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S. HRG. 114–315 

THE FUTURE OF DEFENSE REFORM 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

OCTOBER 21, 2015 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Armed Services 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov/ 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona, Chairman 

JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma 

JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama 

ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

DEB FISCHER, Nebraska 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota 

JONI ERNST, Iowa 

THOM TILLIS, North Carolina 

DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska 

MIKE LEE, Utah 

LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina 

TED CRUZ, Texas 

JACK REED, Rhode Island 

BILL NELSON, Florida 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia 

JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire 

KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York 

RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut 

JOE DONNELLY, Indiana 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

TIM KAINE, Virginia 

ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine 

MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico 

CHRISTIAN D. BROSE, Staff Director 

ELIZABETH L. KING, Minority Staff Director 

(II) 

C O N T E N T S 

OCTOBER 21, 2015

Page 

THE FUTURE OF DEFENSE REFORM ......................................................................... 1 

Gates, Hon. Robert M., Former Secretary of Defense .......................................... 12 

(III) 

(1) 

THE FUTURE OF DEFENSE REFORM 

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2015 

U.S. SENATE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m. in Room 

SH–216, Hart Senate Office Building, Senator John McCain (chairman) of the committee, presiding. 

Committee members present: Senators McCain, Inhofe, Sessions, 

Wicker, Ayotte, Fischer, Cotton, Rounds, Ernst, Tillis, Sullivan, 

Lee, Cruz, Reed, Nelson, Manchin, Shaheen, Gillibrand, 

Blumenthal, Donnelly, Hirono, Kaine, King, and Heinrich. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN, CHAIRMAN 

Senator MCCAIN. Good morning. The Senate Armed Services 

Committee meets today to begin a major oversight initiative on the 

future of defense reform. 

This will be the first in a series of dozen hearings that will proceed from a consideration of the strategic context and global challenging—challenges facing the United States, to alternative defense 

strategies in the future of warfare, to the civilian and military organizations of the Department of Defense, as well as its acquisition, personnel, and management systems, much of which is the 

legacy of the Goldwater-Nichols reforms that were enacted in 1986. 

There is no one, in my view, in America that is better to help 

us begin this effort than our distinguished witness, the former Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates. We welcome him back for his first 

testimony to Congress since leaving the Department. 

Dr. Gates, we know that you have eagerly awaited this day with 

all of the anticipation of a root canal. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator MCCAIN. Few defense—in my view, none—defense leaders can match Dr. Gates’ record as a reformer. He directed more 

than $100 billion in internal efficiencies in the Department of Defense. He eliminated dozens of failing or unnecessary acquisition 

programs. He held people accountable. He even fired a few. And 

yet, by his own account, Dr. Gates left, overwhelmed by the scope 

and scale of the problems at the Defense Department. 

This is the purpose of the oversight effort we are beginning 

today, to define these problems clearly and rigorously, and only 

then to consider what reforms may be necessary. There is profound 

urgency to this effort. The worldwide threats confronting our Nation’s—Nation now and in the future have never been more complex, uncertain, and daunting. America will not succeed in the 21st 

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century with anything less than the most innovative, agile, and efficient and effective defense organization. I have not met a senior 

civilian or military leader who thinks we have that today. In no 

way is this a criticism of the many patriotic mission- focused public 

servants, both in and out of uniform, who sacrifice every day here 

at home and around the world to keep us safe. To the contrary, it’s 

because we have such outstanding people that we must strive to 

remove impediments in our defense organizations that would 

squander the talents of our troops and civilian—and civil servants. 

Now some would argue that the main problems facing the Department of Defense come from the White House, the National Security Council staff, the interagency, and, yes, the Congress. You 

will find no argument here, especially about the dysfunction of 

Congress. We must be mindful of these bigger problems, but addressing many of them is outside this committee’s jurisdiction. 

Americans hold our military in the highest regard, as we should. 

At the same time, our witness will explain, the problems that he 

encountered at the Defense Department are real and serious. Just 

consider chart 1, here. In constant dollars, our Nation is spending 

almost the same amount on defense as we were 30 years ago, but, 

for this money today, we are getting 35 percent fewer combat brigades, 53 percent fewer ships, 63 percent fewer combat air squadrons, and significantly more overhead. How much is difficult to establish, because the Department of Defense does not even have 

complete and reliable data, as GAO has repeatedly found. 

Of course, our Armed Forces are more capable now than 30 years 

ago, but our adversaries are also more capable, some exponentially 

so. At the same time, many of the weapons in our arsenal today— 

our aircraft, ships, tanks, and fighting vehicles, rifles and missiles, 

and strategic forces—are the products of the military modernization of the 1980s. 

And, no matter how much more capable our troops and weapons 

are today, they are not capable of being in two places at once. Our 

declining combat capacity cannot be divorced from the problems in 

our defense acquisition system, which one high-level study summed 

up as follows, quote, ‘‘The defense acquisition system has basic 

problems that must be corrected. These problems are deeply entrenched and have developed over several decades from an increasingly bureaucratic and over-regulated process. As a result, all too 

many of our weapon systems cost too much, take too long to develop, and, by the time they are fielded, incorporate obsolete technology.’’ Sounds right. But, that was the Packard Commission, 

written in 1986. 

And, since then, since 1986, as this chart shows, cost overruns 

and schedule delays on major defense acquisitions have only gotten 

worse. Defense programs are now nearly 50 percent over-budget 

and, on average, over 2 years delayed. It’s telling that perhaps the 

most significant defense procurement success story, the MRAP, 

which Dr. Gates himself led, was produced by going around the acquisition system, not through it. 

The rising cost of our defense personnel system is also part of the 

problem. As chart 3 shows, over the past 30 years the average 

fully-burdened cost per service member, all of the pays and lifetime 

benefits that military service now entails, has increased 270 perVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:04 Jul 27, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 Y:\REIER-AVILES\BORAWSKI\DOCS\15-79 WILDA
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cent. And yet, all too often, the Department of Defense has sought 

to control these personnel costs by cutting operating forces while civilian and military headquarters staff have not changed, and even 

grown. Indeed, since 1985, the end strength of the joint force has 

decreased by 38 percent, but the percentage of four-star officers in 

that force has increased by 65 percent. 

These reductions in combat power have occurred while the Department’s overhead elements, especially its contractor workforce, 

have exploded. Nearly 1.1 million personnel now perform overhead 

activities in the defense agencies, the military departments, and 

service staffs in Washington headquarters services. An analysis by 

McKinsey & Company found that less than one-quarter of Active 

Duty troops were in combat roles, and with a majority instead performing overhead activities. Recent studies by the Defense Business Board and others confirmed that little has changed in this regard. The United States tooth-to-tail ratio is well below the global 

average, including such countries as Russia, India, and Brazil. 

For years, decades in some cases, GAO has identified some of the 

major management and administrative functions of the Department of Defense as being at high risk of waste, fraud, abuse, and 

duplication of effort. Perhaps none of this should be surprising 

when you consider the judgment of Jim Locher, the lead staffer on 

this committee during the defense reorganization efforts, three decades ago, quote, ‘‘The remedies applied by Goldwater-Nichols to defense management and administration have largely been ineffective. They were never a priority for the Act’s drafters, and troubling trends remain. The Pentagon is choking on bureaucracy.’’ He 

wrote that 14 years ago, and the problem has only gotten worse. 

Ultimately, we must ask whether the Defense Department is succeeding in its development and execution of strategy, policy, and 

plans. The Office of the Secretary of Defense, the service secretaries and service staffs, the joint staff, and the combatant commands are all bigger than ever. But, is the quality of civilian oversight and control of the military better? Has the quality of military 

advice to civilian leaders improved? Are the joint duty assignments 

that our military officers must perform producing a more unified 

fighting force? In short, is the Department of Defense more successful at planning for war, waging war, and winning war? 

Goldwater-Nichols was perhaps the most consequential defense 

reform since the creation of the Department of Defense. And, while 

the world has changed profoundly since 1986, the basic organization of the Department of Defense, as well as the roles and missions of its major civilian and military actors, has not changed all 

that much since Goldwater-Nichols. It must be asked, Is a 30-yearold defense organization equal to our present and future national 

security challenges? 

I want to be clear. This is a forward-looking effort. Our task is 

to determine whether the Department of Defense and our Armed 

Forces are set up to be maximally successful in our current and future national security challenges. We will be guided in this effort 

by the same principles that inspired past defense reform efforts, including Goldwater-Nichols, enhancing civilian control of the military, improving military advice, operational effectiveness, and joint 

4 

officer management, and providing for a better use of defense resources, among others. 

This oversight initiative is not a set of solutions in search of 

problems. We will neither jump to conclusions nor tilt at the symptoms of problems. We will take the time to look deeply for the incentive and root causes that drive behavior, and we will always, always be guided by that all- important principle: First do no harm. 

Finally, this must and will be a bipartisan endeavor. Defense reform is not a Republican or Democratic issue, and we will keep it 

that way. These are vital national security issues, and we must 

seek to build a consensus about how to improve the organization 

and operation of the Department of Defense that can and will be 

advanced by whomever wins next year’s elections. That is in keeping with the best traditions of this committee, and it is how Dr. 

Gates has always approached this important work across administrations of both parties. 

We thank Dr. Gates for his decades of service to our Nation, for 

generously offering us the benefit of your insights and experiences 

today. 

And I’d like to apologize for the long statement, Dr. Gates, but 

I take—I believe that this hearing must set the predicate for a 

number of future hearings that we will be having in order to carry 

out—achieve the objectives that I just outlined. 

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Senator MCCAIN. Senator Reed. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR JACK REED 

Senator REED. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

And, Dr. Gates, welcome back to the Senate Armed Services 

Committee. And let me join the Chairman in thanking you for your 

willingness to testify today, and also underscore how thoughtful 

and how appropriate the Chairman’s remarks are with respect to 

the need for a careful bipartisan review of policy in the Defense Department, and change in the Defense Department. 


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I must also apologize. As I’ve told you before, I have 200 or so 

Rhode Island business leaders that I must inform all day long 

today, so I won’t be here for the whole hearing. And I apologize to 

the Chairman, also. 

It’s no accident that the Chairman has asked you, Dr. Gates, to 

testify today on—as the first witness in a major effort to look at 

the Department of Defense. You have more than 1,500 days as Secretary of Defense, decades serving the United States Government 

in roles that range from the National Security Council to the Central Intelligence Agency, and then, of course, the Department of 

Defense. And your vast experience with DOD and the interagency 

process, especially in a post-September 11th context, will be important to the committee’s study of these issues as we go forward. 

And, while you were Secretary of Defense, you were an outspoken critic of your own Department and its ability to manage 

critical competing priorities, such as funding military modernization and ensuring that the requirements of deployed forces are 

being supported appropriately. 

In a speech before the American Enterprise Institute, you said 

the Department is, in your words, ‘‘a semi-feudal system, the amalgam of fiefdoms without centralized mechanisms to allocate resources, track expenditures, and measure results, relative to the 

Department’s overall priorities.’’ As a policymaker in the legislative 

branch, this kind of assessment from the most senior official in the 

Department is deeply concerning, but also very helpful, in terms of 

giving us a direction. I look forward to hearing your ideas and 

thinking of—about the changes you recommend to us for addressing these issues. 

Congress has tried to help address some of these problems, as 

you have rightly noted, in creating the Deputy Chief Management 

Officer. But, one person is not enough to create or compel systemic 

change in the largest organization on Earth. And during your tenure, you created two ad hoc entities in the Department, the Chairman mentioned, to address rapidly dangerous issues to our troops: 

the Mine- Resistant Ambush Protector, or MRAP, Task Force, and 

the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, or ISR, Task 

Force. And both of these endeavors were very successful, but they 

are just an indication of the kind of more holistic and comprehensive change that we need to undertake in the Department of Defense. 

Also in your American Enterprise Institute speech, you made a 

critical point. Since 2001, we have seen a near doubling of the Pentagon’s modernization accounts that has resulted in relatively modest gains in actual military capability. And this should be of a concern to all of us. And we’d welcome your recommendations on how 

to bring changes necessary to ensure that we’re getting what we’re 

paying for; in fact, getting more, we hope, bang for our buck. 

You’ve also spoken about the need for defense spending to be stable and predictable, and the importance of the role of Congress in 

ensuring that such stability is provided. And former DOD Comptroller Bob Hale, who served with you at the Pentagon, wrote recently about the budgetary turmoil he experienced during his tenure, including sequestration, a government shutdown, and continuing resolutions. Specifically, he wrote, ‘‘This budget turmoil imVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:04 Jul 27, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 Y:\REIER-AVILES\BORAWSKI\DOCS\15-79 WILDA
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posed a high price in DOD and, therefore, the Nation it serves. The 

price was not measured in dollars, since DOD certainly didn’t get 

any extra funding to pay the cost of the turmoil. Rather, the price 

took the form of harm to the efficiency and effectiveness of the Department’s mission, and we are still confronting those issues 

today.’’ 

Finally, during your tenure, Dr. Gates, you were a strong advocate not only for our military, but also the funding the soft-power 

tools of statecraft: our diplomacy, developmental efforts, and our 

ability to communicate our goals and values to the rest of the 

world. As we consider steps to making DOD more effective, I’d also 

be interested in your thoughts on the importance of our national 

security in enhancing our civilian elements of national power, and 

also the impact that sequestration has on these elements. 

Again, thank you, Dr. Gates, for your service. I look forward to 

your testimony. 

Senator MCCAIN. Dr. Gates. 

STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT M. GATES, FORMER SECRETARY 

OF DEFENSE 

Dr. GATES. Chairman McCain, Senator Reed, probably the least 

sincere sentence in the English language is: Mr. Chairman, it’s a 

pleasure to be here with you today. 

[Laughter.] 

Dr. GATES. Frankly, short of a subpoena, I never expected to be 

in a congressional hearing again. And, given some of the things 

that I wrote in my book, I’m rather surprised to be invited back. 

[Laughter.] 

Dr. GATES. So, thank you for kind introductory remarks and for 

the invitation to address the important topic of defense reform. 

I also commend you, Mr. Chairman, for attempting to transcend 

the daily headlines and crises of the moment to focus this committee, and hopefully the rest of the Congress, on institutional 

challenges facing the defense establishment. While I’ve stayed in 

touch with my successors periodically and have followed developments from afar—very afar—my testimony today is based predominantly on my experience as Defense Secretary between December 

2006 and July 2011, and being engaged in two wars every single 

day during that period. So, my comments this morning may not 

necessarily account for all of the changes that have taken place 

over the last 4 years. 

