Small Wars Journal

Moving the Needle of Pentagon Reform

Mon, 07/30/2012 - 5:51am

In private meetings with senior leaders, I explain how parochialism, ambition and greed have corrupted our national security apparatus. Bad advice and bad decisions are not accidents, but the results of a system that rewards bad behavior. I see a glimmer of recognition in their faces, a sense that the problems I’ve described are real but not intractable. They ask a question, and then interrupt my answer with another, and another after that: We’re better than this, aren’t we? But soon the glimmer fades, and the eyes shift downward, as if to calculate the odds and costs of reforming an entrenched bureaucracy. The voices go flat and the faces impassive.

--Col Paul Yingling, Washington Post, 4 Dec 2011

As a civil servant I enjoyed an unblemished record until 2007, when I blew the whistle on a procurement breakdown caused by Marine Corps support institutions in Quantico, Virginia.  I felt it was my duty, because vital equipment was not getting delivered to the field, and many lives were being unnecessarily lost…although my charges have largely been confirmed, my professional life has been a nightmare ever since, and I anticipate further retaliation….

--GS-15 Franz Gayl, speaking before the

U.S. House of Representatives,

Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,

14 May 2009.

Part IV: Moving the Needle of Pentagon Reform.

Part IV of this series will explain how reformers forced the Pentagon Establishment to apply maneuver doctrine to the support establishment value chain: Marine Corps Order 3900.17 “Urgent Needs Process” (rapid maneuver for technology) would have never existed otherwise.  Then, a reverse-engineering of the tricks the Pentagon Establishment uses to maintain control over the levers of device initiation will be provided.  Finally, additional comments on the illicit attempt to end the career of a truthteller, Mr. Franz Gayl will be provided, along with an explanation on how Gayl fits the Boyd/Hackworth mold.  Recommendations for change from Part I will be reiterated and expanded.  These change recommendations are not conceptually difficult, but they are morally difficult to achieve in a very large organization that is peppered with middle managers who do not want to change.

Maneuver Doctrine for Technology Programs

In business and in the military, sometimes you need to do things rapidly and sometimes you need to do things in a more deliberate fashion.  It is the same with technologies that are important to the success of a war effort.  When you have to do things rapidly, sometimes it is helpful to have business continuity plans for business or military contingency plans.  In either case, you need to be able to rapidly maneuver when the original plan does not work out so well. 

Marine Corps Order 3900.17, “Urgent Needs Process,” would not have existed without repeated intervention from reformers who understood this.  In this section, the military’s war planning process is provided as an analogy.  Then, a quick explanation will illustrate how it took three attempts over a period of several years to apply this thinking to technology in the Marine Corps.  Finally, the rough outlines of a charter for a specific, quantifiable change effort will be provided within this section: Creation of a new Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication for technology, as a bridge between MCDP-1 Warfighting and two detailed processes, MCO 3900.15B and MCO 3900.17 “Urgent Needs Process”.

The USMC war planning manual has two sub-processes, deliberate planning and crisis planning.  Yet, until 1 July 2008, the USMC technology planning manual only had a deliberate Joint Capabilities Integration Development System (JCIDS) process—a slow-motion kluge that counts innovation in decades.  Reformers began what became a three-year effort to get a disciplined, transparent, rapid technology initiation process. It would take three attempts to get the USMC portion of the Pentagon Establishment to give us a Marine Corps Order for Urgent Needs.

First attempt to get rapid technology doctrine: Early in 2006 my command, Headquarters, Marine Forces Central Command (MARCENT), asked Marine Corps Combat Development Command (MCCDC) for revisions to the rapid technology Marine Administrative Message (MARADMIN) because it was a weak set of instructions for urgent new capabilities.  It was in its third version, and still no one in the middle-to-senior management in Quantico seemed to realize we needed it codified in doctrine.  I believed it was designed to give some warfighter support without giving up meaningful power in toolset initiation

MCCDC literally did nothing with our request: follow-up on the status revealed a GS-15 would do nothing with it.  We had seen urgent needs stonewalled, so it made no sense to waste our time pushing them to codify what Dr. Thomas Barnett would call a new “rule-set” because the effect of that new MCO would decrease Establishment influence over the levers of technology initiation.

Second Attempt: In late 2006, the Naval Audit Services (NAS) Urgent Universal Needs Statement (UUNS) auditors realized there were serious problems in how MCCDC conducted requirements definition for urgent warfighter needs.  They ultimately ruled MCCDC’s urgent needs effort was “not effective.”  During the audit, they twice asked me for solutions.  I explained the problems and identified the kinds of solutions that are necessary. 

