the Military Departments as separate, independent, executive-level entities. (2) Independent Political Bases Beyond the independence provided to the Service Secretaries in statute, there have also been concerted efforts to appoint senior civilian officials in the Military Departments who have independent political bases either in the White House or the Congress. Service officials with substantial outside political support can effectively frustrate initiatives of the Secretary of Defense, either by preventing issues from being raised or blocking implementation of decisions. Even when the Secretary of Defense is aware of such activities by the Service Secretaries, he may not have the political muscle to discipline or fire them. As John Kester notes: ...the secretary of defense, if he wants to be sure of their loyalty, is better off with service secretaries who do not have powerful independent political bases on Capitol Hill or in the White House, or who for any reason can think of themselves as "fire-proof." ("Do We Need the Service Secretary?", page 158) Former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown also notes this problem: ...In recent years Assistant Secretaries of the Military departments have often been appointed from the ranks of Congressional staffers in an attempt to cement departmental relations with Congress. Unfortunately, this practice has increased the likelihood of Service Secretariats' trying to bypass the Secretary of Defense in dealing with Congress....short circuits result, as the former Congressional staffers revert to their earlier loyalties. (Thinking About National Security, page 208) (3) Size of the Top Management Headquarters of the Military Departments Statutory and political independence, combined with the sheer size of their top management headquarters, give the Military Departments substantial capacity to block decisions that are not consistent with their point of view from being made or implemented. As Edward N. Luttwak observed about the military headquarters staffs in his book, The Pentagon and the Art of War: ...At present, they [the military headquarters staffs of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force] employ almost 9,000 people in uniform (mostly officers, and many of them of middle rank) -far more than in the Office of the Secretary, the Joint Staff (1,300) and the civilian-run secretariats of the Army, Navy, and Air Force combined (1,600). These numbers reveal the true balance of power: although the official table of organization puts them at the bottom below the civilian secretariats, who are in turn below the Secretary of Defense and his Office it is in fact the service headquarters that have the greatest power. Their huge size is only partly explained by their supervisory role over their own services (which is already the second layer of supervision, the first being provided by the management and force commands outside the Pentagon). In fact, the size of the Washington headquarters of each service also reflects their undeclared function, which is to manipulate the Joint Staff and even more to outmaneuver the Office of the Secretary of Defense. When a civilian official in that office produces a ten-page paper to argue for some decision or other that is uncongenial to a service, its Washington staff can reply with a one-hundred-page refutation; when three civilian officials probe a questionable service proposal, its staff can assign ten officers to defend the service point of view. By controlling the information on detailed matters within the service domain, and by sheer numbers, the headquarters of each service thus systematically resist central direction. If only because of the lively possibility of a hostile Congressional reaction, stimulated by the friends of each service on Capitol Hill, Secretaries of Defense are usually reluctant to overrule professional military advice which now comes from the service headquarters alone; and to seek alternative options from the Joint Chiefs and Joint Staff is futile. (pages 280 and 281) Luttwak notes only the power of the military headquarters staffs. However, if the military headquarters staffs have the capability to block decisions by the Secretary of Defense, the Military Departments with the resources of both the military headquarters staffs and the Service Secretariats working in concert -have an even greater capacity to ensure that many unfavorable decisions are not made or, being made, are not implemented. c. Lack of Consistency and Specificity in Statutory Descriptions of Service Secretary Positions Part of the confusion about the authorities, responsibilities, and roles of the Service Secretaries results from the different statutory descriptions of those positions. The position of Service Secretary is mandated by law, and the statutes describe each Service Secretary as the "head" of the respective Military Department. However, those same statutes, in attempting to describe what it is that the three Service Secretaries shall do as the "head" of their Departments, are neither consistent nor specific. Table 6-7 presents the statutory description of the roles of the three Service Secretaries. TABLE 6-7 STATUTORY POWERS AND DUTIES OF SERVICE SECRETARIES (As Specified in Title 10, United States Code) 3012. Secretary of the Army: powers and duties; delegation by (1) functions necessary or appropriate for the training, oper- (2) direction of the construction, maintenance, and repair of (3) acquisition of all real estate and the issue of licenses in (4) operation of water, gas, electric, and sewer utilities; and (c) The Secretary may assign such of his duties as he considers (d) The Secretary or, as he may prescribe, the Under Secretary or (1) the procurement activities of the Department of the Army; and (2) planning for the mobilization of materials and industrial organizations essential to the wartime needs of the Army. (e) The Secretary, as he considers appropriate, may assign, detail, and prescribe the duties of members of the Army and civilian personnel of the Department of the Army. (0) The Secretary may change the title of any other officer, or of any activity, of the Department of the Army. (g) The Secretary may prescribe regulations to carry out his func tions, powers, and duties under this title. 