A few days ago I argued that the Melvin Laird and David Packard reforms of 1969-1971 were not a great break from the policies of Robert McNamara. Here is a bit more on that from a 1970 Congressional investigation:
Certainly much that has gone before will be retained. Secretary McNamara built on the work of his predecessors and Secretary Laird will do the same. Knowledge and wisdom in this field are accumulated through many trials and errors and much painful experience. The expertise available to Mr. Laird is not essentially different for that which was available to Mr. McNamara. The experts, whether military or civilian, are career professionals, and in a sense they are now asked to correct their own mistakes.
One of the main failings perhaps, and in the military this comes naturally because of customary obedience to command, is that they carry out their orders too well. They over-react. The pendulum swings from one side to the other, so that endeavors to remedy excesses or deficiencies in one time or place cause them to emerge in another…
In the new policy pronouncements, the personnel problem merges with the organization problem. Strengthening program management offices is cast in terms of upgrading personnel and reorganizing to insure that the requisite resources, authority, and responsibility are placed within the program manager’s control.
In giving this emphasis to program management, Mr. Packard is restating essentially what was proposed and attempted in the McNamara regime. The fact that the problems persist and invite restatement suggests that there are no easy answers. Although it is popular now, as it was before, to refer to the Navy nuclear submarine and Polaris-Poseidon projects as examples to follow, there is no indication that serious thought has been given to the practicality of applying this experience to major systems across the board.
It implies more drastic reorganizations in the services and more rigorous development of technical expertise in program management than has been shown to date. Mr. Packard has referred to the need for drastic reorganization of the services, but he has not spelled out any details, and there is little indication that the services share this view of the problem or are prepared to institute such changes on their own.
The new goal is three-year tours for program managers. It is difficult to see how three-year tours of duty for military officers will enable them to gain the degree of technical and managerial expertise that Mr. Packard emphasized so strongly. Development projects frequently are maintained for much longer periods. The concept of expertise that Admiral Rickover espouses, and Mr. Packard seems to endorse, is associated with rigorous technical training career professionalism, and longer tenure than even a three-year tour of duty…
In his appearance before the subcommittee, Mr. Packard painted a bleak picture and criticized rather harshly the management capabilities and organizations of the military services. In a public statement elsewhere, he referred to defense procurement as “a mess.” At the same time, he has made it clear that the services must be depended on to do the program managing jobs, that the OSD cannot and should not do it for them, even though this was the tendency under the McNamara administration.
We surmise that the decentralization concept is useful mainly as a morale builder and a means of restoring confidence in the services after the strong centralizing tendencies of the 1960’s. The realities point to more rather than less centralizing tendencies…
Perhaps one day we will emerge from over 50 years of an acquisition reform pendulum, swinging within a narrow range of well-trodden solutions proven not to work. What about that program budget…?
Source: “Policy Changes in Weapon System Procurement.” (1970, Dec. 10). Forty-Second Report by the Committee on Government Operations.
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