Small Wars Journal

Carter's Goldwater-Nichols Plan Leaves Big Changes for Hill

Sun, 04/10/2016 - 8:00pm

Carter's Goldwater-Nichols Plan Leaves Big Changes for Hill by Aaron Mehta and Joe Gould, Defense News

For months, the US defense community has watched closely for signs of how Defense Secretary Ash Carter would attempt to reform the Pentagon structure established by the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols legislation.

The answer, it appears, is largely incremental — leaving plenty of space for congressional leadership to take aim at bigger shifts to the department’s worldwide structure.

At a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Tuesday, Carter unveiled his vision of how the department should look and made the case why Goldwater-Nichols, enacted in 1986 to meet the threats of that era, must be updated…

Analysts agree that Carter’s suggestions mainly picked around the edges of known issues without making major changes…

Read on.