7. The Military Reform Movement

Clearly the people across this broad spectrum are not going to agree on everything. But as a result of their efforts, there is at least a chance that John Boyd and his friends have started something—a realization that defense is too important to continue to be a shuttlecock in a private game between the systems analysts and the members of the Army-Navy Club, that it is time to call a halt to our Hatfield-McCoy defense policy feuds of the last 15 years and get busy, together, to find a better way.

R. James Woolsey, former undersecretary of the Navy
“A New Kind of Reformer,”
Washington Post, 13 March 1981

Boyd returned to Washington in April 1973. His family was glad to have him home from Thailand. The last American combat troops had left South Vietnam in January of that year, and the South Vietnamese were left to fend for themselves, the result of the Vietnamization of the war, a euphemism for American withdrawal. Congress had cut off any further funding for U.S. military forces. The debacle in Southeast Asia was entering its final phase but wouldn’t end for another two years, when Saigon fell in April 1975. Boyd had enjoyed his tour abroad. There had been a new environment to figure out and a new set of challenges that he loved. Because of the secret nature of the work, much of which remains classified to this day, he was not able to talk much about it. Back home, he entered into the fray of the military reform movement with a renewed vigor.

It had become clear to those who sought to change the way in which the nation conducted the business of defense that something more than forays against individual weapons systems, policy initiatives, or funding decisions would be in order. In the wake of Vietnam, a group of loosely affiliated defense analysts, journalists and reporters, legislators, and academicians became increasingly vocal and active in taking on the DOD. A spate of articles appeared in the press and journals calling for various reforms in the American military. The military itself, embarrassed about its performance in Vietnam, filled with pot-smoking, drug-using enlisted troops with racial animosities, was debating how to clean up its own act. The reserve components had problems in that their ranks were largely filled with those who joined to escape the draft and service in Vietnam. All in all, the 1970s was not a good time for the American military. Military reform was, therefore, in the air, if not a focused reality.

The saga of the controversies surrounding nonperforming weapons systems has been told and retold many times.1 Many of these media exposés reflect overheated rhetoric, but public findings on problems in force structure planning and weapons acquisition are a matter of record. One of the more succinct statements of the problem comes from the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management in 1986, also known as the Packard Commission, for its chairman, David Packard. In many ways, the commission vindicated the previous decade’s efforts at military reform:

Today, there is no rational system whereby the Executive Branch and the Congress reach coherent and enduring agreement on national military strategy, the forces to carry it out, and the funding that should be provided—in light of the overall economy and competing claims on national resources. The absence of such a system contributes substantially to the instability and uncertainty that plague our defense program. These cause imbalance in our military forces and capabilities, and increase the costs of procuring military equipment.2

If the problems were so self-evident, why weren’t they easily remedied?

In essence, the United States has a defense committee of 535 members of Congress far more concerned about federal jobs and money in their districts than with the nation’s defense. The more seniority a member has, the bigger the benefits. Even when there are supposed victories and defense spending is cut, it turns out to cost more in the long run. Hedrick Smith summed it up:

Inevitably, a Pentagon budget is a negotiated treaty to satisfy all these constituencies, like a politically balanced ticket in Los Angeles or Chicago. The list of “priority” weapons is terribly long because each weapon has its own constituency. So when Congress asks Weinberger for guidance on where to cut, his inclination is to resist rather than alienating some constituency. Congress is forced to make an overall cut and then have the services do what is least effective for national strategy: cut programs across the board from everyone, so that market shares are not disturbed. Hard choices are not made. Nothing is killed. Programs are stretched out. Costs rise because of inefficiency. The taxpayer gets less bang for the buck.3

To the public, the real evils of the Pentagon were seen through the seemingly endless stories of ineptitude, high-priced spare parts, graft, and corruption that filled the press, particularly in the 1980s when the Reagan defense budget threw money at DOD faster than it could absorb it.

This laxity in defense spending and accountability was obvious and of long standing. Why did it continue? The reformers thought they knew. “The generals ordered weapons built, and lieutenant colonels felt compelled to deliver weapons, not bad news. The optimistic reports kept the generals locked into programs, such as Divad, for the incentives of the defense game are to build, spend, and appropriate, not to oppose, question, or delay.”4 Boyd understood that while all this was true, piecemeal attacks and marginal successes were only tactical victories of little significance: “That’s the strategy in the Pentagon. Don’t interrupt the money flow.”5 Unless there was some fundamental transformation in the thinking about defense, the process would never change. As long as the process remained as it was, the nation would be saddled with an inefficient, perhaps ineffective, military establishment to carry out our national security strategy.