I joined the CIA to do my bit in the defense of our country 50 

years ago next year. I’ve served eight Presidents. With the advantage of that half-century perspective, I’d like to open with two 

broad points: 

First, while it is tempting and conventional wisdom to assert 

that the challenges facing the United States internationally have 

never been more numerous or complex, the reality is that turbulent, unstable, and unpredictable times have recurred to challenge 

United States leaders regularly since World War II: the immediate 

postwar period that saw the Soviets tighten their grip on eastern 

Europe and surprised Western leaders and intelligence agencies by 

detonating their first atomic device; the frequent crises during the 

’50s, including the Korean War; regular confrontations with China 

13 

over Taiwan; pressures from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to help 

France by using nuclear weapons in Indochina; war in the Middle 

East; uprisings in eastern Europe; and a revolution in Cuba. During the 1960s, a war in Vietnam, another Arab-Israeli war, and 

confrontations with the Soviets from Berlin to Cuba. In the 1970s, 

Soviet assertiveness in Africa, an invasion of Afghanistan, and yet 

another Arab-Israeli war and oil embargoes. The 1980s brought a 

number of surrogate conflicts in places like Afghanistan and an attack on Libya, crises in Lebanon, and the intervention in Panama. 

And in the 1990s, we had the first Gulf War, military action in the 

Balkans, Somalia, Haiti, missile attacks on Iraq, and the first alQaeda attacks on the United States. 

The point of recounting these historical examples is that Americans, including all too often our leaders, regard international crises 

and military conflict as aberrations, when, in fact, and sad to say, 

they are the norm. Convinced, time and again, that a new era of 

tranquility is at hand, especially after major conflicts, Presidents 

and Congresses tend to believe they have a choice when it comes 

to the priority given national security, and, correspondingly, significantly reduce the resources provided to Defense, the State Department, and CIA. In the short term, at least, until the next crisis arrives, they do have a choice, and the budget cutters and deficit 

hawks have their way. But, in the longer term, there really is no 

choice. While we may not be interested in aggressors, terrorists, revanchists, and expansionists half a world away, they ultimately are 

always interested in us or in our interests or our allies and friends, 

and we always discover then that we went too far in cutting, and 

need to rearm, that the cost in treasure and in the blood of our 

young men and women is always far higher than if we had remained strong and prepared all along. 

The primary question right now before the Congress and the 

President is the priority you give to defense, which, at roughly 15 

percent of Federal expenditures, is the lowest percentage of the 

Federal budget since World—before World War II. Without proper 

and predictable funding, no amount of reform or clever reorganization will provide America with a military capable of accomplishing 

the missions assigned to it. 

The second and related point I think highly germane to your deliberations is that our record in—since Vietnam in predicting 

where we will use military force next, even a few months out, is 

perfect. We have never once gotten it right. Just think about it: 

Granada, Lebanon, Libya twice, Iraq now three times, Afghanistan, 

the Balkans, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, and most recently West Africa to combat ebola. Because we cannot predict the place or the nature of future military engagement, we must provide a premium on 

acquiring equipment and providing training that give our forces the 

most versatile possible capabilities across the broadest possible 

spectrum of conflict. 

These two lessons on funding and flexibility must underpin any 

defense reform effort, whether the focus is on bureaucratic organization, command structures, acquisition, or budgets. All that said, 

it is completely legitimate to ask whether our defense structures 

and processes are giving us the best possible return on taxpayer 

dollars spent on our military. The answer in too many cases is no. 

14 

In this context, the questions the committee are considering are, in 

my view, the correct ones, namely whether our country’s institutions of national defense are organized, manned, equipped, and 

managed in ways that can deal with the security challenges of the 

21st century and that efficiently and effectively spend defense dollars. 

Mr. Chairman, over the next 15 minutes or so, I’ll make observations about Goldwater-Nichols, acquisition policy, the interagency 

process, and the budget. And we can then delve into these and 

other matters, as the committee sees fit. 

First, Goldwater-Nichols, at 30 years, and the question whether 

the ambition of the original legislation has been fulfilled, or is additional legislation of similar magnitude needed, in light of all the 

changes that have taken place over the last three decades? My perspectives on the current structure of the Defense Department is 

shaped primarily by my experience as Secretary overseeing a military fighting two wars. I discovered early on that I led a Department designed to plan for war, but not to wage war, at least for 

the long term. 

The swift victory of the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict seemed to validate all the post-Vietnam changes to our military, including the 

landmark 1986 legislation. But, the Pentagon clearly was not organized to deal with protracted conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan, 

which, contrary to the wishes of most Americans, most assuredly 

will not be the last sustained ground campaigns waged by our military. 

In this respect, Goldwater-Nichols succeeded all too well by turning the services into force and equipment providers walled off from 

operational responsibilities now the exclusive domain of combatant 

commanders. This became especially problematic in unconventional 

conflicts requiring capabilities, usually immediately, that were significantly different from what was in the prewar procurement pipeline. 

Just one illustrative example. While there was, and is, a joint 

process to deal with the ongoing needs of battlefield commanders, 

it was left up to the designated military service to reprioritize its 

budget to find the funding for those needs. It will come as no surprise to you that, with some regularity, the designated service decided that urgent battlefield need did not have as high a priority 

for funding as its long-term programs of record. These were mostly 

advanced weapon systems designed for future conflicts, and had 

near sacrosanct status within the military services, making it difficult to generate much enthusiasm for other near-term initiatives 

that might compete for funds. 

I soon learned that the only way I could get significant new or 

additional equipment to commanders in the field in weeks or 

months, not years, was to take control of the problem myself 

through special task forces and ad hoc processes. This would be the 

case with the MRAP vehicles, additional intelligence, surveillance, 

and reconnaissance capabilities, shortened medevac times, counterIED equipment, and even the care of wounded warriors. I learned 

that if the Secretary made it a personal priority, set tight deadlines, and held people accountable, it was actually possible to get 

15 

a lot done, even—quickly, even in a massive bureaucracy like the 

Pentagon. 

But, satisfying critical operational and battlefield needs cannot 

depend solely on the intense personal involvement of the Secretary. 

That is not sustainable. The challenge is how to institutionalize a 

culture and an incentive structure that encourages wartime urgency simultaneous with long-term planning and acquisition as a 

matter of course. 

A final thought relative to defense organizations and authorities. 

Through my tenure, I was privileged to work with two superb 

Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pete Pace and Mike Mullen, 

who were true partners while providing independent, occasionally 

dissenting, professional military advice. The Chairman, along with 

the Vice Chairman, is the one senior military officer with a stake 

in both current needs and future requirements. One of the great 

achievements of Goldwater-Nichols was strengthening the position 

of the operational commanders and the Chairman relative to the 

service chiefs. I believe that, as a general principle, this must be 

sustained. 

Service chiefs have a tenure of 4 years. Combatant commanders, 

nominally, 3 years. Yet the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff have 2-year renewable terms. I believe their 

positions vis-a-vis both service chiefs and combatant commanders 

would be strengthened by also giving them 4-year terms. This 

would not diminish in the least their accountability to the President, the Defense Secretary, and the Congress. 

Second, a subject that has, for years, been a focus of this committee, the acquisition process. Not only has Goldwater-Nichols hit 

the 30-year mark, so too has the Office of the Secretary of Defense 

for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. AT&L was established 

because a service-driven acquisition system was yielding too many 

over-designed, over-budget, and over-scheduled programs. The theory was that, by giving acquisition responsibility for major programs to a senior OSD official removed from parochial service interests, wiser and more disciplined decisions would ensue. 

So, what can we say, 30 years on? We’ve succeeded in building 

a new layer of bureaucracy with thousands of more employees and 

new processes to feed it. But, when it comes to output, the results 

have been quite mixed. As Secretary, I found that, despite all of the 

OSD and joint oversight mechanisms, far too many major weapons 

and equipment programs were ridiculously overdue, over-cost, or no 

longer relevant to the highest-priority defense needs. To the chagrin of many inside the Pentagon, and probably even more here on 

the Hill, I canceled or capped more than 30 major programs in 

2009 that, if built out fully, would have cost the taxpayers $330 billion. 

So, where does that leave us today as Congress considers reforms 

for the future? Problems with the services running acquisitions led 

to greater centralization and oversight through AT&L. But, that 

led to another set of problems in the form of sizable central bureaucracy that adds delays and related costs without discernible 

benefit. So, now there’s pressure and legislation to return significantly more acquisition authority back to the services. 

16 

My sense is, the right answer lies with finding a better balance 

between centralization and decentralization than we now have. 

But, a strong word of caution: You must not weaken the authority 

of the Secretary of Defense and his ultimate decision-making power 

on acquisition. I cannot imagine a service chief or service secretary 

able to overcome intense internal pressures and voluntarily do 

away with, for example, programs like the Army Future Combat 

System, the airborne laser, the Zumwalt destroyer, or dozens of 

other troubled and needlessly exquisite systems that had built up 

a loyal service constituency. The simple fact is that such decisions 

are not just programmatic, but political. And only the Secretary of 

Defense, with the strong support of the President, has the clout, 

the power inside the Pentagon, with industry and here on the Hill, 

to make such decisions, and make them stick. 

A couple of other observations seem obvious as you and the Secretary of Defense address this issue. Nothing will work without rigorously applied accountability within the services, by AT&L, and 

by the Secretary. And then there is the importance of basic blocking and tackling on the acquisitions process. To wit, high-level rigorous control of requirements and limiting changes beyond a certain point, competitive prototyping, wherever possible, before program initiation, more realistic cost estimates, and revising contract 

incentives to better reward success and penalize failure. 

Also promising are your legislative efforts, Mr. Chairman, and 

those of Chairman Thornberry in the House, to streamline acquisition processes, eliminate counterproductive regulations, encourage 

more use of commercial products and pricing, and attract more 

nontraditional vendors to defense markets. 

That said, at the end of the day, redrawing the organization 

chart or enacting new acquisition laws and rules will matter less 

than leaders skilled enough to make—to execute programs effectively, willing to take tough, usually unpopular choices, and establish strong measures of accountability, and willing to get rid of 

those not performing well, whether people or programs. 

In terms of being better stewards of taxpayer dollars more broadly, the effort I began in 2010 to reduce overhead costs, and continued by my successors, must be renewed and sustained. It was telling that, in just 4 months, in 2010, we found some $180 billion over 

a multiyear period we could cut in overhead. There is, as Deputy 

Secretary Gordon England liked to say, a river of money flowing 

under the Pentagon, primarily funded through catchall operations 

and maintenance accounts. Now, there’s no line item in the Defense budget called ‘‘waste,’’ so getting at unnecessary overhead 

spending without harming important functions is extremely hard 

work. It’s kind of like a huge Easter egg hunt. But, it can and must 

be done. 

A brief word here on resisting the usual approach of reducing 

budgets with across-the-board cuts. I have seen countless Washington reform efforts over the years result in mindless salami-slicing of programs and organizations. That is not reform, it is managerial and political cowardice. True reform requires making trades 

and choices and tough decisions, recognizing that some activities 

are more important than others. It’s hard to do, but essential if 

17 

you’re to reshape any organization into a more effective and efficient enterprise. 

Further, the Congress must contain its own bad behavior, such 

as insisting on continuing unneeded programs because of parochial 

interests, preventing the closure of roughly one-quarter of all defense facilities deemed excess, burdening the Department with excessive and frequently expensive rules and reporting requirements, 

and more. 

My third broad point with regard to the interagency process. 

From time to time, the idea arises to reorganize the U.S. national 

security apparatus put together in 1947 to better integrate defense, 

diplomacy, and development, a Goldwater-Nichols for the interagency, if you will. Goldwater-Nichols has mostly worked at the 

Defense Department because, when push comes to shove, as it 

often does there, everyone in and out of uniform ultimately works 

for one person: the Secretary of Defense. And he or she has the last 

word and can tell everyone to get in line. When multiple Cabinet 

departments are involved, however, there is only one person with 

that kind of authority: the President. The National Security Council and its staff were created to provide the President with an organizational mechanism to coordinate and integrate their efforts. 

How well that works depends entirely on the personal relationships 

among the principals and the talents and skills of the National Security Advisor. Even this structure, headquartered just down the 

hall from the Oval Office, works poorly if the Secretary of State 

and the Secretary of Defense can’t stand one another, as was the 

case for a good part of my time in government, or if the National 

Security Advisor isn’t an honest broker. How well the planning, activities, and efforts of State, Defense, and others are coordinated 

and integrated is the responsibility of one person: the President. 

And there is nothing anybody else, including the Congress, can do 

about it. 

I’ll conclude with three other reasons the Nation is paying more 

for defense in real dollars today than 30 years ago, and getting 

less, and getting less. One is that men and women in uniform 

today drive, fly, or sail platforms which are vastly more capable 

and technologically advanced than a generation ago. That technology and capability comes with a hefty price tag. A second reason 

for the higher cost is the exploding personnel costs of the Department, a very real problem on which I know this committee and others are at least beginning to make some inroads after years of futility. 

But, the third factor contributing to increased costs, and one of 

immense importance, is the role of Congress itself. Here, I am talking about the years-long budgetary impasse on the Hill and between the Congress and the President. The Department of Defense 

has had an enacted appropriations bill to start the fiscal year only 

twice in the last 10 years. The last 7 years all began under a continuing resolution. During the first 6 full fiscal years of the Obama 

administration, the Defense Department has operated under continuing resolutions for a third of the time, a cumulative total of 2 

years. Department leaders also have had to deal with the threat— 

and, in one year, the imposition—of sequestration, a completely 

mindless and cowardly mechanism for budget-cutting. Because of 

18 

the inability of the Congress and the President to find a budget 

compromise, in 2013 defense spending was reduced midyear by $37 

billion. All of those cuts applied equally, in percentage terms, to 

2500 line items of the defense budget and requiring precise management of each cut to comply with the Antideficiency Act with its 

criminal penalties for violations. Sequestration effectively cut about 

30 percent of day-to-day operating funds in the second half of fiscal 

year 2013. 

But, then add to this mess the fact that the Department, probably the largest organization on the planet, in recent years has had 

to plan for five different potential government shutdowns. In the 

fall of 2013, with sequestration still ongoing, the Pentagon actually 

had to implement one of those shutdowns for 16 days, affecting 

640,000 employees or 85 percent of the civilian workforce. 

It is hard to quantify the cost of the budgetary turmoil of the 

past 5 years: the cuts, the continuing resolutions, sequestration, 

gimmicks, furloughs, shutdowns, unpredictability, and more. During continuing resolutions, in particular, the inability to execute 

programs on schedule, limits on being able to ramp up production 

or start new programs or to take full advantage of savings offered 

by multiyear purchases, the time-consuming and unpredictable 

process of reprogramming even small amounts of money to higherpriority projects, all these impose tremendous costs on the Defense 

Department and the taxpayer. And this doesn’t even begin to account for the costs involved in hundreds of thousands of man hours 

required to try and cope with this externally imposed leadership 

and managerial nightmare. Moreover, reimposition of full-scale sequestration looms in January, absent a bipartisan budget agreement. 

Given the harm all this politically driven madness inflicts on the 

U.S. military, the rhetoric coming from Members of Congress about 

looking out for our men and women in uniform rings very hollow 

to me. Further, this legislative dysfunction is embarrassing us in 

the eyes of the world at a time when allies and friends are looking 

to us for leadership and reassurance. All the smart defense reforms 

you can come up with will be of little use if the military is unable 

to plan, to set priorities, and to manage its resources in a sensible 

and strategic way. 