85031. Secretary of the Navy: responsibilities (a) There is a Secretary of the Navy, who is the head of the De- (b) The Secretary of the Navy shall execute such orders as he re- (1) the procurement of naval stores and material; (2) the construction, armament, equipment, and employment . of naval vessels; and (3) all matters connected with the Department of the Navy. (d) The Secretary of the Navy may prescribe regulations to carry § 8012. Secretary of the Air Force: powers and duties; delegation (a) There is a Secretary of the Air Force appointed from civilian (1) functions necessary or appropriate for the training, oper- (2) such other activities as may be prescribed by the Presi- (c) The Secretary may assign such of his functions, powers, and (d) The Secretary or, as he may prescribe, the Under Secretary or (1) the procurement activities of the Department of the Air (2) planning for the mobilization of materials and industrial (3) activities of the reserve components of the Air Force. (f) The Secretary may prescribe regulations to carry out his functions, powers, and duties under this title. The lack of consistency in these descriptions can be explained, to a limited extent, by the differences in forces, roles, and missions assigned to the three Military Departments. However, these differences do not explain, for example, why the Secretary of the Navy has been given the specific statutory responsibility and authority to "execute such orders as he receives from the President relative to" the procurement of naval stores and materials, the construction, armament, equipment and employment of naval vessels, and all matters connected with the Navy. (Section 5031 of title 10, United States Code) While both the Secretaries of the Army and Air Force have the statutory responsibility and authority to conduct activities prescribed by the President and to conduct departmental affairs directed by either the President or Secretary of Defense, neither of these two Service Secretaries have the special statutory responsibility for Presidential orders as does the Secretary of the Navy. It appears that this special statutory relationship between the President and the Secretary of the Navy is a holdover from an earlier organizational era when there was no government official other than the President to whom the Secretary of the Navy was subordinate. That is no longer the case and has not been since the creation of the position of Secretary of Defense. The continued existence of this apparently special responsibility of the Secretary of the Navy, without any evidence of need, can cause confusion and misunderstanding when attempting to define the role of the Service Secretaries. 2. UNNECESSARY STAFF LAYERS AND DUPLICATION OF EFFORT IN THE TOP MANAGEMENT HEADQUARTERS OF THE MILITARY DEPART MENTS A problem area that has frequently been identified is the existence of two separate headquarters staffs (three in the Navy) in the Military Departments: the Secretariat and the military headquarters staff. Critics believe that this arrangement results in an unnecessary layer of supervision and duplication of effort. This criticism must be considered in the context of the numerous staff layers that are involved in virtually every issue having multi-Service considerations: substantial staffs at one or more field commands or activities of each Service, the large military headquarters staffs, the Service Secretariats, the staff of the Secretary of Defense, and often the staffs of one or more unified or specified commands and the Joint Staff. It is a generally accepted principle of organization that unnecessary layers of supervision result in delays and micro-management and are counterproductive and inefficient. Additionally, while duplication of effort within an organization may be useful at times, if that duplication of effort does not result in some specific benefit to the organization, then the duplication is unnecessary and inefficient. The problem of unnecessary staff layers and duplication of effort in the top management headquarters of the Military Departments is compounded by the excessive spans of control of the Service Chiefs of Staff. (For this discussion of span of control, the Service Chief, Vice Chief, and senior administrative officer (e.g., Director of the Army Staff) are treated as one entity.) The Army Chief of Staff has 42 officials reporting directly to him (25 of whom are on the Army Staff); the Chief of Naval Operations, 48 officials (23 in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations); the Air Force Chief of Staff, 35 officials (21 on the Air Staff); and the Marine Corps Commandant, 41 officials (23 in Headquarters, Marine Corps). The large and cumbersome spans of control make effective supervision and coordination much more difficult. A number of studies of DoD organization have identified the existence of two separate headquarters staffs in the Military Departments as a problem. In December 1960, the report of the Committee on the Defense Establishment, chaired by Senator Stuart Symington, identified this issue as a problem and emphasized the need ...to minimize the duplication and delay growing out of the present multiple layers of control...(page 7) Similarly, the Report of the Blue Ribbon Defense Panel in July 1970 found: There also appears to be substantial duplication in all Military Departments between the Secretariat staffs and the military staffs. (page 38) The April 1976 report of the Defense Manpower Commission cast the issue of duplication of effort in a large context: Three layers [OSD, Service Secretariats, and military headquarters staffs] at the Department of Defense (DoD) executive level involved in manpower and personnel policy, planning and programming, and to some extent, operations, appear to be excessive. Given the basic nature of the Department of Defense, two layers -Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the Services [military headquarters staffs] -should suffice... (Defense Manpower: The Keystone of National Security, page 89) The Departmental Headquarters Study, submitted in June 1978, also focused upon layering in the top management headquarters of the Military Departments and its associated redundancy and duplication. In this regard, the study stated: ...we believe that layers should be reduced when their number produces duplication rather than a needed diversity of views. (page 45) In his book, Thinking About National Security, former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown argued that within the Military Departments there is a need To reduce the number of levels in an overly layered managerial structure...(page 208) Some integration of the Service Secretariat and the military headquarters staff has been undertaken in each of the Military Departments. In each department, there is only one staff for legislative affairs and only one staff for public affairs. Each of these staffs have civilian and military members, but the staffs in both of these areas provide single-source support for both the Service Secretary and Chief. A number of years ago, the Air Force integrated its two staffs for civilian personnel matters into one staff, and the Army |