[This article was first published in Army Sustainment Professional Bulletin, which was then called Army Logistician, volume 1, number 2 (November–December 1969), pages 4–7.]
Campaigning with a Union Army along the Red River in 1864, a correspondent for the New York Times noted the vast quantities of animals, wagons, forage, rations, and ammunition required to sustain the force in the field. He made an apt observation in a letter to his editor: "War is an enormous business. Bravery in the general is all very well, but business is what makes an Army."
More than 100 years later, the relationship between the U.S. Army, other military services, and business is the subject of intense national debate.
Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower referred to the relationship as "the military-industrial complex" in his farewell address to the nation. "Complex," as he used the word, clearly defined a whole made up of complicated or interrelated parts.
Today, in a debate notable for generating intense heat but very little light, one is sometimes left with the impression that the former President posed some alternative solution to the military-industrial complex. He did not. He acknowledged that the nation was compelled by external threats to create an immense military establishment with a large arms industry. His celebrated warning was not directed against the military, or against industry, or against the conjunction of the two. Rather he said "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence ... by the military-industrial complex."
It is one of the ironies of the current debate that President Eisenhower's reasoned appeal to the nation for balance in and among national programs is now so often cited by those who seek to destroy that balance.
Those who find something sinister in a relationship between the services and industry usually make three charges. The first is that the military-industrial complex is responsible for shaping a distorted national policy.
While the leaders of the government properly consult military advisors, the shaping of national policy is firmly in civilian hands. It is grossly unjust to infer that military leaders fail to recognize and support subordination of the military to civilian control exercised by the elected representatives of the American people. In the decisionmaking process, military men may not always agree with the decision but it remains their task to convince the civilian—not the reverse.
The second allegation is that the military-industrial complex fabricates threats to the United States in order to perpetuate disproportionately large defense budgets. The price of keeping the peace will never be cheap in an age of massive technological change. Left to themselves, military planners will always prepare for the worst possible contingencies.
Defense planning must be based on a potential enemy's capabilities as well as his current intentions. It must recognize needs not of today but of tomorrow. But it is a necessary one in defense matters. In weapons systems employing advanced technology, operational deployment can lag behind research and development by as much as 10 years. Waiting for a potential enemy to develop a firm operational capability with an advanced weapon before beginning development of one to defend against it, or to deter its use. Invites disastrous technological surprise, the kind that can and has changed the course of wars as recently as 1945.
Checks and Balances
Threat analysis is not the product of a rigidly conforming military thought process. Input from intelligence agencies and the National Security Council must be weighed and validated in arriving at a logical and realistic threat projection. Only that which can be validated and revalidated becomes a part of the approved threat. It is, in effect, a built-in system of checks and balances, which in many respects resembles those that shape legislation.
Understanding the pressures of time and the necessity of achieving an operational capability with a given weapon system at a finite point in time is to understand much of what otherwise seems inexplicable in the military-industry relationship. The knowledge that lost time can never be made up compels making decisions without positive assurance that things will work out as planned.
Despite the high cost of military preparedness, the cost of defense, relatively speaking, has declined since the Korean War. During 1953, 13.4 percent of our gross national product was being allocated to defense. In 1964, the percentage dropped to 8.3. It is estimated to 8.3 percent or lower in 1970. In percentage of total Federal outlay, defense costs amounted to 46.3 percent in 1959. They are estimated to be 40.3 percent in 1970.
The third allegation is that the military-industrial complex spends billions of dollars on the acquisition of inferior weapons which do not make a contribution to national security commensurate with their cost.
Most of the heat in the current debate stems from this persistent allegation. Arguments that the military-industrial complex is "bad" generally cite this as the clincher.
There is some waste. No management system—and the military-industrial complex is the world's largest and most complicated—is mistakeproof. The public has every right to demand and expect an accounting.
This nation, unless it chooses the path of unilateral disarmament. needs the products it gets from the military-industrial complex. Those who propose a return to the use of government arsenals to supply materiel for the military establishment, or who advocate a domestic industry which regards the sale of arms like any other commodity open to international competition, ignore the impact of on-rushing technology on the weapons acquisition process.
As our defense posture has come more and more to depend on weapon systems incorporating the latest technology, the armed services have relied less and less on their own laboratories and arsenals to design and produce weapons. For its part, industry develops capabilities different from those normally required for operation in a civilian market. The effect is to lock both in a relationship where each depends upon the other. Lacking much of the capability needed to research, develop, and produce weapons of the latest technology, the services are dependent upon industry. Government-oriented defense suppliers are equally dependent upon government contracts to support vast teams of technical talent they have been compelled to assemble.
The military brings to this environment a motivation turning on a primary concern for national security coupled with an awareness that it is spending public funds on devices and systems to maintain that security.
Industry’s Contribution
No one can deny that industry's primary motivation is profit. Those who expect industry to forego the profit motive ignore the primary reason for the use of private industry in the first place. Industry's contributions to the partnership are creativity, imagination, resourcefulness, and productivity.
The military partner, on the other hand, expects four things: quality, timeliness, reasonable cost, and performance. In battle, none of these are necessarily compatible with corporate profit and loss statements.