The failure of the Congress in recent years, because of the partisan divide, to pass timely and predictable defense budgets, and 

its continuing parochialism when it comes to failing programs and 

unneeded facilities, has not only greatly increased the cost of defense, it has contributed to weakening our military capabilities, 

and it has broken faith with our men and women in uniform. This 

committee with its counterpart in the House has long supported, 

on a bipartisan basis, a strong defense and protecting those in uniform. As you consider needed reforms in the Pentagon, I fervently 

hope you will also urge your colleagues in Congress to break with 

the recent past and place the national interests and our national 

security ahead of ideological purity or achieving partisan advantage, because, as you know as well I, our system of government, as 

designed by the founders who wrote and negotiated the provisions 

of the Constitution, is dependent on compromise to function. To do 

so is not selling out. It is called governing. 

19 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Gates follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT BY DR. ROBERT M. GATES

Chairman McCain, Senator Reed: 

Probably the least sincere sentence in the English language is: ‘‘Mr. Chairman, 

it’s a pleasure to be here today.’’ Frankly, short of a subpoena I never expected to 

be in a Congressional hearing room again. And, given some of the things I wrote 

in my book I’m rather surprised to be invited back to Capitol Hill. So, thank you 

for your kind introductory remarks and for the invitation to address the important 

topic of defense reform. 

I also commend you, Mr. Chairman, for attempting to transcend the daily headlines and crises of the moment to focus this committee, and hopefully the rest of 

the Congress, on the institutional challenges facing America’s defense establishment. While I have stayed in touch with my successors periodically and have followed developments from afar—very afar, my testimony today is based predominantly on my experience as Defense Secretary between December 2006 and July 

2011 and being engaged in two wars every single day during that period. So my 

comments this morning do not necessarily account for all the changes that have 

taken place over the last four years. 

I joined CIA to do my bit in the defense of our country fifty years ago next year. 

With the advantage of that half-century perspective, I’d like to open with two broad 

points. 

First, while it is tempting—and conventional wisdom—to assert that the challenges facing the United States internationally have never been more numerous or 

complex, the reality is that turbulent, unstable, and unpredictable times have recurred to challenge United States leaders regularly since World War II—the immediate post-war period that saw the Soviets tighten their grip on eastern Europe and 

surprise western leaders and intelligence agencies by detonating their first atomic 

device; the frequent crises during the 1950s including the Korean War, regular confrontations with China over Taiwan, pressures from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to help 

France by using nuclear weapons in Indochina, war in the Middle East, uprisings 

in eastern Europe and a revolution in Cuba; during the 1960s the war in Vietnam, 

another Arab-Israeli war and confrontations with the Soviets from Berlin to Cuba; 

in the 1970s, Soviet assertiveness in Africa and their invasion of Afghanistan, yet 

another Arab-Israeli war, and oil embargoes; the 1980s brought a number of surrogate conflicts in places like Afghanistan, an attack on Libya, crises in Lebanon and 

the intervention in Panama; and the 1990s the first Gulf War, military action in 

the Balkans, Somalia, Haiti, missile attacks on Iraq, and the first al-Qaeda attacks 

on us. 

The point of recounting these historical examples is that Americans, including all 

too often our leaders, regard international crises and military conflict as aberrations 

when, in fact and sad to say, they are the norm. 

Convinced time and again that a new era of tranquility is at hand, especially after 

major conflicts, presidents and congresses tend to believe they have a choice when 

it comes to the priority given to national security and, correspondingly, significantly 

reduce the resources provided to Defense, the State Department, and CIA. In the 

short term, at least until the next crisis arrives, they do have a choice, and the 

budget cutters and deficit hawks have their way. 

But in the longer term, there really is no choice. While we may not be interested 

in aggressors, terrorists, revanchists and expansionists half a world away, they ultimately are always interested in us—or our interests or our allies and friends. And 

we always discover then that we went too far in cutting and need to rearm. But 

the cost in treasure and in the blood of our young men and women is always far 

higher than if we had remained strong and prepared all along. 

The primary question right now before the Congress—and The President—is the 

priority you give to defense which, at roughly 15% of federal expenditures, is the 

lowest percentage of the budget since before World War II. Without proper and predictable funding, no amount of reform or clever reorganization will provide America 

with a military capable of accomplishing the missions assigned to it. 

The second and related point I think highly germane to your deliberations is that 

our record since Vietnam in predicting where and how we will be engaged militarily 

next—even a few months out—is perfect: We have never once gotten it right. We 

never expected to be engaged militarily in Grenada, Lebanon, Libya (twice), Iraq 

(now three times), Afghanistan, The Balkans, Panama, Somalia, Haiti and, most recently, West Africa to combat Ebola. 

20 

Because we cannot predict the place or nature of future military engagement, we 

must place a premium on acquiring equipment and providing training that give our 

forces the most versatile possible capabilities across the broadest possible spectrum 

of conflict. 

These two lessons—on funding and flexibility—must underpin any defense reform 

effort—whether the focus is on bureaucratic organization, command structures, acquisition or budgets. 

All that said, it is completely legitimate to ask whether our defense structures 

and processes are giving us the best possible return on taxpayer dollars spent on 

our military. The answer in too many cases is no. In this context, the questions this 

committee is considering are, in my view, the correct ones: namely, whether our nation’s institutions of national defense are organized, manned, equipped, and managed in ways that can deal with the security challenges of the 21st century and that 

efficiently and effectively spend defense dollars. 

Mr. Chairman, over the next fifteen minutes or so, I will make some observations 

about Goldwater-Nichols, Acquisition Policy, the interagency process, and the budget. We can then delve into these and other matters in more depth as the committee 

wishes. 

First, Goldwater-Nichols at 30 years, and the question whether the ambition of 

the original legislation has been fulfilled or is additional legislation of a similar 

magnitude needed in light of the all the changes that have taken place over the past 

three decades. 

My perspective on the current structure of the Defense Department is shaped primarily by my experience as a Secretary overseeing a military fighting two wars. I 

discovered early on that I led a department designed to plan for war but not to wage 

war—at least for the long term. The swift victory of the 1991 Persian Gulf Conflict 

seemed to validate all the post-Vietnam changes to our military including the landmark 1986 legislation. But the Pentagon was clearly not organized to deal with protracted conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan which, contrary to the wishes of most 

Americans, most assuredly will not be the last sustained ground campaigns waged 

by our military. 

In this respect, Goldwater-Nichols succeeded all too well by turning the services 

into force and equipment providers walled off from operational responsibilities, now 

the exclusive domain of combatant commanders. This became especially problematic 

in unconventional conflicts requiring capabilities—usually immediately—that were 

significantly different from what was in the pre-war procurement pipeline 

Just one illustrative example: while there was—and is—a joint process to deal 

with the on-going needs of battlefield commanders, it was left up to the designated 

military service to reprioritize its budget to find the funding for those needs. It will 

come as no surprise to you that with some regularity, the service decided the urgent 

battlefield need did not have as high a priority for funding as its long-term programs of record. These were mostly advanced weapons systems designed for future 

conflicts and had near-sacrosanct status within the military services, making it difficult to generate much enthusiasm for other, nearer-term initiatives that might 

compete for funds. 

I soon learned that the only way I could get significant new or additional equipment to commanders in the field in weeks or months—not years—was to take control of the problem myself through special task forces and AD-HOC processes. This 

would be the case with the mine-resistant-ambushed protected (MRAP) vehicles; additional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities; shortened 

MEDEVAC Times, counter-IED equipment and even care of wounded warriors. 

I learned that if the Secretary made it a personal priority, set tight deadlines, and 

held people accountable, it was actually possible to get a lot done, often quickly, 

even in a massive bureaucracy like the Penatagon. But satisfying critical operational and battlefield needs cannot depend solely on the intense personal involvement of the Secretary. That is not a sustainable approach. The challenge is how to 

institutionalize a culture and incentive structure that encourages wartime urgency 

simultaneous with longterm planning and acquisition as a matter of course. 

A final thought relative to defense organizations and authorities. Through my tenure I was privileged to work with two superb Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff—Pete Pace and Mike Mullen—who were true partners while still providing 

independent, occasionally dissenting, professional military advice. The Chairman, 

along with the Vice Chairman, is the one senior military officer with a stake in both 

current needs and future requirements. One of the great achievements of Goldwater-Nichols was strengthening the position of Operational Commanders and the 

Chairman relative to the Service Chiefs. I believe that as a general principle this 

must be sustained. Service Chiefs have a tenure of four years, combatant commanders nominally three years. Yet the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint 

21 

Chiefs of Staff have two year, renewable terms. I believe their positions vis-a`-vis 

both the Service Chiefs and Combatant Commanders would be strengthened by also 

giving them four-year terms. This would not diminish in the least their accountability to the president, the Defense Secretary and the Congress throughout their 

term. 

Second, a subject that has for years been a focus of this committee—the acquisition process. Not only has Goldwater-Nichols hit the 30 year mark, so too has the 

Office of the Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. AT&L 

was established because a service-driven acquisition system was yielding too many 

over-designed, over-budget and over-schedule programs. The theory was that by giving acquisitions responsibility for major programs to a Senior OSD Official removed 

from parochial service interests, wiser and more disciplined decisions would ensue. 

So what can we say 30 years on? We have succeeded in building a new layer of 

bureaucracy—with thousands more employees—and new processes to feed it. But 

when it comes to output, the results have been mixed. As Secretary I found that, 

despite all the OSD and Joint Oversight Mechanisms, too many major weapons and 

equipment programs were ridiculously over-due, over-cost or no longer relevant to 

the highest priority defense needs. To the chagrin of many inside the Pentagon and 

even more here on the Hill, I canceled or capped more than 30 programs in 2009 

that, if built out fully, would have cost taxpayers some $330 billion. 

So where does that leave us today as this Congress considers reforms for the future? Problems with the services running acquisitions led to greater centralization 

and oversight through AT&L. But that led to another set of problems in the form 

of a sizeable central bureaucracy that adds delays and related costs without 

discernable benefit. So now there is pressure—and legislation—to return significantly more acquisition authority back to the services. My sense is the right answer 

lies with finding a better balance between centralization and de-centralization than 

we now have. 

But a strong word of caution. You must not weaken the authority of the Secretary 

of Defense and his ultimate decision-making power on acquisition. I cannot imagine 

a Service Chief or Service Secretary able to overcome intense internal pressures and 

voluntarily do away with, for example, programs like the Army Future Combat System, the Airborne Laser, the Zumwalt Destroyer or dozens of other troubled or needlessly exquisite systems that had built up a loyal service constituency. The simple 

fact is that such decisions are not just programmatic but highly political. And only 

the Secretary of Defense, with the strong support of the President, has the clout— 

the power—inside the Pentagon, with industry and here on the Hill to make such 

decisions and make them stick. 

A couple of other observations seem obvious as you and the Secretary of Defense 

address this issue. Nothing will work without rigorously applied accountability, 

within the services, by AT&L and by the Secretary. Then there is the importance 

of basic blocking and tackling in acquisitions processes: to wit, high level, rigorous 

control of requirements and limiting changes beyond a certain point to avoid the 

‘‘Gold Plating’’ phenomenon; competitive prototyping where possible before program 

initiation; more realistic cost estimating; and revising contract incentives to better 

reward success and penalize failure. Also promising are your legislative efforts, Mr. 

Chairman, and those of Chairman Thornberry in the House, to streamline acquisitions processes, eliminate counterproductive regulations, encourage more use of 

commercial products and pricing, and attract more non-traditional vendors to the 

defense markets. 

All that said, at the end of the day, re-drawing the organization chart or enacting 

new acquisitions laws and rules will matter less than leaders skilled enough to execute programs effectively, willing to make tough, usually unpopular choices, and establish strong measures of accountability. And willing to get rid of those not performing well—whether people or programs. 

In terms of being better stewards of taxpayer dollars more broadly, the effort I 

began in 2010 to reduce overhead costs—and continued by my successors—must be 

renewed and sustained. It was telling that in just four months, we found some $180 

billion over a multi-year period we could cut in overhead. There is, as Deputy Secretary Gordon England liked to say, a river of money flowing under the Pentagon, 

primarily funded through catch-all operations and maintenance accounts. As you 

know, there is no line item in the defense budget called ‘‘Waste.’’ So getting at unnecessary overhead spending without harming important functions is extremely 

hard work—like a huge Easter egg hunt, but it can and must be done. 

A brief word here on resisting the usual approach of reducing budgets with across 

the board cuts. I have seen countless Washington reform efforts over the years result in mindless salami slicing of programs and organizations. That is not reform. 

It is managerial and political cowardice. True reform requires making trades and 

22 

choices and tough decisions, recognizing that some activities are more important 

than others. It is hard to do, but essential if you are to re-shape any organization 

into a more effective and efficient enterprise. 

Further, the Congress must contain its own bad behavior—such as insisting on 

continuing unneeded programs because of parochial interests, preventing the closure 

of the roughly one quarter of all of defense facilities deemed excess, burdening the 

department with excessive—and frequently expensive—rules and reporting requirements, and more. 

Third, with regard to the interagency process, from time to time the idea arises 

to re-organize the U.S. National Security Apparatus—put together in 1947—to better integrate defense, diplomacy and development—a ‘‘Goldwater-Nichols for the 

interagency’’ if you will. Goldwater-Nichols has mostly worked at the defense department because, when push comes to shove’’ as it often does there—everyone in 

and out of uniform works for one person: the Secretary of Defense. And he or she 

has the last word and can tell everyone to get in line. When multiple cabinet departments are involved, however, there is only one person with that kind of authority— 

the President. 

The National Security Council and its staff were created to provide the President 

with an organizational mechanism to coordinate and integrate their efforts. How 

well that works depends entirely on the personal relationships among principals and 

the talents and skills of the National Security Advisor. Even this structure, 

headquartered just down the hall from the Oval Office, works poorly if the Secretaries of State and defense can’t stand one another, as was the case for a good part 

of my time in government; or, if the national security advisor is not an honest 

broker. how well the planning, activities and efforts of state, defense and others are 

coordinated and integrated is the responsibility of one person—the president. And 

there is nothing anybody else—including Congress—can do about it. 

I will conclude with three other reasons the nation is paying more for defense in 

real dollars today than thirty years ago and getting less. One is that men and 

women in uniform today drive, fly or sail platforms which are vastly more capable 

and technologically advanced than a generation ago. That technology and capability 

comes with a hefty price tag. A second reason for the higher cost is the exploding 

personnel costs of the department, a very real problem on which I know you are 

at least beginning to make some inroads after years of futility. 

But the third factor contributing to increased costs, and one of immense importance, is the role of Congress itself. Here I am talking about the years-long budgetary impasse on the Hill and between Congress and the President. The Department 

of Defense has had an enacted appropriations bill to start the fiscal year only twice 

in the last decade—the last seven years all began under a continuing resolution. 

During the first six full fiscal years of the Obama Administration, the Defense Department has operated under continuing resolutions for a third of the time—a cumulative total of two years. Department leaders also had to deal with the threat, 

and in one year, the imposition, of sequestration—a completely mindless and cowardly mechanism for budget cutting. Because of the inability of the Congress and 

the President to find a budget compromise, in 2013 defense spending was reduced 

mid-year by $37 billion—all of those cuts applied equally in percentage terms to 

some 2,500 line items of the Defense Budget, and requiring precise management of 

each cut to comply with the Anti-Deficiency Act with its criminal penalties for violations. Sequestration effectively cut about 30 percent of day-to-day operating funds 

in the second half of fiscal year 2013. 