True Reform: Changing Thinking about Defense

At a meeting in the summer of 1992 to create an oral history of the congressional Military Reform Caucus, Dave Evans made an important comment:

I think it goes far beyond simply, as Congressman [G. William] Whitehurst indicated in his memoirs, the implied agenda or the need went far beyond his perception of a process to develop a meaningful alternative to the conventional pattern of weapons acquisition in the Pentagon. I think it was far more than that. We were really looking at nothing less than a way of changing our way of thinking about defense issues.… I think there was clearly an effort to go beyond the notion of being cheap hawks, of producing more with less money.6

Boyd and his associates (principally Ray Leopold, with additional help from Chuck Spinney) tried to do so—change the thinking and the planning process—inside the system before Boyd retired. A paper they drafted had five goals.

1. To provide the decision makers with an understanding of the planning process

2. To identify the crucial steps in the planning process

3. To explain how current planning is not fiscally pragmatic

4. To show the progress we have made toward producing planning options

5. To show what remains to be done and what support is required.7

The document, a mere 8 pages in length, had 140 pages of appendices on five subjects: “Planning’s Evolving Approach,” “Budget Analysis,” “Soviet Weapons Potential,” “Combat Tasks,” and “Matching Hardware Options to Combat Tasks.” It followed Gen. Glenn Kent’s “strategy to tasks” approach. It is a model of lucid thinking, cogent analysis, and important recommendations. In the maw of the system, however, it disappeared.

The paper sought to improve Air Force planning so decision makers can “make choices that increase force effectiveness within available resources.” Though concerned with the future, it makes the point that planning “is actually concerned with the future consequences of current decisions.” The effort was occasioned by concern over the Air Force budget and the realization that the Air Force’s pursuit of its wish lists was mortgaging its future. To acquire everything it wanted and sought in the FY79 budget would require resources from then through FY83. If that wasn’t an incentive for more realistic planning, what was?

The Fighter Mafia did not intend to reform the American military. They wanted to build the best air-to-air fighter for the least amount of money so the Air Force would have enough of them if ever called on in combat against the forces of the Warsaw Pact. Along the way, the Fighter Mafia’s interests evolved into something that would eventually be known as the military reform movement.

The dedication and zeal with which the antagonists supported competing views was more akin to religious fervor than a rational difference of opinion. The reformers inside the Pentagon referred to their growing criticism of military design and procurement of modern weaponry and their efforts to improve it as “doing the Lord’s work.” In labeling it thus, they presumed the inherent righteousness of their cause, recognized that there would be martyrs to it (like Riccioni), and that they would be persecuted, right or not, by the powers that be. Their faith in their crusade would be sorely tested. Ultimately, the heresy that they represented to the orthodoxy of the military services and the defense establishment was something that could not, and would not, last. In the short run, however, Boyd and his circle of conspirators had some remarkable successes.

Retirement from the Air Force on 1 September 1975 gave Boyd the time to do even more and freed him from the shackles of the military hierarchy. It was hardly retirement at all, as Boyd continued to work in the Pentagon and put in ten to twelve hours per day, sometimes six days a week, but he did so on his terms. He wanted to work as an unpaid consultant. He was told he could not. He had to be on a pay status to gain routine access to the building. His terms were one day’s pay each two weeks, the least he could get to satisfy that condition. Money is corrupting, you know.

Boyd became a special consultant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, but he migrated back to the TAC Air Shop and the band of recruits he had formed (Chuck Spinney, Ray Leopold, Barry Watts, Jim Burton), and he kept in touch with others (Pierre Sprey, Tom Christie, Chuck Myers, Rich Riccioni). He also began to widen his circle of contacts and to include media and political contacts who were essential for the sort of guerrilla campaigns they would be fighting for the next decade on a variety of fronts.

The military reform movement was never formally founded or chartered. Indeed, even those who were identified as major participants had a hard time agreeing on when it could be said to have started and why, although all agreed on the key persons involved and the centrality of John Boyd in the effort. Essentially, it spanned the decade from 1976 to 1986. Boyd the person, known for his campaign for the F-16 on the Hill, and Boyd’s ideas in the initial “Patterns of Conflict” briefing were the glue that held the movement together and gave it shape and substance. In 1981, Michael R. Gordon described Boyd’s role this way:

So far, it [the military reform movement] has leaned heavily on the work of such thinkers as retired Air Force Col. John Boyd, whose four hour briefing on the “Patterns of Conflict” draws on the writing of Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu (400 B.C.) and stresses flexible command structures and rapid maneuvers to disorient the enemy. Boyd, who presents his case with the intensity of a revivalist, has briefed several Members of Congress, including Gingrich, as well as congressional staffers, Pentagon reporters and … military officials.8

The movement’s origins lie in the work of the Fighter Mafia and the battle to get the F-16 approved, but its issues branched in many directions with profound military and economic impact over the next decade.