I told the Naval Auditors that we had had a weak MARADMIN, and I told them why it was weak.  I gave them examples of Urgent Needs process exceptions that made no sense except when viewed as examples of pernicious attempts to protect programs of record.  What we needed was a more authoritative Marine Corps Order that would take power out of the hands of the Pentagon Establishment and give Urgent Needs a meaningful seat at the table in Quantico.  In Sep 2007, the NAS UUNS auditors agreed with these recommendations.  In the Marine Corps’ official response to the audit, MCCDC agreed to write a MCO for Urgent Needs. 

Unfortunately, MCCDC gave us a musclebound head fake.  They responded in early 2008 with minor changes to a deliberate-planning JCIDS order (MCO 3900.15B) and told the Commandant that new order was responsive to the audit.  In March 2008, this led to an embarrassing conversation between the Commandant and the Senate Armed Services Committee.  Shortly thereafter I was interviewed (for approximately eight hours) by DoD Inspector General MRAP auditors.  I explained my first attempt with the UUNS audit, and explained what MCCDC was trying to do with MCO 3900.15B.  I told DoDIG auditors that the Pentagon Establishment’s JCIDS order, MCO 3900.15B had no meaningful urgent needs process in it. 

Third attempt: Via the DoD Inspector General MRAP auditors, in early 2008, I asked for a third time for a meaningful MCO for Urgent Needs.  Mr. Gayl and I detailed again what that should mean in no uncertain terms in an 11-page position paper sent directly to the auditors.  Finally, on 1 July 2008, we got an acceptable MCO for Urgent Needs from MCCDC, thus applying maneuver warfare theory to the USMC portion of the Support Establishment in a meaningful way for the very first time.  Grasping for straws, the Establishment in MCCDC tried to call it a Marine Corps “bulletin”.  I viewed this as a last gasp of an attempt to give it less authoritative weight.  They did not push it to the operating forces, I had to ask them for it.  Finally, we got it.

And so we see that MCO 3900.15B (“Expeditionary Force Development” System for deliberate technology planning) and MCO 3900.17  (“Urgent Needs Process” for rapid technology planning) are equivalent to MCWP 5-1, Marine Corps War Planning Process.   For those looking for detailed recommendations for change, here’s a suggestion tailor-made to charter a major change effort. 

Let’s consider the top three levels of Marine Corps Doctrine. 

At the very top we have one seminal publication, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1 (MCDP-1), Warfighting.  The second level of Marine Corps Doctrine has, more or less, one MCDP for each function of the General Officer’s Staff.  For example: there is an MCDP for Operations, applying to the G3.  There is an MCDP for Logistics, applying to the G4.  And there is an MCDP for Planning, applying to the G5. 

Below MCDP-5 Planning we have a third, more detailed level of doctrine.  For example: MCWP 5-1 describes the war planning process, as mentioned above.

Marine Corps Doctrine for technology needs to catch up with these other major functions on the General Officer’s staff.  We have two detailed technology-related processes at the 3rd level of Marine Corps Doctrine: MCO 3900.15B and MCO 3900.17.  I’ve already stated how application of Boyd’s theory—principles in MCDP-Warfighting—led reform-minded officers to request rapid maneuver for new warfighter technologies.  But we are lacking an overarching “why” for technology at the second level. The next step in doctrine development will be for emerging theory in the technology landscape of strategy to be captured in an equivalent to MCDP-5 Planning.  We could call it “MCDP-10 Technology” and it would capture the foresight provided by fundamental frameworks of all technological analysis. These fundamental frameworks are the technological equivalent of Macro Economics (this theory was outlined at the 2010 Boyd Conference and to several current and former DoD leaders).  This theory will be the subject of Part V in this series.

MCDP-10 Technology would provide the basis of the emerging trend of having a trained technologist as a principle staff officer, just as we have trained logisticians and war planners to lead the G-4 and G-5 functions of the General Officer’s staff and just as businesses are already doing with Chief Technology Officer/Chief Information Officer roles.  About half of the senior USMC commands in Iraq and Afghanistan had a Technology and Innovation principle staff officer who was co-equal with, say, the G3 Operations officers, and about half had this role subordinated to the G3 Operations Officer.  We need qualified individuals as principle staff officers in the technology role, not the last “unlucky” colonel to walk through the door who ends up being “stuck” with the Technology and Innovation portfolio.  Someone who has actually studied macro-technology analysis should write it, someone from outside the Quantico Establishment, just as we had outsiders write FMFM-1 (MCDP-1 Warfighting) many years ago.