But then add to this mess the fact that the department—probably the largest organization on the planet—in recent years has had to plan for five different potential 

government shutdowns. In the fall of 2013, with sequestration still ongoing, the 

Pentagon actually had to implement one of those shutdowns for 16 days, affecting 

640,000 employees or 85 percent of the civilian work force. 

It is hard to quantify the cost of the budgetary turmoil of the past five years— 

the cuts, the continuing resolutions, sequestration, furloughs and shut-downs, the 

unpredictability and more. During continuing resolutions in particular, the inability 

to execute programs on schedule, limits on being able to ramp up production or start 

new programs, or to take full advantage of savings offered by multi-year purchases, 

the time-consuming and unpredictable process of re-programming even small 

amounts of money to higher priority projects all impose tremendous costs on the Defense Department—and the taxpayer. And this doesn’t even begin to account for the 

costs involved in hundreds of thousands of man-hours required to try to cope with 

this externally imposed leadership and managerial nightmare. Moreover, re-imposition of full-scale sequestration looms in January absent a bipartisan budget agreement. 

23 

Given the harm all this politically driven madness inflicts on the U.S. military, 

the rhetoric coming from members of Congress about looking out for our men and 

women in uniform rings very hollow to me. Further, this legislative dysfunction is 

embarrassing us in the eyes of the world at a time when allies and friends are looking to us for leadership and reassurance. 

All the smart defense reforms you can come up with will be of little use if the 

military is unable to plan, set priorities and manage its resources in a sensible and 

strategic way. 

The failure of congress in recent years because of the partisan divide to pass timely and predictable defesne budgets—and its continuing parochialism when it comes 

to failing programs and unneeded facilities—has not only greatly increased the cost 

of defense, it has contributed to weakening our military capabilities, and it has broken faith with our men and women in uniform. 

This committee, with its counterpart in the house, has long supported—on a bipartisan basis—a strong defense and protected those in uniform. As you consider 

needed reforms in the Pentagon, I fervently hope you also will urge your colleagues 

in Congress to break with the recent past and place the national interest—and our 

national security—ahead of ideological purity or achieving partisan advantage. Because, as you know as well as I, our system of government—as designed by the 

founders who wrote and negotiated the provisions of the Constitution—is dependent 

on compromise to function. To do so is not ‘‘selling out’’—it’s called governing. Thank 

you. 

Senator MCCAIN. Well, thank you, Mr. Secretary—Dr. Gates, 

thank you. Those are very strong words, and I wish that all 535 

Members of Congress could hear the—your closing remarks. I will 

quote them quite often and quite liberally. And it is, frankly, a 

damning but accurate indictment about our failure to the men and 

women in the military, the 300 million Americans, and the security 

of our Nation. 

We are also looking at a debt-limit showdown, Mr. Secretary. 

And we all know that debt limits have to be raised because of 

spending practices, yet we now have a substantial number of Members of Congress that, ‘‘By God, we’re not going to vote to increase 

the debt limit, and anybody that does is, of course, a traitor and 

doesn’t care about fiscal responsibility.’’ The rhetoric has been very 

interesting. 

So, we’re now looking at sequestration, and we are also looking 

at the debt limit, and we’re also looking at a President and Secretary of Defense—with the Secretary of Defense’s support of 

vetoing a bill that is not a money bill; it’s a policy bill. That’s what 

defense authorization is all about. So, the President’s threatening 

to veto because of the issue of not increasing nondefense spending, 

when there is nothing that this committee nor the authorizing 

process can do to change that. I’m sorry to say that members of 

this committee will be voting to sustain a presidential veto on an 

issue that we have nothing that we can change. 

Well, could I just ask, again, on sequestration—I also would ask 

a specific question. In your remarks, it was interesting to me that 

you didn’t make a single comment about the service secretaries and 

their role. Do you think we ought to do away with the service secretaries, Dr. Gates? 

Dr. GATES. I’ve thought about that, thanks to your staff providing me with some of the issues that you all might want to discuss today. And I think that—I think I would say no to that question. And I would say it primarily because I think that having a 

civilian service secretary does strengthen the civilian leadership 

and the civilian dominance of our military. If there is—and they 

are able to do so on a day-to-day basis in decision making that a 

24 

single person, like the Secretary of Defense, could not do. I mean, 

I couldn’t—the Secretary can sort of reiterate that, and make it 

clear in his actions, that civilian control is important, but I think 

that the symbolism, to members of the services, that there is a civilian at the head of their own service who is responsible for them, 

and accountable for them, I think, is important. 

Senator MCCAIN. Let me go back over this relationship between 

AT&L, the uniformed service chiefs, the Secretary of Defense—and 

you cited a couple of cases where, by going around the entire process as in MRAP, you’ve mentioned, and other cases—where is—go 

over, for the benefit of the committee, the—where is the balance? 

We’re trying to, in this legislation, give some more authority and 

responsibility to the service chiefs, who, right now, as I understand 

it, have none, and yet, at the same time, as you said, not return 

too much to the service chiefs because of their advocacy, their view 

of sacrosanct, long-term programs that they believed were important to their services. I don’t quite get that balance there. 

Dr. GATES. Well, and I wish I could give you a precise and very 

specific answer. It seems to me that—I mean, the irony is that— 

for example, when it came to the MRAPs, although I made the decisions, it was, in fact, AT&L and the leadership of AT&L that executed those programs and that signed the contracts, and they were 

actually implemented, then, by the—the Marine Corps actually had 

the responsibility, because they had originated the—the MRAPs 

were originally their idea, and it was their success in Anbar that 

led me to expand it. But, the problem that I ran into in the Defense 

Department is that any problem, whether it’s an acquisition or 

anything else, affects multiple parts of the Department, none of 

which can tell the other what to do. So, if the comptroller has a 

problem, he can’t tell AT&L what to do. If Cost Assessment and 

Program Evaluation has a problem, they can’t tell AT&L or anybody else what to do. They only report to me or to the Secretary. 

And so, the reason I found myself chairing these meetings was because there were enough different parts of the Department who 

were involved in almost any decision that no one below the Secretary could actually get everybody in the room and say, ‘‘This is 

what you have to do.’’ 

So, how you fix that, institutionally—and I will tell you, when 

Ash Carter was AT&L, was the Under Secretary, and particularly 

in my last 6 or 8 months, Ash and I talked all the time, ‘‘Ash, how 

do we institutionalize this? How do we institutionalize meeting 

these urgent needs along with the long-range kind of planning and 

acquisition that we have?’’ And, frankly, when I left, we hadn’t 

solved that problem. 

But, it has to—the services do have authority, they do have procurement or acquisition authority, and they do have senior people 

in those positions. And, frankly, my sense is that there are—a couple that I dealt with seemed to me to be quite capable. But, how 

you realign the roles of AT&L and the service procurement or acquisition officers, I don’t have an easy solution for you. All I can 

suggest is that there be a dialogue between this committee and 

Secretary Carter and the services and AT&L, in terms of how you 

adjust the balance. 

25 

It is clear to me that the balance has shifted too far to AT&L. 

And therefore, there needs to be some strengthening of the role of 

the services. But, central to that will be forcing the service leaders, 

the Chief of Staff and the Secretary, to hold people accountable, 

and to hold those two people accountable for the service. I know 

Mark Milley was up here testifying and said, you know, ‘‘Give me 

the authority, and, if I don’t do it right, fire me.’’ Well, that’s kind 

of extreme. But, at a certain point, accountability is a big piece of 

this, and I just—I don’t have for you a line drawing or even a paragraph where I could tell you, ‘‘Here’s where you redraw the balance,’’ because I’m not sure right where that line goes. 

Senator MCCAIN. Thank you. 

Senator Reed. 

Senator REED. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, Dr. Gates, for extraordinarily insightful testimony 

and not only giving us advice but also sort of pointing out the questions which you’re still trying to carefully think through. It’ll help 

us immensely. 

One point you made is that we plan very well for the initial 

phase 1, phase 2, phase 3 operations with our equipment, with our 

personnel. It’s the—usually the phase 4 of how we sort of conduct 

protracted war that you predicted would be the likely face of conflict in the future. So much of that depends upon capacity-building 

in the local nations, and so much of that depends upon non-DOD 

elements—State Department, police trainers, public health systems. I think we’ve seen that so many times, in Iraq and Afghanistan. And this comes back to the point I think you’ve also made 

about, you know, if these agencies are not properly funded or not 

properly integrated, then we could succeed in the initial phase of 

the battle, but fail, ultimately. Is that a fair assessment? And—— 

Dr. GATES. Well, I can only remind this committee how many 

times you heard from our commanding generals in both Iraq and 

Afghanistan about the desperate need for more civilians, both in 

Iraq and Afghanistan, and the value that they brought. Secretary 

Rice used to chide me occasionally, reminding me that we had more 

people in military bands than she had in the entire Foreign Service. 

I’ll give you another example, though, and it’s an action that— 

frankly, where the—both the executive branch and the Congress 

are responsible. When I left government in 1993, the Agency for 

International Development had 16,000 employees. They were dedicated professionals. They were accustomed to working in dangerous 

and difficult circumstances in developing countries, and they 

brought extraordinary, not only skill, but passion. When I returned 

to government, 13 years later, in 2006, AID was down to 3,000 employees, and they were mostly contractors. And that is a measure 

of what’s happening in the development part of our broader strategy. And I would say that, you know, for those of us of a certain 

age who can remember USIA in its heyday, what we have in the 

way of strategic communications in our government today is a very 

pale reflection of that. 

So, those—that whole civilian side has been neglected for a very 

long time. 

26 

Senator REED. And that neglect will be exacerbated by sequestration, and they will not—these agencies don’t have a way to provide 

at least short-term funding, as DOD does through the overseas contingency accounts. They’re just stuck. And because they don’t function well—and I think that’s the conclusion you draw—our overall 

national security, our overall response in this, is impaired dramatically. Is that fair? 

Dr. GATES. I believe so, yes. 

Senator REED. And it raises the issue, too, and—because this is 

the subject of a lot of our discussions, is—we have tried to find the 

money for Department of Defense, and the account that’s bearing 

the bulk of the differences, both budgetary and political, is the 

overseas contingency account. As a means of funding defense on a 

long-term basis, in your view, is that an adequate approach, or 

should we raise the regular budget caps and do it as we thought 

we used to do it? 

Dr. GATES. Well, first of all, my approach when I was Secretary 

was to take every dollar I could get, wherever I could get it. 

Senator REED. Yeah, I know. That’s a—— 

Dr. GATES. It’s a terrible way to budget. I mean, it is a gimmick. 

It does provide the resources, but I think it’s hard to disagree 

with—I mean, the way the things ought to operate is that if there 

is a sense on the Hill, a majority view, that the budget needs to 

be cut to reduce the deficit, you go through regular order of business, and you—like I did when I was Secretary of Defense, you 

make tough decisions. What are you going to fund? What are you 

not going to fund? But, you make choices. That’s what leadership 

and political life is all about, it seems to me. And then you vote 

a budget, and the money flows, whether there’s more or less of it. 

You know, in the current paralyzed state, maybe there’s no alternative right now to getting the money this way, but it is—as the 

saying used to go, it’s a helluva way to run a railroad. 

Senator REED. Well, thank you very much, Dr. Gates, for your 

extraordinary service to the Nation. 

Thank you. 

Senator MCCAIN. Senator Sessions. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Dr. Gates, and thank you for your 

service. And I would add my compliments to those of my predecessors—prior speakers, that I believe you represent one of the best 

Defense Secretaries the Nation has ever had. 

Dr. GATES. Thank you. 

Senator SESSIONS. And I know you’ve served with dedication, put 

the Nation’s interests first, you put the Defense Department first. 

Some of your former Cabinet colleagues put Secretary of Health 

first, and education first, and roads first. And so, we got pleas from 

every department and agency, and we don’t have as much money 

as we’d like. So, the crisis we’ve entered on the budget process is 

essentially that the President of the United States has said, ‘‘You 

Republicans care about defense. You’re not getting any more money 

for defense unless I get more money for nondefense.’’ And that’s a 

big conflict. And so, the process we moved forward met the Defense 

Department’s request and the President’s request for defense, but 

it has not met the nondefense increases, all of which, on defense 

and nondefense, are borrowed, because we’re already in debt. So, 

27 

anytime we spend more, we borrow the extra money. So, it’s a difficult time, and—— 

But, you are correct, history teaches us that conflicts just don’t 

go away. They keep coming back, and we don’t know what it will 

be like, and we need a strong national defense. And I thank you 

for your real good advice. 

Briefly, do you believe that, with regard to the extremism we’re 

seeing in the Middle East, that we, as a Nation, and our allies in 

Europe, NATO, and other places, should seek to develop a strategy—bipartisan in the United States or worldwide—to deal sophisticatedly with that threat over decades to come? And can we do 

that? 

Dr. GATES. Senator, I think that—I think we face a generation 

of conflict in the Middle East. I think we have four—at last four 

conflicts going on simultaneously: Shiite Islam, led by Iran, versus 

Sunni Islam, led by Saudi Arabia; reformers versus authoritarians; 

Islamists versus secularists. And then the question of whether 

these artificially created countries—Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria—comprised of historically adversarial ethnic and religious groups can 

hold together at all. I used to say ‘‘without repression.’’ Now the 

question is whether they can hang together at all. Syria has become, if you will, the epicenter of all of that. 

Some of you may have read Dr. Kissinger’s long essay the other 

day in the Wall Street Journal. My concern is that I don’t see an 

overreaching—or an overriding strategy on the part of the United 

States to how we intend to deal with this complex challenge for the 

next 20 or 30 years. And one of the benefits of containment—and 

there were lots of disagreements about how to apply it and how— 

and the wars we fought under it, and so on—but, I will always believe that critical to our success in the Cold War was that we had 

a broad strategy, called containment, that was practiced by nine 

successive administrations of both political parties. It had bipartisan support, the general notion of how to deal with this. We don’t 

have anything like that with respect to the Middle East. And I 

think that as long—and so, we’re kind of dealing with each of these 

crises individually rather than backing up and saying, ‘‘What’s our 

long-range game plan, here? And who are going to be our allies? 

Who are going to be our friends? Where do we contain? Where do 

we let it burn itself out?’’ We just really haven’t addressed those 

long-term questions. It seems to me we’re thinking strictly in sort 

of month-to-month terms. 

Senator SESSIONS. Well, thank you. I think that’s very good advice for us. 

I believe—I’ve been around here a good while—I believe there’s 

a possibility of a real bipartisan support for that kind of long-term 

vision. We’ve got big disagreements on spending and some other 

issues that—hard to bridge, but I think this one we could bridge. 

And I appreciate your thoughts on that. 

I met with the—some German group yesterday in a very fine 

meeting, and raised the need for Europeans to contribute more to 

their defense and our mutual defense. And the leader of the group 

pointed out it was unacceptable that NATO is funded 70 percent 

by the United States. He acknowledged that. You’ve spoken on that 

28 

in the past very clearly. Do you have any further ideas about what 

we might do to have our allies carry a bit more of the load? 

