worked last time and the politicians always fix it in the end, no matter how much pain gets inflicted in the process. And so it goes………..
Let’s see…..What do I drive to work this morning? My Porsche or my Maserati? Gosh, it’s such a tough choice. When I read all the rhetoric coming out of the Pentagon theses days about the tough choices they are making over there, I tend to think that’s their definition of a “tough choice.” 
Granted they do make a few hard choices, but none of them are the budget choices they are making for the FY15 budget that’s on the Hill right now. They have so much money to deal with that the normal ways in which you or I would deal with problems is not possible. There are several reasons why I believe the tough choices are not possible. In fact, in the Pentagon the toughest choices are actually the easiest. Take for example the luxury of scale. Because of the vast quantity of money the Pentagon has, scale makes things easy. Let’s just say for the sake of argument that the total Pentagon budget for 2015 will be around $550 Billion. I’m working on the budget and I need to come up with $5oo million to pay for my “widget ” program because it’s two years behind schedule and Congressional support is waning. I dare not go to the Hill and ask for more money. What tough choices can I make? How about I assume the inflation rate for next year will be 0.1% less than it currently is….Guess what? Instant $550 Million in my pocket. Problem solved!
Another factor which prevents the tough decisions is the herd mentality. It’s much safer to stay with the herd than to break away. Suppose one senior leader in DoD, uniformed or civilian had said, “I value people over weapons. The margin of superiority that we enjoy over our adversaries is so great that I don’t mind shaving a few dollars off my massive budget to ensure I fulfill the promises we made to our Number One weapons system, our people.” What do you think would happen? That person would be dragged to the River Entrance and publicly flogged and made to walk the plank into the Pentagon Lagoon. So it’s much easier and safer to stay with the herd. The tough decision is to break away from the herd and stand on principle.
Yet another problem in the way of making tough decisions is the limited line of sight of senior people. They only know what their staffs want them to know. And if you have ever been a staffer, you know that staffs tend to seek out the solution of least resistance in order to move on to the next problem. Solving the problem is more important than how the problem was solved. If everyone tells SECDEF that the only way to balance the Pentagon budget is to make the tough choice to continue to fund (and actually add more money to) the worst performing acquisition program in history, the F-35, and to pull money from Commissaries, up TRICARE fees and fiddle around with the retirement system, he believes them. Somehow that seems like a no-brainer to me. A few billion dollars is not going to make a difference in the JSF. It’s already over $160 Billion over budget and 7 years behind schedule. Does anyone think the money saved by cutting Commissary subsidies by $1 Billion is really going to make a difference? Well, not to the JSF, but it will certainly make a difference to a young E-2 Marine who is already on food stamps and struggling to make ends meet!
There’s also the Irreversibility Principle. I saw this time and time again when I was in the building. In fact, I admit guilt in actually using the Irreversibility Principle to my advantage. It goes something like this: The DoD budget is so complex and large that once it’s put together, it’s impossible to start over. If you don’t get your oar in the water at the very beginning, then you will be unable to make a change. If you want to have any hope of making a tough decision with major impacts, it must be made very early. What do you think the DoD budget would look like if in the very beginning SECDEF had said, “Whatever we do to balance the budget, it must not be on the backs of our people.” I guarantee you there’s plenty of wiggle room to develop the budget without monkeying with people programs. Just take a look at my previous article, Food Stamps and Decisions, and you will see what other things might be done besides chopping people programs. The tough decision is to declare the Irreversibility Principle null and void and demand a change. Heck, there’s so much churn in the development of the budget these days a little more chaos isn’t going to make much of a difference.
Finally, there’s the Fixation problem. Ralph Waldo Emerson said ” A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” For example, over the past few years there has been attempt after attempt to raise TRICARE fees again and again and again…(sorry , I got carried away!). Each time it’s shot down by the Congress and public opinion. But it’s their baby now, and to back down would admit defeat. There’s a “pay any price, bear any burden” mentality now associated with the TRICARE issue to the detriment of looking for alternate solutions. This is what happened with Asiana Airlines Flight 214. The pilots got so focused on the landing threshold and altitude they forgot to monitor airspeed and engine power. The same thing happens in the budget process. People get so focused on a single solution that they forget to look for others.
So it’s hard to make tough choices in the Pentagon. If there’s any hope of actually getting to the tough choices that NEED to be made, the following “Tough” decision barriers must be addressed:
How will we know when “tough” decisions are being made? I think there are a few signs:
If the Five Barriers to tough decision making are removed, we just might see some of those signs in our lifetime.
