Mac Thornberry's defense acquisition reform proposal and its limitations

Representative Defense Reform Proposal

Defense reform has always been an issue with the federal government -- one that has been difficult to find real solutions. The main problem with the reform bills passed over the decades is that they tend to lead to ever greater swelling of the defense bureaucracy. With so much oversight and red tape to maneuver, defense production actually decreases and waste results. The current defense reform proposal by Thornberry is an attempt to fix the situation: Thornberry wants reform to happen by eliminating the bureaucracy and allowing more decisions to be made by leaders who actually understand the issues in defense. This paper will discuss the problems with defense reform in the past and how Thornberry proposes to address it.

Over the past few years, defense reform has sputtered badly: as Bucci and Maine (2013) make clear, \"one-third of defense procurement costs go to overhead\" -- for defense reform has consistently been based on the premise that more centralization would \"solve whatever shortcomings exist in the system.\" Or, in other words, the bureaucracy would figure out a way to cut costs in the long run, as the nature of bureaucracy is to be efficient. Simply going back to the 2005 memo from Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England in which the Deputy Secretary asserted that the \"system is not working properly\" (Spring, 2005). Defense was spending too much on losing propositions, and wasting capital on projects that were failures. Leaders were unwilling to cut losses -- and so they piled up higher than they should have.

Such was the main issue with reform. Today, however, controlling that waste has become a serious problem: As the Joint Chiefs of Staff iterated in 2014, \"military leaders must contend with ever-evolving, ever changing threat environment, even as our defense acquisition system fails to deliver timely and affordable capabilities\" (Ferreira, Harrison, Maine, Mcginn, Rodriquez, 2015). The military is falling behind and the reform measures on the table -- such as Thornberry\'s proposal -- aim to make the defense acquisition process \"more proactive, agile, transparent, and innovative\" -- yet the underlying problems at the heart of defense remain in spite of these proposals (Ferreira et al., 2015). The issue is that defense is trying to carry too many eggs in one basket and believes that somehow it will work so long as all the right minds come together and the right programs are put in place: the eggs will all fit. Yet with Congress always teetering back and forth between left and right, and the military industry out of touch with the latest in innovation (watching from the sidelines as Russia\'s missile defense takes the lead), it is difficult to see how any single reform can solve the problem. With so many cooks in the kitchen, there is bound to be some disagreement and little resolution: what is needed is leadership and a clear-cut decision, goal, purpose, objective and path forward. Even Thornberry\'s proposal suggests as much (Ferreira et al., 2015).

Freedberg (2013) summarizes the situation tersely in view of Thornberry\'s proposal: the concept the Congressman is aiming to promote is essentially that Congress should heal itself. Thornberry recognizes the fact that \"we\'re not going to make things better by piling on new mandates, new oversight offices, new micromanagement\" (Freedberg, 2013). Thornberry wants a purge -- he is proposing reform that takes away the many several heads currently operating in defense -- paving the way for actual leadership to take the reins and make the necessary decisions that will enable defense to get where it needs to be. Thornberry\'s proposal essentially is calling for Congress to get out of the way and enable \"government managers to make decisions and industry to make a profit\" -- while both are held accountable (Freedberg, 2013). The reform suggested by Thornberry is, however, just as idealistic as any that has been proposed in the past: decision-making and profit taking have always been factors in defense spending and oversight -- but accountability is something that has not. Expecting it now would suggest that there is someone or some entity in existence that would hold government officials accountable for delays, waste, or bad decisions. The current system, administration and powers in authority do not make accountability a sure-thing -- thus, reform will go on -- and on.