Dr. GATES. Well, this is one area where one might hope, in the 

long term, that Mr. Putin has done us a favor by reminding the 

Europeans that, actually, the world has not gone on to broad, 

sunny uplands where there is peace and tranquility all the time. 

The reality is, many years ago NATO countries all committed to 

spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defense. When I left office, 

there were five countries out of 28 that met that threshold, and two 

of them were Greece and Croatia. So, it gives you a measure of 

where the others need to pull up their socks. And, as you say, I 

spoke very bluntly about this, including in Brussels in my last 

speech in Europe. Probably never be welcome in Europe again, either. 

[Laughter.] 

Dr. GATES. But, the—but, no, I—and I think the more that—particularly, the more that Members of Congress from both parties 

talk to their counterparts in Parliaments in Europe, that can only 

help, in my view. 

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. 

Senator MCCAIN. Senator Heinrich. 

Senator HEINRICH. Dr. Gates, in your speech on budget austerity 

at the Eisenhower Library, you said that, quote, ‘‘Eisenhower was 

wary of seeing his beloved republic turn into a musclebound garrison state, militarily strong but economically stagnant and strategically insolvent,’’ unquote. 

As you’ve heard, we’ve got a lot of digit—very difficult appropriations challenges coming up in the next few months, and I wanted 

to ask you if you have any opinions as to what Eisenhower might 

think of the proposal to use the overseas contingency operations 

fund—i.e., the war fund—to cover base-level DOD budget items, or 

whether you might have some thoughts on that. 

Dr. GATES. Well, I think I expressed my view that these kinds 

of ad hoc arrangements are never at all as satisfying or as cost effective as regular-order business in which choices are made and decisions are made based on those choices, and dollars allocated. And 

there may be more dollars, there may be fewer dollars, but at least 

people have some predictability. I would also tell you that having 

some predictability year-on-year would be helpful. And so, I think 

that, obviously, regular-order business, in terms of managing these 

budgets—that’s really what I was talking about in a good part of 

my remarks—having regular appropriated defense budgets that actually begin on the—at the beginning of the fiscal year is the way 

things ought to work, and they have not worked that way up here 

for at least 10 years. That needs to be fixed. 

By the same token, as I said, when I was the Secretary, if I were 

confronted with the situation that I face now, my sense would be 

to take the money, because what’s my alternative, and what kinds 

of programs am I going to have to have to cut in order to accommodate certain defense needs? 

Let me give you an example of a place where I made a big mistake. In 2010, this committee and others were very unhappy about 

supplementals, and talking about moving away from 

supplementals. And I knew that, when the wars were over, those 

29 

supplementals, or now the OCOs, would go away. A lot of the funding that we had for military families and for families of wounded 

warriors, and wounded warriors, were being funded through the 

supplementals. I moved all those programs, or as many of those 

programs as I could, into the base budget, in the belief we would 

need those programs for years and years and years to come. Well, 

guess what? All of those programs are now being hit by sequestration and by continuing resolutions and everything else. So, what I 

thought would protect those programs ended up making them vulnerable; whereas, if I’d have left them on the OCOs, they’d still be 

fully funded. So, those are the perverse consequences of not having 

regular appropriations bills. 

I would make one other observation about Eisenhower and his 

military industrial complex speech. It gets quoted a lot. But, there’s 

one factoid that people don’t usually include. When Eisenhower 

made that speech in 1961, the defense budget accounted for 51 percent of Federal spending. Today, it’s 15 percent. 

Senator HEINRICH. Shifting gears a little bit with the rest of my 

time. Do you have general thoughts on how you build sort of a culture of incentives and values that really value off-the-shelf solutions, where they’re appropriate, within the acquisition process and 

the procurement process, rather than sort of having this inherent 

bias towards exquisite new programs and products? 

Dr. GATES. I think that there are obviously areas in which you 

ought to buy off-the-shelf capabilities. And, frankly, one of the 

great cultural shifts in the national security arena actually occurred in the early 1980s, when we, in the intelligence arena that 

had always led the way in developing data processing, data storage, data management, were discovering that the private sector 

was far outstripping us in terms of their capabilities. And so, beginning in the mid-’80s, we began buying off-the-shelf software; 

and hardware, for that matter. So, there are areas like that, where 

I think that, in fact, the private sector is way ahead of the government and where we can buy off-the-shelf capabilities that will actually improve our capabilities. There will be some areas—and these 

are always the areas that are contentious, but—that have to do 

with some specific military capabilities where you are in the realm 

of completely new technology, and those are the places where 

you’re going to have to take risk and you’re going to have to realize 

that there probably are going to be cost overruns. Most of the highly advanced—technologically advanced programs defense has had 

for the last 30 or 40 years have all, in their initial years, had cost 

overruns. And partly it’s because we’re dealing with, and trying to 

do, things that have never been done before. 

Senator HEINRICH. Dr. Gates, I want to thank you for subjecting 

yourself to this today. We appreciate it. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator MCCAIN. Senator Inhofe. 

Senator INHOFE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And, Dr. Gates, I agree with the statement that was made by our 

Chairman, that there’s no one better suited for the reform that 

we’re looking at, and we’re hoping for and we’re anticipating, than 

you. And I also want to say that, during the various incarnations 

you’ve had, I’ve always enjoyed personally working with you. 

30 

You’ve gone out of your way to have dinners with individuals and 

really tried to work with us more than anyone else has. So, I thank 

you for that. 

You know, you observed that in 1961 it was 51 percent of the 

budget, and it’s now 15 percent. And that’s a problem. It’s the lowest percentage since World War II, I guess. But, that isn’t the problem we’re addressing today. That is a problem, but what we’re talking about is the tooth and the tail. 

Now, both you and Secretary Hagel sought to shrink the inflated 

headquarters and major combat commands’ tasks during the—your 

respective times as Secretary of Defense. Secretary Carter initiated 

a targeted 20-percent reduction in the staff during his deputy 

time—Deputy Secretary. And in August of this year, Deputy of Defense Secretary Robert Work sent all services a memo entitled 

‘‘Cost Reduction Targets for Major Headquarters,’’ ordering preparation for a 25-percent cut in appropriations from 2017 to 2020. I 

think that’s great, and we supported it. In fact, our defense authorization bill has a lot of language in there that says this is what 

we’re going to—we need to do. And it’s a major problem. 

Let me just ask you to think about something that hasn’t been 

brought up yet. It’s an observation that I’ve made a long time ago. 

And that is the problem you have with bureaucracies in general. 

Bureaucracies don’t want to get smaller, they want to grow. It was 

Reagan who said, ‘‘There is nothing closer to life eternal on the face 

of this Earth than a government agency once formed.’’ We both remember that. I—and so, every time it seems that there is a bureaucracy that is asked to reduce its overhead—and that’s what 

we’re talking about today, the headquarters, its overhead—they 

will pick out—cherry pick something that they do that the public 

is so concerned about. 

Let me give you an example. I’ve introduced legislation—in fact, 

I passed legislation that addresses the FAA and their treatment of 

general aviation. I have a second bill called the Bill of Rights II. 

I had problems with reams and reams of bureaucrats from that Department out lobbying, knowing they had a lot of people out there 

on their staff. If you look at the FAA—in 1990, their—the total 

number of pilots that they regulated, which is primarily what they 

were doing in the year 2000, was 625 pilots. Today it’s 593 pilots. 

So, the workload is actually reduced. And yet, in the year 2000, 

their budget was $9.9 billion. Today, it grew from $9.9 billion to 

$16.6 billion. So, that’s an increase of $67 billion. Now, what did 

they do—every time there is some kind of an effort by me, on the 

radio, or something else, talking about how it is an inflated bureaucracy that doesn’t have the workload they had 5 years ago, 

that their budget is 67 percent more. Every time they do that, they 

would say, ‘‘All right, we’ll go ahead and start reducing.’’ What did 

they reduce? They reduced things that scare people. They reduce 

thing—the controllers—the number of controllers that are out 

there. And I could give you a lot of examples, but I don’t have to, 

because I know that you know this. 

So, is there a way to handle this? I think that should be considered in this whole discussion. And, even though I had to leave to 

another committee hearing, I don’t—I suspect that part wasn’t 

brought up. What are your thoughts here? 

31 

Dr. GATES. It just so happens, Senator, that, in January, I have 

a new book coming out—— 

[Laughter.] 

Dr. GATES.—that specifically addresses—the subtitle is ‘‘Lessons 

on Change and Reform from 50 Years of Public Service,’’ and it’s 

how you lead and change big bureaucracies, and how you bring 

about change. And one of the elements in that book, for example, 

is how to use a period of budget stringency to change the way an 

organization does its business. It creates an opportunity for a leader who’s determined to change things and make them better, because you don’t have enough money to do all the things that you’ve 

been doing, and, therefore, you have to think about how you’d do 

it differently. 

I had—we had a lot of programs that—as we referred to earlier— in a 4-month period, we came up with $180 billion in overhead cuts 

in the Defense Department over a multiyear period. This was in 

2010. Now, some of those cuts created a strong reaction, including 

here on the Hill. Senator Kaine will recall the reaction when we— 

when I shuttered Joint Forces Command in Norfolk. And I had the 

entire Virginia delegation on my doorstep. Actually, in my office. 

And—— 

[Laughter.] 

Senator MCCAIN. And the then-Governor. 

Dr. GATES. And the then-Governor. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator MCCAIN. Who was the worst. 

[Laughter.] 

Dr. GATES. The point I’m trying to make is, first of all, we cut $80 billion out of the Defense Department, generally, but what I 

assigned the services to do was to find $100 billion in cuts on their 

own, just in the services. But, what I did, with the approval of the 

President, was to tell them, ‘‘If you find $100 billion—if you find 

the cut, if you meet the target that I’ve given you, and then you 

show me new military capabilities or expanded military capabilities 

that are actually tooth, I’ll give you the money back to invest in 

those.’’ So, they were incentivized. It wasn’t a zero-sum game for 

them, where anything they identified, they were going to lose. But, 

it forced them to address this tail-and-tooth issue and created both 

penalties if they didn’t achieve the goals, but an incentive for them 

to find and be successful in the effort. 

One of those things—and it goes to one of the questions that the 

committee is addressing—the number of general officers. As part of 

that exercise, we took an initial swipe at senior leadership in the 

Department, and our objective—and I—this is one of those things 

you start and you never know whether it came out—but, we proposed cutting 50 four-star positions—or 50 general-officer positions 

and, I think, twice that number of senior civilian positions. 

You can do this. But, the thing that it requires, whether it’s the 

FAA or the Defense Department or anyplace else—it requires the 

person in charge to monitor it almost daily and to make sure that 

people are doing what they said—what they signed up to do or the 

assignment that they were given. In effect, you have to regularly 

grade their homework. You can’t tell somebody—you can’t tell a 

service secretary, ‘‘I want you to cut $25 billion in overhead over 

32 

the next 5 years,’’ and then, a year later, ask him how he’s doing. 

What you need is to ask him in 2 weeks, ‘‘What’s your plan?’’ And 

in a week after that, or 2 weeks after that, ‘‘How are you doing on 

implementation?′′ 

So, you can do these things, Senators. You can make these bureaucracies work. And that’s kind of the thesis of the book, but it’s 

kind of, How do you do that? Because it clearly is not done very 

often. And one of the things that I did, and for which this committee expressed a great deal of appreciation at the time, was actually holding people accountable. You know, people get fired in 

Washington all the time for scandals and doing things wrong and 

that kind of stuff. Hardly anybody ever gets fired in this city for 

just not doing their job well enough. 

Senator INHOFE. Yeah. Good for you. 

Dr. GATES. I mean, that’s what was rare, was somebody getting 

fired because they didn’t do their job well enough. You need a little 

bit more of that in this city. 

Senator INHOFE. Yeah. Well, my time is expired, but that’s a 

great answer to that question, and I appreciate it. And, by the way, 

I’ll swap you books. I have a chapter in mine on this, too. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator INHOFE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator MCCAIN. I hope they’re available on audio. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator MCCAIN. Senator Hirono. 

Senator HIRONO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Gates, thank you very much for your very strong statement 

about Congress’s responsibility to govern through compromise. And 

we have been wrestling with the very negative impacts of sequester 

on both a defense and nondefense side, so my hope is that there 

will be a compromise that will achieve sequester relief for both 

sides, both segments, because national security is more than just 

defense. I’m not trying to lecture you or anything, because I certainly respect your views. 

You mentioned, during the Cold War, that we had a broad strategy of containment. And with all of the conflicts that continue to 

arise in the Middle East—and I think you did note that we’re in 

an environment now where some of these conflicts, or maybe many 

of these conflicts, are unpredictable, that we don’t have a strategy, 

like strategy in the Middle East. Now, I think, after our experience—decade-long experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, that there 

is a desire that boots on the ground in the Middle East should not 

be United States boots. So, from that flows a number of possibly 

what I would consider strategic kinds of decisions. And so, that 

may be one of the reasons—our unwillingness at this point to put 

our own boots on the ground in the Middle East may be one of 

the—would you consider that a—perhaps not a strategic decision, 

but one that really—from which flows a lot of the—our response to 

what goes on in the Middle East? 

Dr. GATES. Well, first of all, I think, when it comes to something 

that specific, it would be a mistake to have, in essence, a one-sizefits-all that basically says, from Pakistan to Morocco, the United 

States will have no boots on the ground. The truth is, we have— 

just as one example, we have 600 sets of boots on the ground in 

33 

Sinai as part of a peacekeeping operation that’s been there since 

the 1973 war. Are we going to pull those guys out because that’s 

boots on the ground? We have—— 

Senator HIRONO. No, but—well, we’re talking about in combat—— 

Dr. GATES. Well—— 

Senator HIRONO.—and in long-term. 

Dr. GATES. But, my point is, then you’re beginning to make some 

distinctions. So, you could have boots on the ground as long as 

they’re not in combat. So, does that allow advisory work? Does that 

allow them to be spotters for airplanes? 

So, I guess my feeling is that the first thing about a strategy is 

identifying what are our interests, what are we trying to—what are 

we trying to protect? What are we trying to prevent from happening? And then you work back from those answers into the techniques, the tactics by which you try to accomplish those broader objectives or that broader strategy. And I think that the solutions, 

particularly where the situations are so complex in the Middle 

East, where you have multiple different kinds of conflicts going on, 

the solution for each country or each part of the problem may be 

different. But, you do need an overarching strategy that at least 

tells you: What am I trying to achieve out here?—and that also— 

I mean, if I had to put a negative in there of what we think we’ve 

learned, it is to be very modest about our ability to shape events 

in that part of the world. That doesn’t mean we should stay out. 

It doesn’t mean we should do nothing. But, we also ought to make 

sure that our strategy doesn’t include grandiose objectives that are 

fundamentally unachievable. 

Senator HIRONO. I agree with you there. Perhaps one of the 

areas of the world where we do have what I would consider a strategy is in the Asia-Pacific area with the Indo-Asia-Pacific rebalance. 