If the USMC portion of the Pentagon Establishment had studied maneuver warfare more carefully, they would have noted that Boyd’s first application of his theory was in fighting the Pentagon Establishment regarding new toolsets for war.  They would have also noted that his first application of maneuver warfare was in an insurgency against the Pentagon EstablishmentThose telling us that American Industry could not maneuver rapidly to build trucks should have noted that one of the great maneuverists who inspired Col. Boyd’s theory on maneuver warfare was Taiichi Ohno—a vehicle manufacturer for a little company now known as Toyota!  The Establishment failed in foresight, and they failed to apply maneuver warfare to the support establishment value chain.

How the Establishment Maintains Power and Avoids Accountability

What are some of the cynical and viciously bureaucratic tools that are used to maintain power and avoid accountability?  For sake of brevity and gentility these will be explained, in most cases, without examples.

If the Pentagon Establishment wants to spike a requirement they say they will “study” an issue even when they do not plan to study it, and they publish no timeline for when it will be completed.  They assassinate the character and the career of their opponents with whispering campaigns, or get them reassigned to remote bases.  They obfuscate descriptions of toolsets, technologies, and programs. They invent new excuses for their decisions after-the-fact.  They play a game I named “Race to the General” with good-sounding talking points leavened with their internal warp, presenting musclebound opinion as fact.  They use a technique I named “Backpressure,” using liaisons and allies assigned to deployed staffs to delay urgent requirements that they oppose.  One quick example: in late 2006, several requirements were being held-up at MNC-I due to Backpressure.  The Chief of Staff of CENTCOM (a Major General) intervened and broke them loose.  The leverage they have over deployed liaisons from their own commands to units in theater is obvious.  They have unexpected leverage over officers on deployed staffs: some of them hope to get a Pentagon Establishment job when they return from deployment.  Any officer who “goes native” to support warfighter needs risks his or her job upon return.

They constantly morph explanations with creative retroactive reinterpretations of events to cover their lack of foresight and lack of honest analysis of technology, just to maintain control over the levers of device initiation and protect Programs of Record.  They sacrifice the careers of people like Mr. Gayl on the altars of their desire for power and promotion.  I could fill a book with stories that explain each of these cynical tricks.

The (Nearly-Successful) Ending of a Reformer’s Career

All this brings us back to an example of everything that is wrong with the Pentagon Establishment, the illicit attempt to end the career of Mr. Franz Gayl, Science Advisor, Plans, Policy and Operations, Headquarters Marine Corps.  The Establishment would have had us believe that Mr. Gayl is a poorly performing employee.  According to news reports (linked in Part I of this series), several USMC leaders tried to convince us that Mr. Gayl should be fired for using a thumb drive (an unfounded charge).  They initiated an NCIS investigation in a manner that betrayed much greater concern for “getting” a whistleblower than for protecting our Nation’s secrets, without any sort of reasonable due process.  When a federal judge refused to let NCIS search his house (thus ending that investigation), they latched onto an unproven charge of use of a thumb drive as part of an ongoing campaign to spin his performance as sub-standard.  When an employee is viewed as a trouble maker, the way to get rid of him is to “build a case” against him in his personnel file.

From the standpoint of military justice, this makes as much sense as court marshaling a USMC Medal of Honor winner for disobeying an order to not go into the kill-zone of an ambush and try to save his fellow Marines and Afghan soldiers.  But when it comes to moral courage in Washington D.C. the Department of Defense evidently would rather fire someone who played a very important role in preventing as many as 10,000 casualties.  To attempt to juxtapose accusations of use of a thumb drive against Mr. Gayl’s brilliant contributions was an insult for Gayl and for the White House Office of Special Counsel to even have had to address.  A list of the categories of his contributions follows shortly.

Mr. Gates was pleased with what he learned from the press, as stated in his final news conference as SECDEF.  Much of that information was due to Mr. Gayl’s conversations with Congress.  Congress was pleased with what Mr. Gayl told him, but their attempts to support Gayl on a personal level were ultimately insufficient—they could have defended him the way they defended Admiral Rickover.  As for Mr. Gates, he appeared to want to have it both ways: he wanted the information the press obtains from Congress and from leaks of unclassified information, but he did nothing to give legitimate venues for the leaked information to reach him any other way.  He wanted Mr. Gayl to act like Boyd, but he did nothing to support him. By contrast, when General Al Gray set out to change the Marine Corps, he went out and found Colonel Mike Wyly.  He had him reassigned to Quantico and gave him authority, both positional and implied.  He gave Wyly an open-door policy. 

