The fiscal 2017 defense policy bill includes several provisions that will change the organizational structure of the military and get at some of the Goldwater-Nichols reform that leaders on Capitol Hill have been pushing all year.
The changes included in the compromise bill, which will be considered in the House on Friday, range from a restructuring of the Pentagon’s acquisition department to reducing how long a member of the military must serve in a joint billet to advance.
One of the biggest changes to organizational structure comes in the acquisition, technology and logistics arena to create one position to take risks in technology and another to minimize risks in business.
The bill creates three new positions by February 2018: an undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, an undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment and a chief management officer. The goal of the changes is to promote innovation, foster a culture that will get better technology into troops’ hands faster, and provide greater oversight of the acquisition process.
The cultures and missions of technology and acquisition are “distinct,” negotiators wrote in the conference report.
“The conferees expect that the under secretary of defense for research and engineering would take risks, press the technology envelope, test and experiment, and have the latitude to fail, as appropriate,” the report says. “Whereas the conferees would expect the under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment to focus on timely, cost-effective delivery and sustainment of products and services, and thus seek to minimize any risks to that objective.”
Much of the military’s organizational structure was set up 30 years ago by the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which was spurred by the need to get the military to act like a joint force instead of four competing services. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have made reforming it a priority and held several hearings this year on Capitol Hill where they suggested the law should be updated and that the pendulum had swung too far toward jointness, giving service chiefs little control over their respective services.
To that end, the bill will reduce the length of time troops are required to serve in a joint job, if they want to be promoted, from three years to two years. It will also cut 110 general and flag officers across the military by Dec. 31, 2022. The defense secretary will also be required to deliver a study to Congress by April justifying each general or flag officer billet, and outlining where another 10 percent could be cut.
The bill also caps the size of the president’s National Security Council at 200 staff to address concerns that the White House panel was wielding too much power that belonged at the Pentagon instead. The Senate-passed bill wanted to limit the council to just 150 personnel.
Some proposals also would have subjected the national security adviser to congressional confirmation if the cap is exceeded, but this consequence is not in the final bill.
Another reform to Goldwater-Nichols that will elevate U.S. Cyber Command to be its own combatant command made it into the final bill. That will put the military’s cybersecurity arm on the same level as geographical commands such as Central Command and Pacific Command, a proposal that was included in the House-passed version of the defense policy bill.
One proposal to shake up the Pentagon’s organizational structure that did not make it into the compromise bill is a change to the role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, including officially codifying the chairman’s job of advising the secretary on the transfer of troops between geographical regions.