The Context

The period from Jimmy Carter’s presidency to Ronald Reagan’s second term was one of intense soul-searching and turmoil within the U.S. defense establishment. A host of issues gripped the government and the nation. The Vietnam War had ended with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. There was confusion about national security strategy, national military strategy, the transition from conscription to an all-volunteer force, militarily relevant technologies, arms control, budget battles for defense versus other needs, fights among the services on individual weapons systems and just why the war had been lost. After being lied to about Vietnam, the American public was increasingly skeptical of its government’s claims. In part, it was this uncertainty and confusion that gave rise to the opportunity for a military reform movement. These issues were both the saving grace that created the interest and the damning sin that doomed it to failure.

The American military had to reinvent itself after military defeat and steel itself for challenges at both ends of the conflict spectrum. ICBM inventories and capabilities, the vaunted window of vulnerability, and discussions of nuclear winter vied with revolution in Iran, wars in Afghanistan and El Salvador, and rescue missions on the Mayaguez (a success) and at Desert One (a failure). A series of issues seized the spotlight in the public debate in foreign policy and national security affairs. Detente gave way to both arms control and preparations for strategic nuclear war. The seemingly omnipresent but ill-applied rhetoric and policies regarding human rights under Carter gave way to Reagan’s rhetoric about the Soviet Union as the “evil Empire” and “the focus of evil in the modern world.”9 Groups as disparate as the Council for a Livable World and the Catholic Bishops on the one hand argued with Paul Nitze’s Committee on the Present Danger and the National Conservative Political Action Committee on the other. The CIA’s unprecedented Team B was assembled to create a more dangerous profile of the Soviet enemy, while Greenpeace made headlines with its antinuclear activism.

A whole set of rather complex issues seized the headlines over the next decade. Debates over new weapons systems clashed with arms control initiatives such as the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty process, and a new-found emphasis on ballistic missile defense and the Strategic Defense Initiative (labeled Star Wars by its detractors) all vied for attention and resolution. So too did the Nuclear Freeze Campaign and efforts at congressional procurement reform. Given growing weapons system costs and press reports of obscene payments for spare parts, there emerged a public debate on defense the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the 1930s.

In the middle of this context stood Boyd and the Fighter Mafia. They had a much narrower range of concerns than those suggested above, but a broader vision about the ultimate solutions. They raised questions about affordability, readiness, performance, and sortie generation of the weapons most likely to be deployed and employed in large numbers in conventional engagements—chiefly tanks, mechanized infantry vehicles, and airplanes. Although not disdaining high-technology capabilities, they wished to be selective in adopting them and were concerned about becoming overly sophisticated in weaponry, command and control, and tactics on the battlefield. Like Carl von Clausewitz in 1832, they were concerned about the effect of fog, friction, chance, and luck in war. Like Sun Tzu in China around 400 B.C., they were increasingly concerned that war, when it came, should be short in duration, quick in tempo, low in casualties, and strategic in consequence. They were concerned, at base, about what Chuck Spinney would later call “the plans/reality mismatch.” They disliked what they considered to be “gold-plated” weaponry and state-of-the-art technology promising to achieve near-perfect performance in new multirole capabilities.

The Debate between Technologists and Reformers

The debate has been variously characterized as one between proponents of quantity versus quality or of low-tech versus high-tech solutions. There is some truth in each, but as with most shorthand descriptions, they are distortions of reality. Perhaps the best short explanation of the schools of thought is found in Serge Herzog’s Defense Reform and Technology: Tactical Aircraft:

Succinctly stated, reformers hold the following positions: (1) overemphasis on high technology has driven the cost of modern weapons out of control; (2) high technology has introduced a level of complexity that seriously hampers force readiness; (3) high technology is pushed in areas often irrelevant to success in combat and may even endanger its user; (4) the added increment in performance resulting from high technology rarely justifies the cost involved; and (5) high technology stretches acquisition and maturation, causing critical delays in technology integration and frequently unexpected technical problems.10

In opposition were those characterized as the technologists, also referred to as the planners or the establishment. They were seen and saw themselves as defenders of orthodoxy and keepers of the true religion of the faithful against the heretics. They were vocal critics of the reformers’ efforts and held the following views: “(1) technology acts as a force multiplier; (2) technology provides force flexibility; (3) technology has the potential to improve cost and equipment reliability and maintainability; and (4) technology is indispensable given the alternatives.”11 The issues were—and still are—complex and not easily summarized, but these characterizations are generally correct, if limited.