Would you agree that that is a strategy? 

Dr. GATES. Yeah. And I think, you know, despite—you know, 

going back several Presidents, we’ve had several Presidents, during 

their campaigns, take one position toward China, which, when they 

became President, they adjusted. And so, I think, while we don’t 

have, if you will, an explicit bipartisan agreement on strategy in 

Asia, I think there is a pretty broad agreement across both parties, 

the leaders of both parties, in terms of how we—except for maybe 

one or two presidential candidates—about how you deal with 

China, how we—how—what our strategy ought to be in Asia. So, 

I—I guess I’m fundamentally agreeing. I think, in Asia it’s more 

implicit than explicit, but I think there is a pretty broad bipartisan 

agreement on the role we ought to play in Asia. 

Senator HIRONO. Thank you very much. 

Senator MCCAIN. Senator Ernst. 

Senator ERNST. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Thank you, Secretary, very much for being here. I appreciate 

your service to the Nation in your many, many capacities. So, 

thank you. 

Secretary, you were successful in getting MRAPs, body armor, 

and drones to the field to support our warfighters. And to do that, 

even while we were undergoing sustained ground combat, you really had to fight the bureaucracy at the Pentagon to achieve that. So, 

34 

we’re glad that you did that and you took that step to make sure 

our warfighters were protected. But, I am afraid that, after you 

left, it has reverted back to the same old, same old. I’d like to see 

some more pushback out there. 

But, just for example, the Army has spent 10 years trying to figure out how to by a new handgun. Ten years on how to buy a new 

handgun, an end item with a total cost of just a few hundred dollars per item. Ten and a half years, or half a dozen industry days 

later, the Army produces a 351-page request for proposal—351 

pages—for a handgun. And whatever is in these pages, it isn’t a 

lean or streamlined acquisition process responsive to the needs of 

our warfighters. And, because of the bureaucracy and a lack of responsiveness to anyone who isn’t engaged in the Special Operations 

arena, our soldiers have handguns that are over 30 years old; and, 

in recent surveys, they have stated that they absolutely hate those 

small arms. What should Congress do to get the Army to fix this 

mess for small arms and for all items, really, that our soldiers need 

on the ground in a time of war? 

Dr. GATES. Well, it seems to me that—I mean, my friends in the 

Army are not going to like my answer, but—— 

Senator ERNST. That’s okay. 

Dr. GATES.—but, I think—you know, what it is about is calling 

the Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army and 

the Chief of Acquisitions to sit at this table and ask that question, 

‘‘Why has it taken you guys 10 years?’’ This is absurd. And, ‘‘Why 

is it a 350-page RFP?’’ It’s a handgun, for God’s sake. 

And, you know, again, I always come back to the same theme. 

Most bureaucracies have a stifling effect. It’s just in the culture. 

It’s in the DNA. And what is required are disruptors. And if you 

have people in senior positions who are not disruptors, you need to 

make them into disruptors. And the way you do that is by holding 

them personally accountable. 

Senator ERNST. I appreciate that, thank you. And I like that answer, so I don’t know why they wouldn’t. But, I think you’re right 

on, there. 

I would like to talk a little bit about the Middle East, as well. 

In the past, you’ve called for a safe haven to help end the humanitarian disaster in Syria. And I’d like to direct my attention to Iraq, 

because we do have a humanitarian disaster in Iraq, as well. I believe we have a safe haven there, which is Iraqi Kurdistan. They 

have taken in nearly 1.6 million refugees. Many of them are Christians. And our KRG friends who are providing that safe haven, 

they are really unequipped to provide for the influx of all those 

folks. The Peshmerga are also fighting, with limited resources, 

against an enemy which seems to have an endless supply of weapons and other types of equipment, to include many weapons procured through various processes from the United States, whether 

that’s simply picking items up off the ground that have been left 

behind via other security forces. So, how important, in your opinion, has the United States relationship with the Iraqi Kurds been 

for our country and for the DOD over the past quarter of a century? 

35 

Dr. GATES. Well, I think it’s—I think it’s a very important relationship. I think it’s worth noting that I think the Chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs is either there right now or has just been there. 

I mean, my view is that one of the things we ought to be—I said 

this in an interview, and I probably was a little more blunt than 

I should have been, but I think that the idea of training indigenous 

fighters outside of a country, and then reinfiltrating them, was 

probably never going to work. I think one of the things that could 

work is to identify groups, particularly tribes and ethnic groups, 

that have shown they are prepared to defend their own territory 

against ISIS, and provide weapons to those tribes and those religious groups. They may not fight in Iraq or outside of their own 

turf against ISIS, but they may well fight to the death to protect 

their own homeland, their own villages, and so on. And so, finding 

those groups and arming them at least begins to contain ISIS and 

presents them with a diverse number of enemies that make it difficult for them to further expand their activities. And I would include, above all among those groups, the Kurds. 

Senator ERNST. Thank you very much. I appreciate your answer, 

Secretary. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Senator MCCAIN. That was what the Anbar Awakening was all 

about, right, Mr. Secretary? My crack staff tells me that, in this 

RFP, the Army specified everything the handgun needed to do, including comply with the current boar brush, but they didn’t specific 

what caliber the weapon should—— 

[Laughter.] 

Senator MCCAIN. Governor Kaine. 

Senator KAINE. Thank you, Senator and—McCain—Mr. Chair. 

And thank you to you, Dr. Gates, for your service. And we have 

a special affection for you because of your service to your alma 

mater, William & Mary. 

I want to really focus on the last bit of your testimony, which is 

what Congress can do better, and, in particular—we have a hearing right now in the Budget Committee about Federal budget reform. You testified that, I think, only 2 years during the years that 

you were the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) were you dealing 

with a full appropriations bill on the first day of the fiscal year. 

Otherwise, you were dealing with CRs. You and your colleagues in 

the Secretary of Defense dealt with CRs, you dealt with sequestration, you dealt with furloughs, you dealt with threats of all of the 

above, you dealt with brinksmanship over debt ceiling limitations, 

you dealt with a high degree of uncertainty as you’re planning, you 

know, ‘‘Do I—what scenario do I run, in terms of the resources that 

I’ll have? Will I have it—are we going to have to absorb the full 

sequester, be it the budget caps? Will there be some relief?′′ 

Talk a little bit about the strategic challenge that it presents to 

the entire defense mission of the United States when you’re dealing 

with the degree of congressional budgetary uncertainty that we’ve 

seen in the Nation in the past number of years. 

Dr. GATES. Well, it—as I said in my comments, we have had a— 

an appropriations bill at the beginning of the fiscal year twice in 

the last 10 years. And, believe me, it was, I think, probably the 9th 

and 10th year ago. I submitted, through the President, five budgets 

36 

to the Congress as Secretary, and never once had an appropriation 

at the beginning of the fiscal year. 

The problem is, you then have to straight-line your spending, you 

have to adjust all of your spending, because you can’t spend—you 

can’t start anything new, you can’t spend anything more on anything. And then you get several months into the fiscal year, and 

all of a sudden you’ve got money. So, instead of disbursing the 

money over a 12-month period in a rational and planned way, you 

have to hurry up at the end of the fiscal year. When you get a cut 

of 30 percent in the operations budget halfway through the fiscal 

year, which is what happened in 2013 because of sequestration, 

that’s when you ended up with a third of the Air Force Active Duty 

fighter wings grounded. That’s when you didn’t have the money to 

deploy the Harry S. Truman to the Persian Gulf. Those are the 

very real consequences. 

And this uncertainty ripples down to every level. And so, what 

you have are commanders at lower levels not wanting to get caught 

short, so they’re very conservative in the way they spend their 

money, because they don’t know what’s going to happen. And so, 

you have less training, less exercises, less maintenance. I mean, 

these are all the things that can be put off, and they are being put 

off. And the backlog of maintenance in the Navy, for example, is 

becoming huge, but it’s because of this uncertainty of when we’re 

going to get something. 

I mentioned, in my prepared statement, often in the—in a program—in a development of a program, you—when you move from 

one year to the next, you create the opportunity to significantly 

ramp up production. And when you ramp up the numbers, the 

costs go down. You lose those opportunities if you don’t have the 

money to ramp up because you don’t know whether you’re going to 

have the resources to do that, or even the authority, if you’ve got 

a continuing resolution. 

So, it has—you know, I mean, it has a huge ripple effect—even 

a continuing resolution—a huge ripple effect throughout this entire 

giant organization, and you just—you know, I used to say—I used 

to say, when testifying up here, I’d say, ‘‘You guys expect me—I’ve 

got the biggest supertanker in the world, and you expect me to run 

it like a skiff.’’ And that’s just impossible. 

Senator KAINE. Let me compare uncertainty, because, at the 

start of your testimony, you talked about there can be a conventional wisdom that you challenge that, ‘‘Oh, the world is more uncertain now than it’s been—more dangerous than it’s been,’’ but 

you sort of walked through from World War II to today, and you 

pointed out, decade by decade, the challenges. And, while we may 

not be able to predict the next challenge, that there will be challenges is actually fairly easy to predict, based on past history. 

You’ve testified that you don’t think the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account is particularly smart, in terms of budgeting. And you would try to put stuff in the base account. But, it 

seems to me that the mission of national defense is probably, in 

real terms, kind of more threatened by uncertainty here than uncertainty in the world. Bad things are going to happen in the 

world, and we know it. And we’re not necessarily going to be able 

to stop that. We can predict that they will, even if we can’t predict 

37 

the particular one. The uncertainty that we can fix here is the uncertainty of our own budgetary dysfunction. 

Dr. GATES. I sometimes say—when I’m talking to groups and at 

universities, I get asked, ‘‘What’s the biggest national security 

threat to the United States?’’ And I say, ‘‘Well, fundamentally, and 

I’m not kidding, it can be found within the two square miles that 

encompass the Capitol building and the White House,’’ because if 

we can’t solve these problems, if we can’t get through and begin to 

address some of the tough problems facing this country, there is no 

single foreign threat that is more dangerous to the future of the 

United States than that. 

Senator KAINE. Thank you, Dr. Gates. 

Senator MCCAIN. When you have the CRs and the sequestration 

that you mentioned, and the uncertainty that it breeds, doesn’t it, 

over time, have a significant effect on morale and retention? 

Dr. GATES. Absolutely. And I think, you know, if Bob Hale, who 

was referenced earlier, who was the comptroller while I was Secretary—Bob wrote an article about the consequences for morale of 

all of these changes and all this uncertainty and so on. People just 

get discouraged. I mean, they do all this planning, and they do— 

and then it all comes to naught. And, you know—and I told General Odierno and General Amos, before I left—I said, ‘‘My biggest 

worry is how you—as these wars ramp down—is how—you have 

given these young officers and NCOs amazing independence and 

opportunity to be entrepreneurial, innovative, thoughtful, and out 

there on their own doing amazing things′′—these are really the 

captains and the NCOs’ wars—I said, ‘‘And if you bring them back 

to the Pentagon and put them in a cubicle, you’re going to lose 

them, you’re going to lose the best of these young people.’’ 

I believe that this continuing uncertainty about the future—I 

mean, pilots join the Air Force to fly. People join the Army to drive 

tanks and other equipment. People join the Navy to go to sea. And 

when you tell them you’re not going to train as much as you 

thought you were, you’re not going to fly, you’re not going to sail, 

you’re not going to drive as much as you thought you were, I think 

there’s a very real risk that these uncertainties are going to lead 

to a bleeding out of some of the most innovative and desirable 

young people we have in the military who just, frankly, get fed up. 

Senator MCCAIN. Senator Ayotte. 

Senator AYOTTE. Thank you, Chairman. 

I want to thank you, Dr. Gates, for your incredible record of service to our country. 

And I certainly hope, as you have rightly said to us today, that 

we can come together to address sequester with a budget agreement that is going to make sure that you have that certainty and 

that our men and women in uniform have that, given the challenges we are facing around the world, so that they can plan and 

make the right decisions that need to be made to make sure that 

the Nation is safe. 

I want to shift gears a little bit and ask on a topic, first of all, 

that I noticed, in an op-ed that you and Secretary—former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrote recently on the situation 

with Russia and the engagement that Russia is taking in Syria to 

keep Assad in power, in cooperation with the Iranians. And wanted 

38 

to ask your thought process about, as we look at what Russia is 

doing right now, what you think that their goals are, and also what 

you think we should be taking as steps. 

We recently had testimony before this committee from General 

Keane and General Jones, both very distinguished retired generals, 

and one thing they said really struck me, that they believe that if 

we continue the current course with our interactions with Russia, 

they believe it could be the end of NATO if NATO doesn’t further 

step up, also, to help address not only this—we think about what’s 

happening in Syria, but also the situation with Ukraine and what 

is happening in that region. 

So, I wanted to get your thoughts on Russia and where you think 

we should be stepping up. 

Dr. GATES. Well, I had a number of opportunities to interact with 

Mr. Putin when I was Secretary. We actually had an interesting 

relationship because of our respective backgrounds in intelligence. 

I would sometimes remind him that I was Deputy Director of the 

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) when he was a lieutenant colonel 

serving in southern East Germany, but—— 

[Laughter.] 

Dr. GATES. What Putin has been most impacted by, in my view, 

was the collapse of, not just the Soviet Union, but the Russian Empire. Russia’s borders today are roughly what they were when 

Catherine the Great was Empress. Ukraine has been part of the 

Russian Empire for a very long time. 

Putin is all about lost power, lost glory, lost empire. And he is 

not crazy. He is very much an opportunist. But, what—I think he 

has two basic strategic objectives. The first is to restore Russia to 

great-power status so that no problem in the world can be addressed without Russia’s involvement and without Russia’s agreement. And the second is as old as the Russian Empire itself, and 

that is to create a buffer of states friendly to Russia on the periphery of Russia. And if he can’t create friendly states, then frozen 

states, where the West can no longer expand its influence, and 

Russia can hold—have at least a barrier. And that’s what happened, if you will, in eastern Ukraine. 

So, I think those are his objectives, and I think that he will be 

very opportunistic in pressing those objectives. But, at the same 

time, he is not a madman. And I think if he runs—if he encounters 

resistance, he will hesitate, he will pull back. 

And so, I think that he has seen an opportunity to cement Russia’s position in the Middle East through helping Assad. I don’t 

think—as I—as Condi and I said in the op-ed, he’s not particularly 

sentimental. When the time comes for Assad to go, Putin will be 

happy to throw him overboard whenever that’s convenient, as long 

as Russia has another person coming in who will be attentive to 

their interests and allow them to keep the naval base at Tartus 

and their position—their military position in Syria. 

So, the question then is, What do you do about this? And I think 

that—oh, and I guess one other thing I would add is—also in the 

back of Putin’s head: as he sees opportunities, if he also has the 

opportunity to poke the United States in the eye, he will never 

miss that opportunity. 

39 

So, the question is, How do you—where do you resist him? Where 

do you push? And frankly, in Ukraine, Putin has escalation control. 

He has a lot more forces on the Ukrainian border than we or North 

Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) can put on the opposite side, 

or are willing to put. We also happen to have a pretty dysfunctional government in Kiev, which makes our trying to help them 

even more difficult. 