The Pentagon Establishment is busy trying to rewrite history and several of them have offered a story very different than what is presented here.  Their problem is at least threefold: 1) the basis for these comments supporting Mr. Gayl is documented, 2) in most cases the basis is eyewitness, and 3) key judgments herein have been confirmed in several audits. Much of this author’s perspective is based on eyewitness leadership and participation in disruptive technology efforts, including being one of the first five officers to have initiated the entire MRAP program as we know it today.  As previously stated, MRAPs are the largest program of its kind since WWII.  In the course of these events I repeatedly saw the USMC portion of the Pentagon Establishment use each of these bureaucratic tricks to attempt to block, inhibit or slow-down MRAPs and several other devices.  Joint Program Office-MRAP’s theme, “Ultimate Team Sport” buying MRAPs 2007-2010, was great to see.  But it was made possible by the technology insurgency of 2006-2007. 

Mr. Gayl is only the latest to be treated this way.  All reformers are attacked in this manner, as were with Boyd, Burton, Spinney, Hackworth, Wyly, Yingling, and others.  This series reconfirms that there is, essentially, no difference between the PP&O Science Advisor’s MRAP Case Study (published Jan 2008) and the DoD Inspector General MRAP audit’s judgments (published Dec 2008).  The PP&O Science Advisor MRAP Case Study’s judgment of “criminal negligence” of the middle-managers in MCCDC was deemed incorrect by DoD Inspector General MRAP auditors.  Col. Jim Burton’s description of “moral and ethical corruption” on the part of the accusers would have been more precise.

After Congress and Mr. Gates gave them an offer they could not refuse, and the truth of their conduct up to that time was revealed, the Pentagon Establishment’s story about what went on in 2005 and 2006 morphed as Mr. Gayl, Congress, Mr. Gates, the Press, and several internal audits from three different DoD audit organizations shined light on their statements and conduct.  New, retroactive arguments for why MRAPs were not purchased in 2005 were invented.  We have many of the Pentagon Establishment management problems laid out for us in five audits:

--DoD Inspector General criticism of sole-sourcing MRAP contracts to a small company that had never made vehicles before (June 2007).

--NAS UUNS audit (Sep 2007), where the Urgent Needs program of MCCDC was determined to be not effective.

--DoD Inspector General MRAP audit (Dec 2008), the most powerful evisceration of the Pentagon Establishment in this list.

--Government Accounting Office critique of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (April 2009): several hundred million dollars, and no weapons to show for it.

--DoD Inspector General Dazzler Audit (Jan 2011), where a MCCDC civilian gave yet another flat denial of error, even though this particular situation had been judged by other auditors in Sep 2007 as being an example of incompetence, and that audit was accepted by the Commandant of the Marine Corps.

In 2003, one colonel (a Marine regimental commander) was fired for leading his unit too slowly in the three-week drive toward Baghdad.  Yet, no comparable Pentagon Establishment official was fired for the incompetence evident in these five audits.  By their public comments, some officers and GS personnel in the Pentagon Establishment act as if some of those audits’ findings never existed.  The message seems to be: if you don’t recommend change, if you support the Establishment, you are more likely to get promotions, awards, and increased responsibility.  To paraphrase COL. Paul Yingling, a private who loses a rifle will suffer greater consequences than a GS-15 in the Pentagon Establishment who resists the signature new technologies of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The True Value of Mr. Franz Gayl’s Contributions

Mr. Gayl has now been restored as justice requires.  One can almost hear his detractors grasping for patronizing nonsense like, “He beat the rap on a technicality,” “We don’t need Mr. Gayl as a Science Advisor,” or “We don’t need him as a Technology thinker in the Pentagon.”  

Let there be no mistake: he won his case because it was good and honorable and just.  He won his case because he displayed superior understanding of technology in war, when the chips were down, at a time when we needed it.  He won his case because he out-thought his opponents in the Pentagon Establishment.  He won his case because he did the job the Pentagon Establishment could not bring themselves to do. 