The issues were essentially those raised by Boyd and Sprey regarding the lightweight fighter, expanded into a general suspicion of technology for technology’s sake. Walter Kross summarized Boyd and Sprey’s position:

Both men see only one way for the United States to maintain reasonable numerical parity with the air forces of the Soviet Union and its allies—keep fighter costs down and performance up to superior standards.… More specifically, Sprey and Boyd had three goals: Omit all subsystems not absolutely essential to the mission, resist the desire for advanced technology engines, eliminate requirements for complex avionics, high top speeds, and excessive ranges. These men have been pressing for these changes in the character of USAF TACAIR fighters since the late 1960s. In the early 1980s, when readiness became a concern, important people started to listen.12

Despite the antitechnology tone to some of the reformer rhetoric, neither Boyd nor Sprey were the neo-Luddites that some of their critics have suggested. They were skeptical of contractor claims and military technologists who promised great performance for only marginally greater cost. They believed in what Jim Stevenson has called the Pentagon paradox: “Benefits are inversely proportional to the promise.”13 Stevenson wrote an entire book about it using the evolution of tactical aviation in general and the development of the F-18 Hornet in particular as the case study. The reformers countered the technologists with their own sometimes overstated or overgeneralized convictions. These included arguments that the promise of technology is always greater than what is delivered (not true) and that the cost of a weapons system increases by at least the pi factor (3.14) from first estimate to final billing (closer to the mark). More particularly, they worried about an adversary with a large quantity of technologically less advanced systems and the problems these might present. As Vietnam demonstrated then and discussion of asymmetric warfare demonstrates now, those are relevant concerns.

On the other hand, not all who opposed Boyd and the reformers were either personally or professionally devoid of honor, intelligence, or a concern for America’s defense. Not all those opposed to the reformers’ preferences were necessarily the embodiment of evil they were sometimes portrayed to be. A military cannot dispense with technological advances as a way of achieving superiority, particularly in a democracy such as ours. As an economically powerful democratic political culture, Americans prefer firepower rather than manpower and quality rather than quantity. The two sides in the military reform debate differed less in their ends and far more in how to accomplish them. Both sides thought themselves true patriots, and they were.

As important as the supposed characteristics of the weapons system itself are the budgetary environment in which we acquire these systems and the strategic environment in which we employ them. Boyd and Sprey never developed a system in isolation or without concern for these two issues. In one of his more graphic illustrations of their concerns, Sprey created a chart that showed sorties per day per million dollars. It combined the initial cost of tactical aircraft along with their maintenance and reliability record to derive the number of planes that could fly on a given day for a given cost, in this case $1 million. The figures were adjusted for inflation in 1978 dollars. The results, shown in table 3, reveal a steep decline from the F-86 (2.1 sorties per day per $1 million) to the F-14 (0.028). Sprey plotted these on a graph, showed that current rates were one eightieth of what they had been 35 years earlier, and called the resulting curve “The Curve of Unilateral Disarmament.”14

Table 3. U.S. Fighter Sortie Cost

Aircraft Sorties per Dayper $1 Million
F-86 2.1
F-5 1.25
F-4 0.12
F-15 0.05
F-14 0.028

Source: Pierre Sprey, reprinted in James Fallows, National Defense (New York: Vintage Books, 1982), p. 100.

Of course, sorties per $1 million is a fabricated indicator that may or may not have any bearing whatsoever on combat capability. It does, however, show the increasing cost of high-technology weaponry. It is, unfortunately, symptomatic of the debates between the two groups that their zeal to score debating points sometimes obscured the seriousness of the issues under review. The hyperbole and name-calling reached extremes at times, and misrepresentations of each other’s views were rampant.15 The passions were just as hot as the rhetoric. Cries of “foul” and “cheap shot” echoed from each side, with reason.

