Military Reorganization is Necessary to Address Readiness Issues

Why the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 prevents the Department of Defense from defining its readiness problem.

Kristofer Fosmoe
Jul 27, 2017 · 4 min read

The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 was a historic bill that reorganized the U.S. military, and established many of the modern aspects of the national security system. Goldwater-Nichols was focused on solving the problem of the four Services (Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines) being unable to operate as a joint team to accomplish operations. The incredible success of the U.S. during operations Desert Shield and Operation Iraqi Freedom are evidence that Goldwater-Nichols solved that problem.

However the most important and existential problem for U.S. national security is the readiness of the military. The Goldwater-Nichols acts exacerbates this problem in no small way by making the concept of readiness nearly impossible to understand.

After 30 years, the significant change in the threat environment and the limited capacity of the Services require a fundamental change to the structure of the military organization established in the bill.

The Goldwater-Nichols act established the current chain of command for the Combatant Commands and the Services. There are nine, soon to be ten, Combatant Commands separated into a geographic or functional mission. Each combatant command is commanded by a four star general. Additionally, each Service has a four star general Chief of Staff.

The geographic combatant commands are:

  • U.S. Northern Command
  • U.S. Southern Command
  • U.S. Africa Command
  • U.S. European Command
  • U.S. Central Command
  • U.S. Pacific Command

The functional combatant commands are:

  • U.S. Special Operations Command
  • U.S. Transportation Command
  • U.S. Strategic Command
  • U.S. Cyber Command

Readiness Challenges

The four Services provide trained and ready forces to these combatant commands for their employment in joint operations. Goldwater-Nichols unified the chain of command from the President to the combatant commander, placing all the Service’s forces under the operational control of the combatant commander.

The current inability of the senior military leaders to agree on whether or not a readiness crisis exists, what are its causes, and how sustained operations in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed to military readiness is a feature of the way the system was designed under Goldwater-Nichols.

Technically, readiness is a form of utility. An important point to remember is that there is no meaningful interpersonal comparison of utilities. This idea is so fundamental to the study of utilities that most decision science books will assume a unitary decision maker.

The current system has at a minimum 14 equivalent four star decision makers. 10 combatant commanders being supplied by 4 Services, and there is no way (short of the Secretary of Defense) to aggregate the readiness impact of decisions among these commanders.

Global Integration

The Department of Defense needs a way to globally integrate strategy and resource decisions, and the only meaningful way to affect this behavioral change is through organizational reform. In its reorganization there are several principles that work well and others that need to be addressed.

  • There is a healthy and natural tension between manning, training, and equipping Service forces and employing forces to achieve joint effects.
  • There is no useful way to talk about Global readiness. How does a counter narcotics operation in South America compare to counter piracy operation in Africa, in terms of total readiness?
  • Given that there is no meaningful way to answer the previous question, the Department has trouble making informed decisions about the benefit of conducting an operation or recovering Service readiness.

The Department needs a flatter organization with fewer combatant commands to meaningful address the existential readiness crisis in the U.S. military.

Developing a global integrated combatant command, with regional directors allows one commander to make resource and readiness informed decisions. This effectively solves the problem of trying to compare the value of inter-combatant command priorities, by appointing one integrator. The principle of Unity of Command remains relevant.

A Dream Deferred

I am not confident in the ability of U.S. lawmakers, civilian officials, and military leaders to come together to make lasting and important change to the departments organization.

Lawmakers have no incentive to be seen supporting something technical like department organizational reform. There is no natural constituency calling for system reform to enable readiness.

Department of Defense officials and military leaders will have no interest in backing a plan that calls for the reduction of staff, and specifically senior general officers. This is unfortunate because a reduction in staff and bureaucracy enables a more balanced force with the right proportion of fighting muscle to staff brain.

Kristofer Fosmoe

Written by

American. Soldier. Engineer. Lover of America and data. I write to think. Bring good arguments, and I will change my mind.

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