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Military Purchasing, National Security Suffer At Hands Of Politically-Motivated Officers

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By JOHN NASH

Of Cabbages and Kings

Published: June 27, 2008

With all the fuss over Sen. Barack Obama's middle name, or his wife's "fist bumping," you might not have noticed something as unimportant as the fact that our Air Force has, after four years of wasted money and manpower, failed to contract for badly needed refueling tanker aircraft.
With each passing day, the Air Force's aged fleet of airborne tankers becomes less dependable, less adequate and less safe. They began the replacement contract bid process more than four years ago, but through apparent incompetence, carelessness and even flat-out unethical or dishonest activities, have managed (I use that term very loosely in this situation) to screw things up so that they are no closer to contract award today than they were several years back.
Throughout that tainted process, various offices and investigators were "shocked — shocked!" to discover that the Air Force conducted misleading and unequal discussions with bidders and "erred" in evaluating the bids eventually received, thus favoring one bidder without justification. So the Air Force is back to square one in the tanker acquisition process and moving ahead not at all. Apparently, their reluctance to clean up the disgraceful situation is largely a result of their being unwilling to admit how flawed their acquisition process has been and then to act effectively to clean it up.
Those "flaws" in the contract and systems acquisition processes (as well as in many other parts of the armed services) are largely a result of substandard quality in high-ranking officers (such as generals/admirals), along with corrupt or ineffective civilian government employees of similar power and influence. To save time and printer's ink, we'll look here at only the military officers, whose unacceptable performance is, to me, far less acceptable than that of civilians.
It is tragically true that most of the higher ranking officers (roughly major general to general — two to four stars — in the Air Force) got to that elevated position by being politicians more than anything else. Those key decision makers are too often unquestionably unfit for the established requirements of their job descriptions, and fail, dangerously so, to fulfill their heavy responsibilities. When one's 18-hour work day is filled with politicking, planning the next step in career advancement, golfing and partying with civilians and officers that can or will affect one's advancement, and in general simply "sucking up" to relevant superiors, there's no time for mundane activities, such as proper management of a contract award process.
As a typical example of what I allege, consider the career moves of a man that jumped from lieutenant colonel to four-star general in just a few years. By the time he'd been promoted to major, he'd already mapped out his career moves and identified the officers, congressmen and Department of Defense civilians he needed to court to move up as rapidly as possible. He chose to make most of those moves in the Air Force's Systems Command, which was responsible for contracts such as that for the tankers.
By manipulating his contacts, during social and business meetings, he arranged for frequent job changes of assignments, which gave him exposure to a wide group of influential persons, so that his name would become well known in all the "right places." I once watched him in action, at a formal dinner held at Tyndall AFB, in Florida. The guest speaker was the secretary of the Air Force. The ambitious officer (then a colonel) arrived at the dining room well before the scheduled time, walked through the dining room, reading names on place cards until he found his own. He picked that up, and moved it to a position which would be directly in front of the lectern from which the secretary would speak; moving the original place card back to where his had been. He had carefully prepared questions for the secretary, which were designed only to afford the secretary an opportunity to speak on one or more of his favorite projects/policies. Having submitted those attractive questions to the secretary's staff, the ambitious office felt assured that he would be called on when he raised his hand during the period allowed for questions.
It worked. When the secretary pointed to the colonel, who'd held up his hand indicating that he had a question, the colonel stood, and in a booming studied voice announced, "Sir, I am Colonel ____________, program director for the ______________ ," at which point the secretary interrupted him with "Lanny, we know who you are; what's your question?"
Lanny's name and face were already recognized in the highest places, although he'd never accomplished anything other than keeping those in front of anyone and everyone of perceived importance. He bounced from job to job without ever staying in one place long enough to even learn what it was that he was supposed to do there. Other "Lannys" have been, and are, in charge of procurement programs such as the infamous tanker contract.
So long as the Air Force (as well as all other branches of the armed services) promotes to the highest ranks — colonel and general — based more often on politics and personality than on job qualifications and performance, we'll suffer from surprisingly mismanaged projects vital to our national defense and security. Inevitably, we'll procure inadequate, inappropriate and overpriced military equipment, while our troops suffer from careless, thoughtless leadership at the top.
Yes, there are exceptions to my seemingly blanket condemnation of generals, but for every Marshall or Bradley, there have been 50 politicians wearing stars. And that, Hillary, is why the tanker contract process has been such an abject disgrace and failure.
Air Force Secretary Gates recently fired two high-ranking officers because of misconduct. That's a hopeful start; perhaps the secretary will now have the moral courage to initiate a much-wider house cleaning, and to, perhaps — just perhaps — start major change to the service's dangerously corrupt and ineffective promotion system.
There are hundreds of very competent, dedicated, hard-working and morally upright young officers in the armed services today. We can only hope that most of our future generals and admirals might be chosen from their ranks and not from those who play a good round of golf, laugh at superior's jokes, light the boss's cigar and spend all their time in polishing apples and their own worthless — even dangerous — careers.
John G. Nash has been a widely published journalist for more than 30 years. He welcomes rational comment to him at john@have-eye.com.

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