Mr. Gates revealed the true utility of MRAP vehicles in June 2011—thousands and thousands of lives saved, and multiples of that in terms of limbs.  In Mr. Gayl’s role advocating that one technology alone, we see the true value of Mr. Gayl’s contributions: spouses, children, friends reunited with those who came home from war;   Congress pleased, willing to continue funding the war.  But there are many other COIN capability toolsets with Mr. Gayl’s fingerprints on them.  DoD has not had occasion to reveal any analysis on offensive toolsets for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that Mr. Gayl played a central role in conceiving and how they help our forces take the fight to the enemy in highly useful ways.  The number of ways in which Mr. Gayl helped the warfighter win the war is innumerable.

Did Mr. Gayl do “everything” right when he played a key role initiating…

--increased MRAP requirements

--“Plus” armor that would one day save a Lt. General’s life and several others (24 Aug 2008)

--ubiquitous ground cameras

--ubiquitous drones (one of Mr. Gates’ favorite capabilities)

--Marine Corps Order 3900.17

--perhaps 20 other devices and

--the first doctrinal application of maneuver warfare theory to the support establishment? 

Of course not—and neither did John Boyd when he and his associates initiated…

--the energy-maneuverability theory (the basis for fighter aircraft design and evaluation),

--the F15, the F16, the A10, the F18,

--a new version of FM 100-5, MCDP-1,

--honest Bradley testing and

--maneuver warfare theory.

The only reason the Pentagon Establishment wants to focus on Mr. Gayl is to remove focus on the conduct of those who have been trying to illicitly destroy his career during the past four years.  Both Boyd and Gayl suffered repeated attempts from Establishment forces to have them reassigned out of technology-related jobs.  Anyone who would oppose decisions made by middle-management in MCCDC or Marine Corps Systems Command is held to a standard of not making any mistakes.  Meanwhile, the Pentagon Establishment gives us creative retroactive reinterpretations of their actions all day long with impunity.

Thankfully, civilian leaders in the U.S. Government came to the only reasonable conclusion one can come to regarding Mr. Gayl: they restored him fully to his position.  But this is not enough: we need to follow Mr. Gates’ exhortations and honor reformers. 

In honor of Mr. Gayl’s achievements, Congress can do as it did with Admiral Rickover and convince the DoD to retroactively get Mr. Gayl promoted to Senior Executive Service, a promotion that was recommended by a Lt. General as recently as Feb 2007.  We should give Mr. Gayl the highest DoD Civilian award in keeping with some of the awards Col. Boyd received.  Any other course of action is surrender to the Pentagon Establishment’s attempted stealing a patriot’s career as well as his singular accomplishments, and perpetuating the hyper-expensive, hyper-complex toolset philosophy of the military industrial complex.  The Pentagon Establishment already took a year of this patriot’s professional career on a set of carefully constructed arguments that were determined to be incorrect by senior civilians in the Executive Branch.  As VAdm Art Cebrowski said, we can have moral courage in Washington, D.C.  DoD can find a way to honor reformers. 

Conclusion

We cannot improve if we look in the mirror of these events and in the next moment disregard the obvious imperative to reform the Pentagon Establishment.  We must acknowledge that Mr. Gayl’s treatment by the Establishment has been no different than USMC Establishment treatment of Col. Mike Wyly for having the gall to suggest we should adopt maneuver warfare theory, no different than USAF Establishment treatment of John Boyd regarding many innovations, and no different than Big Army treatment of Col. Jim Burton regarding Bradley Fighting Vehicle testing.

Reform has properly begun with full restoration of Mr. Gayl.  This is proper because anything short of full restoration would have made all future possibility of change powerless: anyone who follows Mr. Gates’ advice and goes up against the Pentagon Establishment will know that no senior officer will have their back.  Even now, too many civilian government employees had to intervene on Mr. Gayl’s behalf for us to have confidence that senior uniformed officers will have the understanding, moral courage, or the mechanisms to give us a different outcome when the next innovator comes along.  The troops are still at risk.

As previously stated, the Secretary of Defense, in this administration and the next, needs to carefully plan a comprehensive, top-to-bottom reform of the Pentagon.  Reformers need to be brought inside the fold to be given increased responsibility, not sidelined or attacked.  Even with Mr. Gates cancelling many boondoggle programs, it is clear that we are not yet serious about eliminating the powerbase of the military industrial complex in the Pentagon.  The plan for reform needs to follow Dr. Kotter’s eight-step process for effecting change in large organizations.  The model needs to follow the Gen. Gray/Gen. Krulak comprehensive program for implementing maneuver warfare in the Marine Corps in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s: it took both Commandants to make that major change. 