So, the question is, then, Where do you have the chance to establish some limits? And it seems to me one of those places where he 

is at the end of a long supply line, and we have some real assets, 

is in the Middle East. And I think that there is an opportunity to 

draw some lines in Syria that—let me frame it another way. 

I think we should decide what we want to do in Syria, whether 

it’s a safe haven or anything else, and basically say—just tell the 

Russians, ‘‘This is what we’re going to do. Stay out of the way.’’ 

And if it’s a safe haven, and it’s in an area that doesn’t threaten 

Assad’s hold on power, then it seems to me that the chances of 

them challenging us are significantly reduced. 

But, at a certain point, first of all, I think we need to stop talking 

about whether these actions make them look weak, or he doesn’t 

know what he’s doing, or whatever. I think he knows exactly what 

he’s doing. And at least in the short-to-medium term, he’s being 

successful at it. 

Senator AYOTTE. Thank you. 

Senator MCCAIN. Fortunately, he’s in a quagmire. 

Governor King. 

Senator KING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Gates, welcome. It’s a delight. Your testimony has been provocative in many ways. 

In fact, one of the—my first comment is, you talked about the 

USIA. And we abolished the USIA in 1998, and now its successor 

agencies have, according to my quick calculations, about half the 

budget that it had, and yet, one of the reasons we’re having such 

a problem with ISIS is, we’re losing the war of public opinion, particularly in the Middle East. That was a—in retrospect, a strategic 

error, in terms of our ability to combat the idea, which is a very 

important part of this conflict. Would you agree? 

Dr. GATES. Totally. You know, I would run into people from Pakistan to Morocco and elsewhere, and they would say they learned 

to speak English in a USIA library. We had a—USIA libraries in 

virtually every major city in the world. And these guys would go 

there as kids. They would say, ‘‘We went there because it was the 

only building in town that was air-conditioned.’’ 

[Laughter.] 

Dr. GATES. But—they learned to speak English, but they also 

learned something about America. And these libraries and these 

activities were very important. 

And then, obviously, during the Cold War, we had all these capabilities. And it wasn’t just USIA. CIA had a huge covert propaganda operation going on. We infiltrated millions of miniaturized 

copies of the Gulag Archipelago into the Soviet Union over the 

years, and magazines and stuff like that. 

So, it was both an overt—a complementary overt and covert policy that extended the reach of the message that the United States 

40 

wanted to communicate to other countries, extraordinarily—and 

we—what we have now is a pale reflection of all of that. 

Senator KING. And yet, that’s an essential element of the war 

that we’re in now. 

Dr. GATES. Absolutely. 

Senator KING. Second point. You talked about how to fix the bureaucracy. And I kept thinking, as you were talking, what you were 

really talking about is leadership, that organizational structure, 

you can mess around with, you can change. And then, when you 

talked about the budget process here, we could change things, have 

a biennial budget or a different kind of budget. But, the—we have 

a budget process: pass authorization bills and then pass appropriations bills. We don’t do it. Wouldn’t you agree? It’s really a failure 

of leadership. It’s not a failure of structure or good intentions. 

Dr. GATES. It is a failure of politicians to do politics. Politics is 

about leadership, but also about making choices and making decisions. 

You know, one of my favorite Churchill quotes is, ‘‘Having one’s 

ear to the ground is a very awkward position from which to lead.’’ 

[Laughter.] 

Senator KING. My favorite—I’ll trade Churchill quotes—my favorite is, ‘‘Success consists of going from failure to failure without 

a loss of enthusiasm.’’ 

[Laughter.] 

Senator KING. We had a very interesting hearing last week on 

the aircraft carrier and overruns. And as we got into the subject, 

it became apparent that one of the problems was trying to cram a 

lot of new technology into a—an asset that’s going to have to last 

40 or 50 years. You could say the same about the F–35 or other 

new weapon systems. How do we deal with the problem of new 

technology, which involves risk, which involves time, which involves mistakes and rework, and yet we can’t afford to be building 

obsolete weapon systems? Do you see the challenge? 

Dr. GATES. Well, I think that—let me use a—an example from 

when I was Secretary. I stopped one new bomber program, because 

I thought it was headed down the wrong path. And I ultimately, 

before I left, approved the next- generation bomber that the Air 

Force is bringing before you all. But, I told them that they had to 

design it with a couple of things in mind. First of all, they needed 

to be—we didn’t want to repeat the B–1—or the B–2 bomber, 

where, because we kept reducing the buy, we ended up with 20 of 

them, and so they ended up costing $2 billion apiece. So, when we 

lost one on Guam, that’s 5 percent of our bomber force, and it’s $2 

billion. So, I said, ‘‘You’ve got to build it—you’ve got to design it 

so that you can buy at least 100. And you have to keep the cost— 

you have to start with technology that you understand.’’ 

So, your colleague was talking about off-the-shelf hardware. I 

think that, you know, if you look at the B–52—I was born and grew 

up in Wichita; they built the B–52 when I was in elementary school 

and middle school. And they’re still flying. Now, there’s not much 

original left in the B–2. But, the point is, those planes were built 

in such a way that we have been able to enhance their capabilities 

as new technology has come along, for decades. That’s what we 

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41 

thing that we know we can get off the ground for a reasonable 

price, and then, as new technologies become available, integrate 

them into that system. 

Whether you can do that with an aircraft carrier—I got into a 

huge amount of trouble with the Navy League several years ago, 

when I made the mistake of telling them, at their meeting, ‘‘We 

ought to think long and hard about the long-term missions of aircraft carriers,’’ and particularly as China was working on their 

anti-access area-denial capabilities. 

But, I think that—I mean, we need to think about these systems 

more in terms of how we can get the best technology we can, that 

we have available, that we know works; build it, and then enhance 

it as we go along. That may not get you the most tremendously advanced capability, but you’ll have a larger number. 

I mean, one of the reasons the number of Navy ships is down so 

far is because each ship has become so incredibly expensive. And, 

you know, the old line is, ‘‘Well, we have a lot of quality.’’ I mean, 

there’s a lot of technological capability in these things. Another one 

of my favorite quotes from an unlikely source is Josef Stalin, who 

once said, ‘‘At a certain point, quantity has a quality all of its own.’’ 

[Laughter.] 

Dr. GATES. And it goes to the Chairman’s point, you can’t have 

the same aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf and the South China 

Sea at the same time. So, we’ve got to figure out a way—you know, 

having the most advanced technological whatever in the world 

doesn’t help you much if you can only afford to build 20 of them. 

So, better to have something that has somewhat less capability, 

where you might be able to build hundreds—— 

Senator KING. And modular—— 

Dr. GATES.—and then upgrade them. 

Senator KING. And modularize it in some way so that you can 

upgrade. I think that’s an important concept. 

Thank you. Appreciate it. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator MCCAIN. In the defense bill, we do require studies on 

other platforms. Maybe not do away with the carrier, but certainly 

the dependency on one company building it is part of—I think, contributes to the overrun problem. I think you would agree, Dr. 

Gates. 

Dr. GATES. The absence of competition is never good. 

Senator MCCAIN. Senator Cotton. 

Senator COTTON. Secretary Gates, thank you very much for your 

lifetime of service to our country and its national security interests; 

in particular, your 4 and a half years as a wartime Secretary of Defense, when your actions saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives 

of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Dr. GATES. Thank you. 

Senator COTTON. Appreciate it. 

In those many years as a leader in America’s national security 

establishment, can you recall a time when our strategic interests 

were as threatened as they are today across the Eurasian supercontinent? 

Dr. GATES. Well, I think, you know, we have—as I mentioned at 

the very beginning of my remarks, every decade has had a variety 

42 

of challenges. I think it’s probably fair to say that we’ve not had 

as many challenges in as many and widespread parts of the world 

as we do today, that the occasions that that has happened have 

been pretty rare, I think. 

Senator COTTON. The one country that spans across the entire 

continent and has a global interest, you might say, like the United 

States, is Russia. Given some of Russia’s recent provocations, not 

just in Europe, but in the Middle East, do you think that, as part 

of defense reform, we should relook at our basing structures in Europe, to include the possibility of moving permanently stationed 

troops to the front lines of NATO, the Baltics, if not Poland? 

Dr. GATES. I think that we need to increase—well, first of all, let 

me say, I agree with the steps that have been taken to increase the 

presence of NATO and United States forces in eastern Europe, particularly in Poland and in the Baltic states. I think the idea of having equipment sets, as the Pentagon is thinking about, has a lot 

of merit, in terms of having the equipment already pre-positioned 

in Europe. I think I would work very closely with our NATO partners, in terms of the wisdom of having permanent United States 

bases in Poland or in the Baltic states. There is always the risk of 

taking a step too far and creating a consequence that you were trying to prevent in the first place. And as in the case of eastern 

Ukraine, the Russians have a lot more capability and a lot shorter 

supply lines in that area than we do, but I think enhancing the defensive patrolling out of the—air patrolling out of the Baltic states, 

challenging Russian aircraft when they come up and go beyond 

where they should go, and having regular exercises in eastern Europe—the truth is, Putin has provoked all of this. Our allies, when 

I was Secretary, back in 2008–2009, when we would propose— 

when the United States would propose having an exercise in Poland or in the Baltic states, our NATO counterparts wanted no part 

of it. So, one of the things Putin has achieved is to create enough 

alarm in Europe that our allies are now willing to participate with 

us in those kinds of forward operations. 

So, I’m—I guess what I’m saying is, I totally support advanced 

kit being over there. I totally support the rotational presence and 

increased presence of our forces and other NATO forces on a rotational basis. I think whether you want to go to permanent bases 

is a tougher question. 

Senator COTTON. Okay. Another thing that Vladimir Putin has 

done, especially in the last month, is display some of his advances 

in missile technology to go along with the boasts he’s made. The 

United States, in recent years, has accused Russia of developing a 

nuclear ground-launched cruise missile, in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Given that Vladimir Putin 

already has nuclear weapons that hold all of Europe at risk, why 

do you think he would be considering developing such a missile? 

What does that tell us about the way he conceives his nuclear 

strategy as part of his overall security strategy? 

Dr. GATES. The Russian Defense Minister, as early as 2007, approached me about doing away with the INF Treaty. And he said, 

‘‘The irony is, the United States and Russia are the only countries 

that cannot have intermediate-range missiles.’’ And then he said, 

‘‘Now, of course, if we do away with it, we would not put those misVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:04 Jul 27, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 Y:\REIER-AVILES\BORAWSKI\DOCS\15-79 WILDA
43 

siles in the West, we’ll put them in the south and in the east,’’ 

meaning Iran and China. I wasn’t sure I believed that at the time, 

but—so, they’ve been interested in getting out of this treaty for several years. And just as we unilaterally walked away from the ABM 

Treaty early in the second Bush administration, it would not surprise me in the least to see Russia walk away from the INF Treaty 

and have the opportunity to deploy more of these missiles. 

Senator COTTON. And should we, (a) consider their offer and abrogate the INF Treaty, and (b) regardless, should we consider to 

begin the development of new nuclear warheads that would be 

smaller, more versatile, to counter the threat that Vladimir Putin 

is beginning to pose? 

Dr. GATES. Well, theoretically, my answer would be yes, but I 

would tell you, practically speaking, I spent virtually the entire 4 

and a half years that I was Secretary of Defense trying to get the 

executive—first, the executive branch and then the Congress to figure out a way to modernize the nuclear weapons we already have. 

That effort was a signal failure. So, until—if I have to have a priority on developing nuclear weapons, it would be to modernize the 

ones we already have to make them safer and more reliable, rather 

than building new ones. 

Senator COTTON. Thank you. 

Senator MCCAIN. Senator Donnelly. 

Senator DONNELLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And, Doctor, thank you so much. 

As with some of our B–52 crews recently, they enjoy flying them 

as much as ever. And we want to thank you also because you are 

also a member of the Indiana University family, and we are very, 

very proud of that fact. 

I wanted to talk to you for a second about some of the aftereffects 

of so many of the battles we have been in, and that is the Veterans 

Administration and the work together with the Department of Defense. And we’ve had glitches, things like sharing health records, 

aligning the drug formularies when the handoff comes, matching 

up disability ratings. And I was wondering if, in your time, you 

have any—that you’ve learned any recommendations you have for 

us that can help make that transition better, that can help make 

DOD and VA work together better, any glitches you saw that you 

think, ‘‘Look, this still exists.’’ How do we remove this, how do we 

take care of this? 

Dr. GATES. I saw a lot of glitches. And, as I’ve said, if there’s one 

bureaucracy in Washington that may be even more intractable 

than DOD, it’s VA. And I would find repeatedly—and I worked 

with two Secretaries of VA that I thought were of very high caliber 

people, and they were very intent on helping veterans. The problem 

was that, when we would meet, we and our deputies would meet, 

and we would agree to do things, it would all fall apart the second 

he and I weren’t on top of it. And I—this was one case where I 

think I was better able, in the Defense Department, to make sure 

things got done, but in VA, and particularly under Secretary 

Shinseki, I just had the feeling that he was sort of on the bridge 

of the ship, and he had the big wheel in his hands, but all the cables below the wheel had been cut off to every other part of the organization, and he was just spinning the wheel. 

44 

We worked on electronic records. And, frankly, a lot has been accomplished. Not nearly as much as could have been. But, I’ve 

just—I had the feeling—first of all, these bureaucracies were at 

each other’s throats over whose computer program they were going 

to use—VA’s or DOD’s; and we would go back and forth on this, 

and we’d get briefings, and so on and so forth. 

And so, I think that—the bottom-line answer is to reaffirm what 

everybody knows. That is, there are huge problems in dealing with 

these veterans issues. My objective had been—I wanted the transition to—for, let’s say, a soldier—to be seamless, that he almost 

didn’t know when he passed from DOD into VA hands, because it 

was all done electronically, and so on. And, unfortunately, we’re 

just not there. I mean, my own view on these issues—and I’m not 

an expert on veterans affairs—but, I think the idea of—if you can’t 

get an appointment at a VA hospital within a reasonable period of 

time, then you’re automatically granted a voucher to get help from 

a—from somebody in the private sector so that you actually can get 

treated quickly. 

But, VA was as unprepared for long, protracted wars as the Department of Defense was. They were dealing with, basically—their 

youngest people they were dealing with mostly were Vietnam-era 

people, so people the Chairman’s and my age. And all of a sudden, 

they had this gigantic influx of young men, mainly, who were grievously wounded and would need rehabilitation for years and years, 

and they were totally unprepared to deal with that. 

Senator DONNELLY. Let me ask you one other area that you dealt 

extensively with, and that is trying to reduce suicides in the Active 

Duty military. One of the areas that we’re pushing on, as well, is 

to try to move decision making down to platoon leaders and others 

who deal every day with the soldier. Do you have any additional 

recommendations that you think could make a difference in reducing the suicide rate? 

Dr. GATES. One of the things that we discovered—and my guess 

is, it hasn’t improved much since I left—as we went out to hire a 

significant number of mental health professionals to work in our 

hospitals, to work with Wounded Warrior Units, Warrior Transition Units, and so on, there basically weren’t enough of those professionals to be able to—for us to access to be able to make as big 

a dent in the problem as we wanted. 