There’s lots of hot air blowing about on the subject of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) inside the Beltway. I thought I put a few points out there as food for thought. First of all, a quick explanation of the BRAC process is in order (Here’s a link to the 2005 BRAC web page). BRAC is the process by which the Defense Department determines what US bases and facilities are no longer needed or facilities which should be repurposed, obtains Congressional approval to close those bases and goes about closing the bases The determination process is done secretly within each Service based on criteria set in advance by OSD and the Services. The Service data is then forwarded to OSD where the lists are “modified” to accommodate the desires of the OSD staff and SECDEF. This list is then presented to an independent BRAC Commission. The commissioners are appointed by the President, in consultation with the Congress. The BRAC staff reviews the recommendations, conducts field visits and hearings around the country, and then the Commission produces a list of base closures. This list is given to the President for review and approval who then forwards the list to Congress. Congress has 45 days to vote “all or none” (no modifications allowed) on the recommendations. If they do nothing, the recommendations become law and DoD has six years to close or realign the bases on the list. In past BRACs the DoD has done a variety of disposal actions, including Federal real property made available by public benefit conveyances for airport, education, and homeless assistance; federal transfers to native American tribes; economic development conveyances to local redevelopment authorities; and public sales.
Communities spend vast amount of money and effort preparing for BRAC, making sure the contributions to the local economy from local bases are well known, lobbying the Hill and Pentagon and generally stirring up dust in an attempt to “BRAC-Proof” their bases. That’s a big reason why the process is kept under wraps until released to the Commission.
The Defense Department says it needs BRAC to rid itself of excess infrastructure in order to reduce costs. The big question is rather or not BRAC closures actually achieve the projected savings. That’s a tough question because there is a fair amount of conflicting data out there. The DoD uses a model (critics say it’s flawed and inaccurate) called COBRA (Cost of Base Realignment Actions) that projects closure costs and the modeling results are generally used for racking and stacking the recommendations. To my knowledge, the model has never be compared to actual costs in order to validate its results (partly because I doubt if the real costs are known). I just don’t know enough about it to have an opinion either way, but given that determining costs is involved I tend to agree with the critics.
There have been several problems related to BRAC which have limited savings or increased costs:
I just read today that the Navy’s Treasure Island Facility, BRACed in 1993, is now scheduled for radiation testing because high levels of radioactivity have been detected in the housing areas. YIKES!
The CNO has said that the Navy does not need another round of BRAC , but the Army and the Air Force maintain that it’s needed. The Army’s position is certainly understandable given the personnel reductions they are facing.
Although great pains were taken to “de-politicize” the BRAC process, politics inevitably creep in. Take for instance the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard located in Defense Committee Heavy New England. Its main purpose was to refuel nuclear submarines. The Navy’s newest version, the Virginia-class is designed to last 30 years without refueling. The last of the submarines requiring refueling are long gone, but when the Navy tried to close it, the fan was clogged by politics and it was removed from the list.
So keep an eye out in the Defense Budget debate over the next few months. To Bric-a-BRAC? That is the question.
I was honored to be on the waterfront last week and had an opportunity to meet officers and Sailors on a soon-to-deploy ship and boy did I leave feeling good about our Navy. Everyone I talked to, from seaman to the Captain, were excited about their ship, their contribution to national security and the upcoming deployment. Their enthusiasm was genuine as it was a weekend and I’m sure they would have rather been with their families. It reminded me of a saying I used to share with my audiences when I was important (at least in my own mind): Every day I spent at sea I got a day younger, and every day I spent in the Pentagon I got ten days older! That certainly explains why I look so old now–too many days in the Pentagon and not enough days at sea. It’s probably not intuitive to you land-lubbers, but being at sea and on deployment is the easiest part of the whole cycle. Before deployment there are endless exercises, training and long hours preparing for the task ahead. Many would say that’s the hardest part of being in the Navy. That’s not to lessen the impact of being away from family and friends…there’s always that. But Navy leaders have done a lot to lessen the distance between families during deployments. Sailors are generally well connected to their loved ones by internet, email and instantaneous telephone connectivity. During my first deployment in 1975, the lovely Mrs. Crenshaw and myself exchanged daily letters, sequentially numbered on the back flap so we could read them in chronological order. Nothing’s worse than reading about your son being released from the hospital when you didn’t even know he was in the hospital to begin with. I wish we could establish a program that gets all Pentagon confines out in the field a couple of time a year so they could recharge their batteries. I felt even better when I had the opportunity to meet with Soldiers this morning, many just returned from Afghanistan and many more looking to go back in less than a year. I didn’t hear one sour note. They were all ready and willing to go back, despite the hardships on their families. As I read the news about the possibility of us pulling our of Afghanistan, I can’t help but think about the 2176 brave Americans who gave their lives for this cause. We could argue all day about rather or not Afghanistan is a critical aspect of protecting America’s freedom and I frankly don’t care which side of the argument you are on…..The fact is 2176 have died for the cause. To pull out lock, stock and barrel would be a dishonor to them and the families who remain behind.
And I can’t imagine how anyone can look them in the eye and tell them that they are pulling the plug on their Commissary benefits, or telling them that their health care is too expensive so when they retire, they will have to pay more. I would rather see us spend all the money and effort people are spending on marginal costs on homeless veterans and jobs for veterans and other programs which honors their service, not puts a price tag on it.