U.S. Defense Department

Tasked with the enormous duty of protecting the United States and its interests worldwide, the U.S. Department of Defense has one of the largest budget of any Department in the U.S. government. It is interesting to note that liberal factions within the U.S. like to point to the DoD as the big spender in the U.S. budget, however it has been noted by our military friends that it is a matter of record that in the last decade, the biggest spender is actually the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), certainly a liberal fair haired organization. But with massive liberal media attention paid to the sums devoted to the DoD and related areas, it is no wonder that the DoD has always been available as a target for budget cutters. In fact the DoD budget has historically been cut in order to reduce the overall deficit or to fund other projects in government, thus has oscillated up and down since the formation of the department following World War II.

The Department of Defense "works very closely" with the Department of State in order to provide for dual options in international crisis, State providing diplomatic efforts, and Defense holding up the more violent resolution capability of U.S. efforts.

Note that the expression "works very closely" is the official doctrine of the State Department. According to a military intelligence officer there exists some problems with the relationships between State, the DoD, and even the Intelligence community.

As regards State, they seem to suffer from two chronic/systemic problems. Firstly, they tend to become advocates for foreign countries and interests, usually in preference to U.S. interests (a former Israeli Military attache once sagely remarked to me that "what the U.S. State Department needs is an American Interests Desk"). Secondly, they tend to be arrogant, routinely disregarding the input of the intelligence agencies and the military (as an historian, I can tell you that they are ALWAYS wrong).
Civilians do indeed rule, and rightly so (although I think that our military is a bit too slavish to this principle in that general officers will tend not to disagree with superiors that they know to be wrong; and resigning over principle is almost unheard of (AF General Fogleman's being a recent exception to this notwithstanding)).

Ideally, State and Defense (and intelligence) should work hand-in-hand. Diplomacy is indeed worthless without the omnipresent specter of force to give it substance (another consistant failing of State's is that they don't seem to understand this). [ not hard to understand since the use of military force is viewed by State as their own failure - MILNET ]

It should also be made clear that the statement above is in no way the official policy of the Department of Defense or any U.S. military service. It is nothing more than an enlightening opinion of one of the real warriors. Keep 'em coming gentlemen and ladies!

In the view of MILNET, given the at times inexperience and academia makeup of the State Department, it is not hard to understand why this might be true. And since State is thought of by the military mind as leaning to far towards diplomacy, and State Department philosophy that the military mindset is far too ready to go to war, it is also not hard to understand why the two departments differ on their approaches and philosphies. We would have to agree that not going into Baghdad was not a wise military move (or to be more accurate...a lack of movement:), it is quite conceivable that State had far too much influence in that decision.

The structure of the DoD can be seen in the chart included. The actual military chain of command flows from the President, to the Secretary of Defense, through the Secretaries of the Air Force, Army, and Navy, through the under-Secretaries, and then to the Generals in the Operational Commands. The Operational commands can be thought of as two types of command structures; Specific Commands and Unified Commands.

Specific Commands

Specific Commands are those in a given task within a specified military service, such as the Air Combat Command, which is part of the U.S. Air Force, and tasked with strategic offensive and reconaissance operations.

Unified Commands

The Unified Commands are intra-service commands, usually tasked with operations in a particular region such as the European Command.

Any given military commander is subordinate to one of these Commands and receives his or her operational orders from the commander or staff of that command.

The Secretaries

The individual major services each have a secretary subordinate to the Secretary of Defense, thus the U.S. has a Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of the Air Force, and the Secretary of the Navy. There duties are actually quite simple, they perform the budget and planning tasks for their individual military services, providing their pieces to the U.S. Defense Budget. They establish the policy for activities that fall within the practice of the military art and sciences. Thus in the U.S. form of government the Secretary of the Air Force is the highest ranking individual concerned with specific Air Force issues, and is only "out ranked" in that regard by the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States.

Under-Secretaries of Defense

The Under-Secretaries of Defense work with the Specified or Unified Command Commanders to build a specific day-to-day operational budget, which is melded into the overall DoD budget request. This budget request also includes monies for R& D, operational weapons procurement, as well as intelligence assets that are not covered in other Intelligence Community budget requests.

The staff in the Department of Defense is also the largest of all Departments in the govenment, with their offices being mainly located in the Pentagon, a five sided, five concentric sectioned building in Virginia, very close to a major freeway leading into Washington, D.C. The Department of Defense also has several smaller offices near the capital building.

One of the key installations housed within the Penatagon is the National Military Command Center (NMCC) the hub of command and control for the U.S. Here the Generals in command of military can communicate with the operational commands and during actual military events, communicate with the theatre commanders in command of troops in combat. Displays in the NMCC are thought to show the world's strategic disposition of forces and perhaps also have the ability to look at some level of tactical information during "hot" events.

The Defense Department is also a primary analysis organization for the President, applying their vast and knowlegeable resources on topics ranging from non-proliferation of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons (commonly called "weapons of mass destruction"), to terrorism and the sharing of costs of operations by countries in strategic regions. For example the Department of the Secretary of Defense released an interesting report in 1996, Toward A New Partnership In Responsibility Sharing An Overview of the 1996 Report on Strategic Context of Responsibility Sharing.

milnet@milnet.com
Last Content Updated: 7/28/95