Congress, SecDef MUST Lead Pentagon From The Vale Of Seven Sins: CNAS [View all]

http://breakingdefense.com/2013/06/06/congress-secdef-must-lead-pentagon-from-the-vale-of-seven-sins-cnas/



Congress, SecDef MUST Lead Pentagon From The Vale Of Seven Sins: CNAS
By Colin Clark on June 06, 2013 at 5:50 PM

WASHINGTON: Some of Chuck Hagel’s best friends in the defense world offered him a compelling report on how to save almost as much as the $500 billion that the Budget Control Act will force him and his successors to cut over the next decade.

The wonderful title of the report, “The Seven Deadly Sins of Defense Spending,” will certainly give this effort a better chance of cutting through the enormous amount of white noise currently surrounding the sequestration and drawdown debate. Also, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) has close ties to the Obama administration that will give this report a much better chance of being read at senior levels in the Pentagon than most of the myriad other budget prescriptions.

The Seven Deadly Sins

Redundant overhead, layering and workforce;
Inefficient business practices;
Excessive acquisition costs and overruns;
Excess infrastructure, installations and management costs;
Unaffordable increases in cash compensation;
Unsustainable growth of military retirement system costs; and
Escalating military health care costs.

Of course, none of those are new in and of themselves. But the report’s five authors provide fairly specific areas where the Pentagon could cut without endangering the country’s ability to project power globally.