Should attempts be made to rigidly control costs and establish prices years into the future, both the military and the contractor become vulnerable to economic forces beyond their control. Inflexible adherence to a time schedule places a limit on technical innovation and runs the risk of fielding a weapon already overtaken by technology. Overemphasis on incorporating the latest in technology destroys schedules and can send costs skyrocketing. Cutting corners for the sake of profit or overemphasizing competition to reduce costs endangers quality and operational readiness.
In a typical contract situation, none of the four factors can be allowed to dominate. Each party to the government-industry relationship must strive to maintain a balance rather than achieve victory over the other.
The military-industrial complex emerged as a relationship born of necessity. It exists because it must exist. The form of collective management evolved has made real contributions to the security of this nation. It is far from perfect.
The problems this military-contractor conjunction pose and the proper solutions for them are too important to the nation's future to be dismissed lightly. Many critics dismiss them with a recommendation to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Few have addressed the root issue. None have stated it better than John Kenneth Galbraith when he wrote that the goal is not to make "military power more efficient or more righteously honest. It is to get it under control."
The well publicized "control" exercised by the Defense Department over the military-industrial complex during much of this decade was an exercise in "making military power more efficient and righteously honest." It was an exercise in control of efficiency rather than control in a program sense. A system of centralized, or stovepiped, control was instituted within the Defense Establishment. Rule was piled upon rule, enforced from the top down with a massive hierarchy that finally tied itself up in the details of regulation and administration. It was "control'' by individual system, not program. Those who favored it lost sight of the fact that what they were attempting depended upon too many individuals to be imposed from above. They depended, at last, upon the things that cannot be ordered: quality of workmanship, economy of operations, determination to be timely, satisfaction of military readiness requirements. These accrue from esprit, not mandate. They come from the working level.
It is the responsibility of the President and his advisors, including the Department of Defense, to assure appropriate controls that enhance and cause these things to happen. It is a violation of sound management principles to take over authority for the actual "doing" at the topmost level.
Control in a Program Sense
The view from the top must concern the whole. It must not be channelized down the stovepipes of individual systems. Such an operation loses sight of the forest as it minutely examines the thickness of bark, the flow rate of sap, and the fullness of leaf on single trees.
The real goal, control in a program sense, provides assurance that the military-industrial complex will never shape national policy or spend a disproportionate share of the national product to defend against false threats. That control properly comes from outside the Defense Department. It comes from the very top of the administration.
Someone needs to decide if we need everything we can build. That decision can properly be made, in most instances, within the Defense Department. A more basic decision must come first, however. That concerns what rightful share of the economy can go to defense while maintaining a proper balance between national security and domestic needs. Striking that balance is an external decision, the function of top level control.
Left to itself, the Defense Department may attempt to strike a balance between offensive and defensive weapons. However, it should be told what its task will be in the 1970's, what national objectives it will be called upon to support, and what resources will be allotted to do the job.
Control of the reasoned balanced between defense spending and our other needs is a logical and necessary first step and must come from the top. We cannot do everything we want to do, be it in the perfection of new weapons, meeting the urban crisis, or alleviating poverty. We can make a balanced approach to all, and all are vital to true national security.
Once long term objectives and long term allocation of resources to realize those objectives are decided upon, the portion allotted to defense must be examined in detail to achieve a balanced defense posture. Careful analysis shows that a balanced posture is the best choice. There is an inherent weakness in the constant temptation to overemphasize a particular weapon system. A determined potential enemy can concentrate his efforts to counter it. The most difficult defense to overcome is one balanced in reasonable relationship to the threat. This costs a potential enemy his greatest effort to overcome at any single point in time.
In deciding what future technical approaches to follow, the practice of selling a good idea clear to the top must be replaced with an approach that progressively selects the best ideas within the established budgetary restrictions. Decisions on new weapons must generate from the bottom, not unilaterally as they often have in the past. Within properly balanced budget restrictions, this concept provides increased competition and better management at each succeeding level. It lends greater assurance that only the most important concepts will be selected for production and deployment.
Best Overall Control
We can no longer afford to support the length and breadth of technology with isolated decisions without relating these decisions to the impact on the overall balance of effort. Controls must relate the decision process to the dollar level the nation can afford for defense and decide what are the best overall solutions within that dollar level.
This control, from the top down, inextricably fused to a level of effort consistent with a balanced security provides a base line to properly evaluate action that must be taken in the event of ballooning costs, slipping schedules, or failure to meet performance in a particular weapon development. It creates the environment for sharp competition, efficiency, quality, and performance without detailed materiel control from the top down.
This is control of the military-industrial complex—control that makes sense. It leaves industry to do those things it is geared to do best. It puts responsibility for decision and control squarely where it belongs. The highest level of Government determines policy and amount of effort. The military departments execute that policy and seek specific solutions.
LTG Charles W. Eifler is the Deputy Commander in Chief, U.S. Army, Europe and from July 1967 until September 1969, he commanded the U.S. Army Missile Command, Redstone, Alabama. Previously he commanded the 1st Logistical Command in the Republic of Vietnam.
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