One of the ideas that I had, that, frankly, I never got the chance 

to push, was that, just as—just as there is legislation that—if a 

young man or woman goes to medical school and is willing to commit to some years of service in the military, the military will pay 

for their medical education. One thing you all might look at is 

whether that could be extended to mental health professionals, as 

well. And it would be a twofer for the country. First of all, it would 

give the military more of these assets that we need, and so we 

could have people at almost every base and post, but, when they 

leave the military, they’ll fill a very real need in American society 

as a whole. 

Senator DONNELLY. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator MCCAIN. We’ll take that suggestion on board, Mr. Secretary. 

45 

Senator Lee. 

Senator LEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, Dr. Gates, for being with us. You—I think you’re 

somewhat uniquely qualified, based on your experience as Secretary of Defense, to testify and to give us advice on issues related 

to reform within the Pentagon. We appreciate your service and 

your willingness to come back today, even though, as you note in 

your book, it’s not exactly your favorite thing to do, to testify in 

these hearings. And I can’t blame you. 

A lot of military analysts have lamented at some length the 

growth, over the past two or three decades, of what they sometimes 

refer to as the military bureaucracy, referring, of course, to support 

staff and headquarters staff, whether they be uniformed, civilian, 

contractors, or a combination of the—all of the above, and that a 

lot of this occurs—this growth occurs at the expense of the military’s core operational forces. And so, in other words, we get a lot 

of growth, a lot of movement, but not necessarily a lot of forward 

progress, because we’re not necessarily growing the part of the 

military that actually does things, that actually goes in and does 

the work that the military is there to do. How much of this growth 

in headquarters and support services occurred as the United States 

became involved in the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq? 

Dr. GATES. Well, as your question implies, it began before those 

wars, but I think that the amount of money that began to flow to 

the Department of Defense after 9/11 really removed any constraints for hiring additional people. And so, you know, one of the 

things that—as you’re probably aware, a couple of our commanders 

got into a lot of trouble by giving interviews to various press outlets that got them into trouble with the President. Well, what I discovered was that several of these commands had gone out and 

hired contractors to provide them with public relations advice. This 

was not something that it seemed to me that a combatant commander needed, but I think—— 

Senator LEE. At least not for the purpose of fighting wars. 

Dr. GATES. Well, at least not for the purpose of why they were 

there. So, I—when I—in 2010, we put some very severe constraints 

on—in fact, we froze contractor—the number of contractors, and 

then put some restrictions in place that would require the different 

parts of the Department to begin reducing the number of contractors. We also tried, as part of the overhead effort in 19-—in 2010, 

when we found $180 billion in savings in overhead—the measures 

that we were taking included a number of cutbacks, in terms of 

headquarters staffing. I mentioned earlier, we had a—as part of 

that plan, cutting 50 general officer slots. One of the things we discovered had been a grade creep so that, where you might have a 

three- star commander of the air forces in Europe at one time, you 

now had a four-star. So, how do you push that back down? Because 

they all have—you know, if you go from three to four stars, you get 

more staff, and so on and so forth. So, I think we have kind of an— 

we have a pretty good idea of how we can go after those kinds of— 

that kind of overhead, but it requires—as I suggested earlier, it requires a continuing pressure on the institution, and accountability 

of—you know, ‘‘You said you were going to cut X number. Have you 

done it? And if not, why not?′′ 

46 

Senator LEE. How about the—how are these issues, meaning the 

relationship between the size of the DOD bureaucracy—how is the 

size of the DOD bureaucracy related to the scope of the missions 

that we become involved in around the world? In other words, if 

the United States were to take either a more involved or a less involved role in addressing various crises around the world, what effect might that have on the size of the headquarters and support 

structures for the military services and combatant commands? 

Dr. GATES. I think, particularly when it comes to headquarters, 

whichever way you went, you could cut the numbers. 

Senator LEE. You could cut them, either way, whether you’re 

taking a more involved role or a less involved role. 

Dr. GATES. Yes. 

Senator LEE. So, it need not necessarily follow, from a decision 

to get involved in a particular conflict, that we have to grow the 

Pentagon, that we have to grow the support staff or the military 

bureaucracy to a corresponding degree. 

Dr. GATES. That’s my belief. 

Senator LEE. Okay. I see my time’s expired. Thank you very 

much, Secretary Gates. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator COTTON [presiding]. Senator Blumenthal. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

Welcome, Secretary Gates, and thank you for your service to our 

Nation, and your continuing service now. 

I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the connectivity between the Department of Defense and the VA. And I know this was 

an issue very much on your mind when you were Secretary. From 

what you’ve seen, has there been improvement, for example, in the 

transfer of medical records, in the services that are provided to our 

military men and women when they are about to leave the military? Could you give us your assessment? 

Dr. GATES. Senator, we were beginning to make some headway 

on sharing electronic health records when I left. In all honesty, this 

is an area, in the 4 years since I’ve been gone, where I’ve—I’m not 

aware of what’s actually been done under my successors. And with 

VA, I would hope the progress has continued, but I must say that, 

just based on what I read in the newspapers and what I hear from 

various veterans as I go around the country, I worry that they 

don’t see a lot of improvement. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. I think you worry with good reason, from 

what I know, from what we have been told in these settings, in the 

VA, and other fora. So, I appreciates that you do not have the same 

kind of access or involvement, but I think your instinct and your 

observations are well taken, that, in many ways, there has been 

very little progress in the years since you’ve left. And I think that 

the institutional barriers to progress really have to be broken down 

and reformed. We’re here about reform. 

And, as I think you have observed, probably in this very room 

on repeated occasions, nothing more important as a resource than 

the men and women who serve. With all the equipment and the organization, at the end of the day, it’s really the rewards and incentives that we provide to our military men and women. And the 

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47 

ward, the education and skill training and healthcare that they 

need. 

From your last 4 years in the civilian world, do you have any observation about how well our schools are doing in accommodating 

the needs of our veterans? 

Dr. GATES. As in the public schools or higher education? 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Higher education. 

Dr. GATES. Higher education? I think—so, I have affiliations with 

several universities. I’m the Chancellor of the College of William & 

Mary, I’m—was president of Texas A&M. And so, I’d get down 

there from time to time. We have a community college in our local 

town in Washington State. And just taking those three examples, 

I think that these—I think many universities and community colleges over the past few years have made extraordinary strides in 

reaching out to veterans. All three of the institutions that I just described have space allocated for veterans organizations, a lounge 

where veterans can go and relax together on campus, programs to 

help veterans, ways to get veterans together to give mutual reinforcement so that men and women who have been in combat in 

Iraq and Afghanistan have somebody to talk to other than a 18- 

year-old who just graduated from high school. And so, I have the 

sense that—you know, I know—I’ve read in the papers about all 

the scandals, in terms of misuse of VA funds, and so on. But, I 

think at—in terms of some of the for-profit schools, and so on—but, 

I—my experience and what I’ve heard anecdotally as I go around 

the country and talk to various—at various universities, from the 

most elite universities to the biggest public universities—I have the 

sense that they’re totally unlike Vietnam. These campuses are 

bending over backward to make veterans welcome and to help 

make them successful. 

Senator BLUMENTHAL. Thank you. 

My time is expired, but I might just say, your observations, I 

think, also are aligned with mine, anecdotally. I don’t have numbers or statistics, but peer- to-peer relationships and veteran-toveteran programs, where veterans can provide relationships, and 

crisis intervention, I think, are increasingly common, plus the 

OASIS program that you just described, where veterans can go and 

find other veterans, increasingly common, as well. So, I thank you 

for being here today. 

Dr. GATES. Thank you. 

Senator COTTON. Senator Cruz. 

Senator CRUZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. GATES. Senator. 

Senator CRUZ. Secretary Gates, welcome. Thank you for being 

here. Thank you for your many, many decades of distinguished 

service to our Nation and also to my home State of Texas. It’s very 

good to see you. 

Dr. GATES. Thank you. 

Senator CRUZ. I want to start by talking with you about the morale of the military, which is a concern that troubles me greatly. 

The Military Times did a survey in 2009, and they asked soldiers 

whether the overall quality of life is ‘‘good or excellent.’’ And 2009, 

91 percent of soldiers said yes. In 2014, that number had dropped 

from 91 percent to 56 percent. Likewise, they asked whether senior 

48 

military leadership had their best interests at heart. In 2009, 53 

percent of soldiers agreed with that statement. In 2014, that number dropped in half, to roughly 27 percent. 

Do you share my concerns about declining morale in the military? And, if so, what do you see as the cause of these challenges? 

Dr. GATES. I don’t have any statistics, but I do have the sense 

that there is a morale problem. And I think it is—I think it’s due 

to several things. First of all, I think it is due to the substantial 

and growing cutbacks in the number of men and women in the 

military. So, people in the military now are less confident that they 

will be allowed to remain in the military, that, in the force reductions, they will be turned out—in essence, be fired, and particularly 

for those who have some years in, and probably have families, concerns about what they will do if, because of forced downsizing, they 

end up out in the civilian world again. I think that there’s a morale 

problem that derives from a lot of the budgetary uncertainty, in the 

sense that, as I suggested earlier, people who joined the military 

to fly airplanes, sail on ships, or drive tanks, are finding they don’t 

have the same opportunities to do that anymore. That’s the stuff 

that made it ‘‘fun’’ and that was one of the things that encouraged 

them to stay. 

So, I think that these and the budgetary uncertainties and so on 

are all part of a challenge for our young men and women in uniform. 

And then the final one that I mentioned just a few minutes ago, 

and that is, you go—particularly the ground forces—you go from— 

mostly young men who have been out in Iraq and Afghanistan on 

these deployments, they have this great sense of comradery and 

brotherhood with their fellow soldiers and marines. They’ve given— 

been given a lot of opportunity to operate independently and in an 

entrepreneurial way, and be innovative, and so on, and they’re 

being brought back and put in cubicles and asked to do 

PowerPoints. 

So, I think all those things together probably are having a real 

impact on morale. 

Senator CRUZ. You know, in my view, another factor that is contributing, in addition to every one you just discussed, is having a 

Commander in Chief that fails to set clear objectives, and, in particular, an objective of winning, clearly and decisively, military conflicts in which we’re engaged. In your book, ‘‘Duty,’’ you stated that 

President Obama didn’t appear to believe that this own strategy for 

Afghanistan in the Middle East would work. Is that still a concern 

you share? 

Dr. GATES. Well, I—what I wrote about and what concerned me 

was that—my belief that if a Commander in Chief or a Secretary 

of Defense is going to send a young man or a young woman into 

harm’s way, they need to be able to explain to that young person 

in uniform why that mission is important, why the cause is noble 

and just, why their sacrifice is worthwhile. And that was—I think 

the easiest way to put it, that was not a speech I heard the President give. 

Senator CRUZ. No. Sadly, it was not. 

One final question. The budget request that you proposed in fis- cal year 2012 called for $615 billion in the base budget for fiscal 

49 

year 2016. That was the last Pentagon budget that was directly derived from the threats we face. By any measure, the world, I believe, has become much more dangerous today than it was in 2012. 

Do you agree with that assessment? And do you view that baseline 

of $615 as a—$615 billion as a reasonable baseline, given the growing threats in the world? 

Dr. GATES. I would say—I’ve been out of this for 4 years, but I 

would say that, certainly, the number of challenges that we face in 

a variety of places in the world are more complex and more difficult than when I put together that fiscal year 2012 budget. I have 

seen several assessments by analytical groups that I respect, that 

are nonpartisan, that basically say that the Congress and the administration should go back to that fiscal year 2012 budget as the 

base for going forward. And I respect the views of those who say 

that, and I, therefore, think that that probably would be a good 

idea. 

Senator CRUZ. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. 

Senator COTTON. Mr. Secretary, if, as you said at the beginning, 

the least sincere statement in hearing like this is, ‘‘Mr. Chairman, 

I’m ready for your questions,’’ perhaps the least welcome statement 

is, ‘‘I have a few more questions.’’ Just two, though. 

When we were talking earlier, you said that, theoretically, you 

think that we would need to modernize our nuclear warheads, 

build new ones, maybe smaller, more versatile. That’s a debate we 

can have. But, practically, you had the devil’s own time of just 

modernizing the warheads that we had. Why do you think that is? 

Dr. GATES. Well, there—to be honest about it, there was a great 

deal of resistance, both within the administration—this administration—and here on the Hill, to allocating the funds for modernizing 

our nuclear enterprise. At a time when the—sort of, the political 

aspiration is to get rid of nuclear weapons, the—it was seen as the 

U.S. trying to improve or enhance our nuclear capabilities, when, 

in reality, what we were proposing was not any additional nuclear 

weapons, but simply, rather, trying to make the ones that we already have more reliable and safer than the very old designs that 

we have deployed today. 

It’s a very expensive proposition, but I actually allocated, within 

the defense budget, about $4-and-a-half billion that would go to the 

nuclear enterprise at the Department of Energy, but, at the end of 

the day, it all fell apart. But, it was part of the deal, actually, that 

was made with the passage of the most recent strategic arms 

agreement. Part of the deal that was made was that we would 

modernize a good bit of the nuclear enterprise in exchange for support for going forward with the newest arms control agreement. 

The trouble is, to the best of my knowledge—and, as I say, I’ve 

been gone 4 years—but, to the best of my knowledge, there has 

been no forward progress on that modernization effort. 

Senator COTTON. Since you pursued this effort, despite the political headwinds, presumably you believe there are few things more 

important than a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent for our President to have? 

Dr. GATES. Well, there is nothing more important than that. 

Senator COTTON. Thank you. 

50 

Final question. The Goldwater-Nichols Act reorganized the Department of Defense to improve the quality of strategy, policy, 

plans, and military advice for civilian leaders. Do you think the organization set up by Goldwater-Nichols provided you with the best 

possible ideas, options, and advice while you were Secretary of Defense? 

Dr. GATES. I would say that the policy papers and the planning 

that I received both from the Office—from the Under Secretary for 

Policy under both President Bush and President Obama were firstrate. Led—that organization was led, under President Bush, by 

Eric Adelman, by Michele Flournoy under President Obama. And 

I thought I got very high quality work from them. I thought that, 

on the military side, I got very good planning and very good advice 

from the joint staff and from the combatant commanders. 

I think that the one place where the gap between resources and 

strategy begins to diverge is, every 4 years, when we do the Quadrennial Defense Review. And too often the Quadrennial Defense 

Review, which is kind of what our strategy ought to be to implement—what our military approach ought to be to implementing the 

President’s national security strategy, gets divorced from the budget realities. And therefore, I think that reduces the value of the 

Quadrennial Defense Review. When we did the one in 2010, we 

tried to bring those two back closer together, but we didn’t entirely 

succeed. 

Senator COTTON. Thank you. 

Mr. Secretary, thank you, not just from me, but on behalf of all 

of my colleagues and the citizens we serve, but, most importantly, 

the men and women of our Armed Forces, who you led for 4 and 

a half years of war and whose lives you helped save. 

Dr. GATES. Thank you. 

Senator COTTON. This hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:52 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

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