Doctrine for technology based on emerging macro-technology theory must be created, adopted and integrated into Joint Publications for operations and planning.  USMC doctrine should change as previously outlined and all Services should conduct similar reviews in light of emerging macro-technology theory.  COL. Paul Yingling recommended that Congress  pass laws to change how General Officers are selected.  That, along with more effective use of the Senate’s consent of promotion of senior officers, can be tools of reform to make the Pentagon inhospitable to legacy thinkers. 

We need to re-think having all those GS-14s and GS-15s in MCCDC in positions to dictate toolsets that they themselves don’t have to deploy and use in combat.  Voting members of the MCCDC’s Combat Development Integration Board (CDIB) should all be active duty officers, and no officer at a requirements definition command like MCCDC should ever have a GS employee write his leadership evaluation.  Those who were members of the CDIB in 2005, when the Feb 2005 MRAP requirement was spiked, should be reviewed and recommended for other lines of work not involving technological foresight.  Perhaps we should return to primarily using uniformed officers in MCCDC and TRADOC. 

The Defense Science Board wrote a report in 2009 on “Fulfillment of Urgent Operational Needs.”  Their recommendations fit with the recommendations in this series of articles.  “A radically different culture is needed, one that is nurtured to be anticipatory, agile, schedule driven, capability-oriented.  The people enacting such a process should be the best and brightest, and the workforce should be very lean and without a bureaucratic mindset.  Personnel should operate in integrated teams involving the warfighter, acquisition, finance, technology, logistics, and training communities to enable speed and anticipatory thinking.  The teams need to focus on delivering true solutions, with no ‘drive-by fielding’…Leveraging commercial sector personnel can be a way to change culture….”

The alternative is that the middle-management of the Pentagon will perpetuate lack of foresight.  The alternative is to continue to allow DoD establishment technologists to repeatedly initiate hyper-complex toolsets and fight for each respective Services’ piece of the budget at the expense of the Nation’s safety.  The Marine Corps’ treatment of Mr. Gayl has been a symptom of the cancer that is still among us in the Pentagon Establishment. 

While the focus of these criticisms is on permanent personnel in GS-14, GS-15 roles in Requirements Definition and Acquisition commands (and some twilight-tour field-grade officers), no doubt some military leaders will take these reform recommendations personally.  They will remind us of their combat leadership and physical courage on the battlefield.  Yet, no one doubts their success in combat leadership.  But capacity to command in Afghanistan or Iraq, or willingness to deploy, willingness to risk one’s life in combat is not the issue here—neither was it the issue with General Officers serving under the six Supreme Commanders profiled in Dr. Cohen’s book, Supreme Command.  It was not the issue for General George Marshall’s or Abraham Lincoln’s quest for Lt. Generals and Generals, either.  I say again: Mr. Gates found the Pentagon “Not on a wartime footing” in 2007, five years after the war began, long after most senior roles in the Pentagon Establishment were filled by combat veterans.  The vision for Mr. Gates’ reform is not catching on. 

Simply put, it does not matter if one shows physical courage in Iraq, or can lead troops in combat in Afghanistan, if when they return to jobs at the Pentagon or in Quantico they meekly let the military industrial complex’s moral corruption continue.  And make no mistake; the military half of that Complex is most culpable.  When it comes to military technology, the DoD should not have to rely on people like Chairman Duncan Hunter and Chairman Gene Taylor to understand what toolsets work on the battlefield, and prioritize them. Unless aggressive measures are taken to fight the cancer of the Military Industrial Complex, our nation remains at unnecessary risk from internal DoD weakness. Hopefully, the recent restoration of Mr. Gayl has struck fear into the Pentagon Establishment, an example that Business As Usual in the Pentagon Establishment may no longer be tolerated.  Restoration of Mr. Gayl has been a good start for an expansive reform campaign that is led from the top and relentlessly implemented from the top of the Pentagon to the bottom.

About the Author(s)

Thaddeus L. Jankowski is a colonel in the United States Marine Corps, Reserve, and an Infantry Officer.  He has been mobilized three times and deployed twice, spending 4 of the past 10 years on active duty.  In his civilian career he is a technology consultant at a variety of large corporations.  He has a Master of Science in Management of Technology (MS-MOT) from the University of Minnesota’s Technology Leadership Institute.  His undergraduate degree is from Wheaton College (IL), where he majored in Mathematics and Philosophy.  The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Marine Corps, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.