Saturday, June 4, 2011

Double Leadership Hit Leaves U.S. Army Scrambling


The U.S. Army's reclamation project to fix its broken acquisition system took a major hit when it lost both Army Chief of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey and Army acquisition chief Malcolm O'Neill in the same week, defense analysts said.
THE U.S. ARMY has been weakened by this week’s loss of acquisition chief Malcolm O’Neill, left, and Chief of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey. (Staff file photos)
O'Neill caught many by surprise when he told his staff June 1 in an email he would resign for "personal reasons" just more than a year into the job. His resignation came two days after President Barack Obama announced his nomination of Dempsey to take over as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff just one month after he became Army chief.
"There's a very good chance the Army will take a 45-degree turn here in the fact that Dempsey and the acquisition chief are leaving at the same time. I think a lot of the directions that Dempsey put in place at [Training and Doctrine Command] and then continued in his short stint as chief are in question right now," said retired Army Lt. Gen. David Barno, who worked closely with Dempsey as an outside senior adviser when Dempsey was TRADOC commander.
Dempsey, seemingly not on the president's list to succeed Adm. Mike Mullen since he took over the Army in April, rocketed up to the top job after other potential nominees, namely Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, fell out of favor.
Losing both leaders at a time when a recent Army review of the service's acquisition system said it required "major surgery" will leave the Army looking for direction all over again.
Obama announced his nomination of Gen. Ray Odierno, head of Joint Forces Command, to take over for Dempsey at the same Memorial Day White House news conference. However, many Pentagon insiders and defense analysts struggled to come up with potential successors for O'Neill outside his key deputies, including Marilyn Freeman, deputy assistant secretary for research and technology, and Scott Fish, the Army's chief scientist.
"The silver lining in this might be that O'Neill had a time in place so it's not like there will be no adult supervision. He put together a good leadership team, but it is still a question of who will take over and whether they will follow through on his vision," said Jim Carafano, a defense analyst with the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank.
Dempsey's service as the head of TRADOC before taking the Army's top position allowed him to spend three years reviewing the Army from a "big picture" perspective, Barno said. By comparison, Odierno has spent his last assignments either in operational billets leading the war in Iraq or closing Joint Forces Command.
"The guy who really understands this who has been working these requirements as the TRADOC commander and now the Army chief is going to be vaulted into the chairman's position and General Odierno isn't coming from that type of background. He's been out in the operating force and the joint world," Barno said.
Odierno hasn't served in a senior Army-specific billet since 2004, when he spent three months as a special assistant to the Army vice chief of staff. Peter Singer, a defense analyst with the Brookings Institute, is eager to see what Odierno lists as his priorities and how they might match up with Dempsey's.
"There's a potential the Army will lose some momentum as they go through the leadership transition … but you really can't answer the impact until you get a sense of Odierno's priorities and operating style. A very accomplished general and commander, but there are a lot of open questions of what he is going to set as his key priorities in terms of acquisition and how he runs the process."
Although the timing is odd since Dempsey had just released his commander's intent and started to dig his heels into the job, Carafano said it might be even tougher to replace O'Neill since he's had a year in the job.
"O'Neill is a little bit more disruptive to the Army because he was moving out and had some definite ideas. He was strong on using outside advisory boards and his red teams," Carafano said.
O'Neill retired as a lieutenant general after 34 years in the Army that included a stint as director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, now the Missile Defense Agency. After his Army career, he turned to industry, working for Lockheed Martin from 1996 to 2006. More recently, he served as chairman of the board on Army Science and Technology for the National Academies and the National Research Council.
Two sources said he is leaving for a health-related issue; the resignation has nothing to do with his work. The Army would not confirm if a health concern caused his resignation, however, in a recent speech, O'Neill spoke about an injury he sustained in the Vietnam War, which still plagues him today, and serves as motivation for him to help soldiers in today's fight.
"I'm still suffering the consequences of that. If I don't take my medicine every day, it's goodbye," O'Neill said.
O'Neill quickly put his mark on the Army's largest weapon programs, forming a red team to investigate the Army's Ground Combat Vehicle's (GCV) weaknesses. After soliciting bids for the vehicle, the Army withdrew its request for proposals in August 2010, revised the program's requirements to prevent cost from spiraling out of control.
Major questions remain for the program; Army Vice Chief Gen. Peter Chiarelli listed it as the service's second priority behind the Army network. The red teams, which O'Neill formed to look at GCV, questioned the urgency of the need for the vehicle in the next seven years.
"The funds that have migrated from the FCS program were driving the events and activities of the program versus a true capabilities gap," according to a Government Accountabilities Office report on the "Army's ground force modernization initiatives."
Barno said the transition in leadership will force the Army to "take another serious look" at each one of its modernization programs. When the Army looks again at the cost versus the capability the GCV provides, Barno said he's not confident the service will continue with the program.
Dempsey and O'Neill had directed industry to focus its efforts on soldier technology, dismounted operations and the squad. The Army chief wanted the Army to take a bottom-up approach versus the top-down review the service traditionally used when looking at modernization.
O'Neill also worked closely with Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter on the Defense Department's drive to find efficiencies and reduce overhead costs. The Army will have the challenge of balancing the coming reset from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with modernization programs like the GCV while defense spending continues to shrink, Carafano said.
"The cost of resetting the force is going to be huge, so they are going to have to make some really big tradeoffs here," Barno said.
Dempsey seemed to be the perfect fit to usher the Army through this transition set up by his time at TRADOC, Barno said. However, the Army's loss is the Pentagon's gain.
"It's really unfortunate for the Army but great news for the nation because I think Dempsey is a terrific pick," Barno said.

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