But after a decade of steady progress, there’s still a long way to go to modernize one of the most massive and complex organizations on the planet, with net operating costs of $635 billion, assets worth $1.3 trillion, liabilities of $1.9 trillion and more than 2.9 million military and civilian personnel, as of fiscal 2005. Congressional criticism of military transformation efforts persists, and even the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs gives the services sub-par marks for executing its transformation plans, while praising their intent and understanding of the challenge.

Addressing a gathering at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., in October, Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace gave the military a score of “8” for transformation intent and understanding on a 10-point scale but only a “4” for execution, according to the American Forces Press Service.

“I really believe we have applied a lot of energy to transformation, but it’s a lot like computers. The faster a computer becomes, the faster the next one will be, because you use that computer to make the next one,” he says. “So, too, with transformation. That’s why we’re a ‘4.’ Not because we haven’t been applying energy, but because we don’t know yet what we’re capable of doing.”

Full Spectrum Dominance
Joint Vision 2020 describes an integrated force that is “dominant across the full spectrum of military operations. … [which] rests upon information superiority as a key enabler.” Though the plan does not describe specific weapons systems, communications networks or support systems, its vision for a joint force that is “faster, more lethal and more precise,” dovetails with the concept of network-centric war­fighting that is driving programs like the Army’s $161-billion­ Future Combat Systems and its $10-billion Warfighter Information Network-Tactical, the Navy’s ForceNet, the Air Force Command and Control Constellation initiative and its Network-Centric Collaborative Targeting project, and DOD’s Global Information Grid.

“Net-centric capabilities are about getting people the information they need, when and where they need it,” deputy Defense secretary Gordon England said at October’s Military Communications Conference 2006 in Washington. “Just as it is in business, information has become a strategic asset for the department, and using it effectively is essential to the success of our mission.”

“If we never got any new toys and just had a different mindset about how to use them, that would be transformational.” —Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace

Under Joint Vision 2020, as well as the corresponding blueprints developed by each service—Army Vision 2010 and the Army Transformation Roadmap, the Navy’s Sea Power 21 and Naval Transformation Roadmap, and the Air Force Vision 2020 and its 176-page Air Force Transformation Flight Plan—IT is supposed to act as a force multiplier that enables small, modular combat forces to deploy rapidly and flexibly because of greater situational awareness of the battlespace and tighter communications among components of the force.

The Army’s ongoing force transformation from a division-based force into 70 modular brigade combat teams—down from 77 after DOD’s Quadrennial Defense Review in February—is the most radical and extensive of the service transformations, but the Navy and Air Force are also restructuring forces as they develop their net-centric capabilities.

Like Pace, the Government Accountability Office continues to give the Army and its sister services mixed grades on transformation efforts. In September, GAO warned that the Army is not meeting its goals for equipping the initial 19 brigade combat teams converted to modular configuration earlier this year and faces additional shortages of equipment the Army has identified as essential for achieving modular force capabilities. The report also questions the Army’s ability to reduce its current end-strength authorization of 512,400 to 482,400 by 2011, as its transformation plans call for.

Last August, however, GAO comptroller general David M. Walker praised DOD top management for its demonstrated “commitment to transforming the department.” He also highlighted for lawmakers the key initiatives DOD has implemented to improve financial management and business systems critical to transformation, including updates of its Business Enterprise Architecture and Enterprise Transition Plan, as well as establishing four investment review boards and the joint Defense Business Systems Management Committee (DBSMC).

Yet in that same testimony, Walker cited “pervasive financial and business management problems” that continue to hamper military transformation, detailing several examples of systems that DOD and the services are struggling to deploy “on time, within budget and with promised capabilities.”

Walker highlights problems with requirements management and testing of the Army’s Logistics Modernization Program; $1 billion “largely being wasted” on the Navy Enterprise Resource Planning program, which resulted in “four more DOD stovepiped systems”; underutilization of DOD’s new Defense Travel System; and inadequate cost justification of the $1.45 billion Naval Tactical Command Support System and the Army’s $1.7-billion TC-AIMSS II, a “joint” program to provide an integrated transportation information system that the Air Force and Marines have stated they do not intend to use, he notes.

Of the more than 3,700 military business systems identified by DOD as of April 2006, only 226, representing $3.6 billion in modernization investment funding had been approved by the DBSMC, while only 290 systems had been tapped for phase-out or elimination by the committee, according to Walker.

Simplify, Eliminate and Share
One service not specifically called out in recent GAO criticism has been the Air Force, which is making solid progress in implementing its net-centric systems and modernizing logistics and business systems to support a smaller, more flexible and joint force. The Air Force is in the process of simplifying and eliminating redundancies and legacy systems among the more than 1,100 applications it currently runs, says Maj. Gen. William T. Lord, director of information, services and integration in the Air Force Office of Warfighting Integration and CIO. The Air Force will cut that by more than half within the next two years.

“We have about 1,100 different applications that [support] warfighting and business applications,” Lord says. “We think we have to simplify those. It’s too complicated to teach a shrinking force how to use that many different applications.”

Among the programs that support transformation is the consolidation of the Air Force Network Operations Command under Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder, which has allowed the service to reduce its number of network operations and security centers from 17 to nine, on the way to only two, one at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., and the other at Langley Air Force Base, Va., within a year, Lord says.

“As we in the IT business align what we’re doing with the major goals of the Air Force—being effective in combat in the global war on terrorism and efficient in recapitalization of our force—we are redefining our processes, as we speak, to get those efficiencies, yet provide combat capability,” Lord says.

In today’s climate of tightening Defense budgets and the accelerating push toward transformation, most of the services’ IT projects are presented as “transformational” in an attempt to protect them from the congressional budget axe, says Eugene Gholz, an assistant professor at the University of Texas in Austin, and co-author of Buying Military Transformation: Technological Innovation and the Defense Industry, with Peter Dombrowski, chairman of the Strategic Research Department at the Naval War College in Rhode Island. Yet human resources and business systems that might help a smaller force operate more efficiently are not as critical as the weapons systems and networks that will enable net-centric warfare, Gholz says.

“It is true that a lot of people are interested in the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet, but that’s not the core of the transformation,” he says. “It’s not tactical, agile, mobile—all of those things.

“But if you believe that one of the core parts of transformation is that reach-back facet of people on the battlefield being able to access databases back home to try to understand if this guy out here is a terrorist or not, then a lot more of these programs start to become relevant in a way that’s a little more serious than just the jargon.”

Pace agrees: “If we never got any new toys and just had a different mindset about how to use them, that would be transformational.”

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