Military Preps for Turf War

The Pentagon is in the early stages of a "roles and missions" review, mandated by Congress -- and if history is any guide, it's not going to be pretty watching the services fight to preserve (or expand) their piece of the pie.

As InsideDefense.com reports this week, Pentagon leaders are hoping to "strike a delicate balance in launching a congressionally mandated military roles and missions review that aims to satisfy lawmakers without triggering a full-blown bureaucratic turf war between the services."

Good luck with that.

However, draft guidance for the roles and missions assessment, issued April 14 by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff, is raising the hackles of the military services who say the roughly 15-page document includes provisions that could incite major interservice battles.

One such provision directs a sweeping review of areas where there is “excess” capability overlap.

“It could become a real donnybrook,” said one service official, concerned about the initial guidance, which will be the subject of a half-day meeting by all Defense Department stakeholders . . . to be followed by a general- and flag-officer-level review next week. . . .

“There’s no intent on the part of the services or the leadership of this building to break those kinds of relationships over roles and missions issues,” the senior official said. “We do want to look at potential solutions where it’s not, ‘I win, you lose,’ but ‘Where can we really improve warfighting effectiveness and, if possible, achieve some efficiencies at the same time?’”

The last roles and missions review was in 1994. The key issue this time, in the early going, appears to be the idea of "excessive" capability overlap -- which, in simple terms, boils down to what can be cut or taken from one service and given to another.

“If that language sticks, that’s going to be a big deal. That could entail an overall scrub of all capabilities across the department -- to determine what is excess and how that would potentially be realigned, or how functions could be reassigned” among the services, the service official said.

Stay tuned.