Want to save on Pentagon overhead? Close down JFCOM

So recommends the Defense Business Board, an official advisory board that reports to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The news of the board’s pending recommendations came in a Defense News story. Here are some excerpts:

An influential Pentagon advisory board will recommend that Defense Department Secretary Robert Gates slash the civilian work force by more than 111,000 people and drastically pare the military’s combatant command structure as ways to save billions of dollars.

The Defense Business Board task force also will urge Gates to initiate a hiring freeze for the Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD), all Joint Staff directorates and all combatant commands. It also is calling for DoD to shut down OSD’s Networks and Information Integration (NII) directorate and the contractor-heavy U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM).

According to the Defense News article, the Defense Business Board task force has focused its efforts on finding contractor positions within OSD and at the combatant commands which it believes are redundant or wasteful. The goal of the task force is to cut at least $100 billion over the next five years in overhead expenses, savings that the Congress would redirect to weapons acquisitions. To reach this savings target, the task force aims to eliminate over 111,000 of the Defense Department’s 743,388 civilian billets.

What are the odds of such savings occurring? One can find precedents in history to argue either way. Regarding the alleged bloat in the intelligence community, I recently argued that such bloat (if it really is bloat) is understandable because of the American tendency to spend whatever it takes to save lives. Thus, when it comes time to consider such ideas as shutting down Joint Forces Command or winding up program offices or staff positions during wartime, such efforts could run into resistance if the condemned billet-holders can convincingly show how they save American lives on current or future battlefields.

We have recently witnessed the consequences when stock market and real estate bubbles burst. Is there a defense contractor bubble worthy of bursting? Many of us know some of these contractors, who are real people doing serious and sometimes dangerous work. A lot of their work we would not consider to be a bubble. Perhaps some is. If the Defense Business Board and Secretary Gates get their way, some of us will watch friends and their families suffer personal and financial pain, in the name of a stronger defense and national solvency.