WASHINGTON — Secretary of Defense Ash Carter wants to clarify the role of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, see service chiefs have a greater hand in acquisition, and winnow the number of four-star billets, all part of a major reform effort to the rules that govern the Pentagon.
Carter’s proposals come under the aegis of reforming the 1986 Goldwater Nichols Act, which gave the Pentagon its modern structure. While the system worked well for a time, both members of Congress and Pentagon leaders have expressed a belief that the system needs to be reworked for the modern battlefield.
Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Tuesday, Carter made the case for why and how the Goldwater-Nichols legislation should be changed.
Carter's social engineering policies have been an utter disaster, but on this, he's right. So much of GNA is obsolete, and badly in need of reform.
Were it up to me, there would be two combatant commanders, Pacific and Atlantic, with three star subordinates for the various long term theaters, such as Europe, Central Command, and what not. As needed, theaters of operations could be opened. That wasn't how GNA envisioned things. For instance, GNA saw the Centcom commander being both the peacetime interface with local nations in the Middle East, and as the theater commander in the event of a shooting war. And that's what happened in Desert Storm. But then we found ourselves fighting concurrently in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and in essence, CENTCOM opened two theaters of operations, each with its own 4 star commander, reporting to CENTCOM.
As to procurement, so much of the inefficiency is driven by the need for a service to justify a program to DoD and the Defense Advisory Board. The perfect example of this is as GEN Milley pointed out, the ongoing effort to buy a new pistol. The requirements document is something like 350 pages.
Really?
PEO Small Arms is run by a Colonel, who should be able to invite a shootoff between a few brands, and then pick one and make the buy out of petty cash. It's a pistol, not rocket science.
And finally, yes, let's please water down the joint tour requirement for field grade officers. A large part of why staffs are so bloated is that you have to have a ton of joint billets so every field grade officer has a shot at qualifying for promotion to General.
XBradTC 
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