The Widening Web of Conspirators

The reformers were both helped and hindered by their wide array of sympathizers, who had disparate reasons for supporting reform. In the context of the times, the Military Reform Caucus on the Hill provided a way for liberal and conservative alike to be publicly concerned with defense reform and yet not break faith with party or conviction, be they dove, hawk, chicken hawk, or cheap hawk. There was something for everybody. How could a congressman not be against fraud, waste, and abuse? Why shouldn’t congressmen be concerned about how tax dollars are spent? Who would argue against improved efficiency and effectiveness in the military?

Regardless of motivation or sympathy, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, they all shared some portion of a common goal—to change the way the DOD did business. But they differed sharply on what should be done. Such a disparate group (it included Pentagon insiders, both civilian and military, journalists, academics, and members of Congress) would rarely, if ever, achieve unanimity. They had vastly different priorities, approaches, and agendas, which turned out to be the fatal flaw in the group. Size, disparate agendas, factionalism, and disinterest took their toll.16 As long as there was good news coverage for folks back home, an issue of personal or political interest, or a chance to score points against the DOD and the executive branch, fine; but few in Congress were genuinely committed or interested over time.

Yet Boyd and the reformers understood a central reality of national security. It flowed from Boyd’s affinity for trade-off analyses and his propensity for trade-off thinking. What does X mean in terms of Y? If I have only so much money, Z, how much of X or Y, or combination of the two, should I buy? The reality is that despite the intellectual progression that would have budgets flow from strategy and military capabilities determined by objectives, they are seldom developed in that manner. Far more likely is that a budget will drive strategy and that threats will determine which capabilities are deemed necessary. That being so, the central questions of defense are “How much is enough?” and “To do what?” Boyd was always concerned about trade-offs and cost because cost has both immediate and long-term consequences.

Beyond that, those considerations were the last that one should worry about. Boyd’s trinity held people first, ideas second, and things third. Often, the military has as its first priority the things, the high-tech weaponry. Ideas are second, and people, in that they are trained to be interchangeable parts, a tertiary consideration. That is not meant to seem as heartless as it sounds but merely to point out that we often seem to value the capabilities of our technology more than the people who use it. Those who serve in the military are expendable for the nation’s purposes. That sense of unlimited liability, laying down one’s life for his or her country, is what separates being in the military from being a civilian. Boyd was convinced that one’s mind was the best weapon, and hence, well-trained and well-educated people, who think well and quickly, were the most important asset, followed by ideas, in turn followed by the equipment they had at their disposal.

Congress, the Media, and Reform

Several different groups and many different issues came to be involved in the military reform movement.17 Congressional members of the Military Reform Caucus, formed in early 1981, initially consisted of a couple of dozen bipartisan members of the House and Senate and was chaired by Senator Gary Hart (Democrat from Colorado) and by Representative William G. Whitehurst (Republican, Virginia). Members hailed from across the nation and represented the entire political spectrum and the array of concerns about American national security. By 1983 the caucus had a letterhead and 57 members listed. By 1985 more than 100 members had signed on. Eventually, more than 130 members of Congress claimed membership in the rather loose and amorphous organization. Still, a group with over a quarter of the Congress is hardly a lightweight in the political arena.

Its original executive committee included Representatives Norman D. Dicks (D, Washington) and Newt Gingrich (R, Georgia, later Speaker of the House), and Senators Sam Nunn (D, Georgia, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee), Gary Hart (D, Colorado, former presidential candidate), and William S. Cohen (R, Maine, who became President Clinton’s token Republican in the Cabinet as Secretary of Defense). Representative Richard Cheney (R, Wyoming, Secretary of Defense under George Bush) was also a member. Those who were particularly active included a retired Air Force officer turned Republican congressman from Oregon, Denny Smith; Senator Charles Grassley (R, Iowa); and Senator Nancy Kassebaum (R, Kansas). They could hardly be described as liberal, antimilitary pacifists. Congress’s entry into the fray was heralded by a series of articles, written by the politically odd combination of Gary Hart and Newt Gingrich, that criticized defense policy and publicly stated the case for reform.18

Equally important was a coterie of sympathetic journalists that Boyd and company had cultivated over the years. They knew they could get information from Boyd and that he would give them advance warning on how situations were likely to play out. Boyd knew he could count on them for publicity when he needed it and could thus go outside the system (military and political) to get things public. Jim Fallows received much of his information for his seminal article, entitled “The Muscle-Bound Super Power” in Atlantic Monthly (October 1979), from Boyd and company. It launched the public portion of the military reform movement. A major step in the critical debate (and in Fallows’s career) was the publication a year later of his best-selling book National Defense, which expanded on the same themes raised in the article and publicized Boyd and the Fighter Mafia’s views to the outside world.19

Meanwhile, both the use of the term and its implications grew. “ ‘Military Reform,’ however, is more than a press fancy,” wrote Theodore J. Crackel in 1983. “West Point has hosted a three-day conference on the subject; and in Washington, members of Congress have formed a joint House/Senate caucus dedicated to it. Meanwhile, there have been a host of books dealing both generally and specifically with the subject. ‘Military Reform’ may prove one of the most powerful sets of ideas of our time.”20 It became a staple for the press and the public. John Fialka at the Wall Street Journal, Michael Getler at the Washington Post, Walter Isaacson and Hugh Sidey at Time, and Michael Gordon at the National Journal in the early 1980s all wrote stories chronicling the reform movement’s clout, trials, issues, and positions. Their coverage gave a dimension to the debate that was hard for opponents to ignore or to combat successfully. Even some of the military’s own publications (Air University Review and the Marine Corps Gazette in particular) published the reformers’ views and devoted large sections to the debates that they began.

Inside the Pentagon, Boyd kept briefing his constantly evolving “Patterns of Conflict,” and he, Sprey, and others kept looking for allies and converts. In time, they ended up with a diverse group composed of some Air Force officers, some Marines interested in military history and strategy, some young Navy officers, people at the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, consultants at Beltway-bandit think tanks, and the occasional academic, all of whom became familiar with the sort of thinking that Boyd and others were doing. Slowly, a following emerged. Added to them were others trying to take on the system; people like Tom Amlie and Ernest Fitzgerald originally made charges from inside the system, while Dina Rasor and Andrew Cockburn fought with insider information as they published books and articles from outside.21

Equally important, if not more so, were members of personal staff and committee staff on Capitol Hill who provided access to others throughout the government and the press corps. Catalysts of the process, they played a particularly important role in spreading the ideas to people who could in turn make a difference. Among the staff members who helped spread the word of the Fighter Mafia and reformers inside the Pentagon were Bob Weed and Mike Burns, who worked for Representative Newt Gingrich; Bill Lind, who worked first for Senator Robert Taft Jr. of Ohio and, after he lost his reelection bid, for Senator Gary Hart of Colorado; Charlie Murphy, who worked for Representative Jack Edwards; Dave Evans, who worked for Representative Bill Whitehurst; and Winslow Wheeler, who held a variety of positions on the Hill and later at the Government Accounting Office.

Since it was taxpayer money at issue, nearly any member of Congress, regardless of committee assignment, could initiate another story printed in the press about various outrages that should be investigated. This would generate more heat and eventually fire as another member decided to have his committee or subcommittee hold hearings on the matter. That would then generate a committee report or legislation to change some aspect of the way DOD was doing business. It worked like a charm for years. Though it caused a great deal of embarrassment at times and publicized some of the more egregious examples of waste, inefficiency, and greed, it did not alter a fundamentally flawed procurement system. Business as usual prevailed.

There were a few successes, some salient failures—a mixed bag. That was all that could be expected from the ad hoc alliance of political forces involved. When they won, they won big. When they lost, as they ultimately did, they were overwhelmed by a system entrenched in its established habits of pork, politics, profits, and promotions. No doubt, Gary Hart’s ill-fated dalliance and his abortive presidential campaign hurt the movement, but it did have some success, nonetheless. Strangely, the realm of individual weapons systems and military tactics was where the reformers had their greatest impact. Actions taken to cancel the Division Air Defense gun (DIVAD), to improve the Ticonderoga class of cruisers and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and the general promotion of maneuver warfare could all be judged successes. An overall reform of the budget process, the procurement system, or contracting practices, however, proved beyond their reach. There is only the occasional rebuke, such as the cancellation of the A-12 by Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, an early member of the caucus on military reform.22 The military services rarely cancel any of their own programs. That usually takes action by the Secretary of Defense or a cutoff of funds by Congress. Over the last thirty years, similar recommendations made by numerous blue-ribbon panels and presidential commissions to reform the procurement system have been largely ignored and routinely ineffectual. The reformers fared no better.

Paranoia, Reprisals, and Legacies

Much of the military reform movement went well beyond Boyd directly, but he seemed always there, in the background, the éminence grise of the movement. His counsel, advice, and contacts on the Hill and in the press were on call. One of the more salient battles fought by the reformers was over the issue of weapons testing and their desire for accurate, unbiased testing of new military hardware with proper oversight by someone other than the service procuring the item. It was hardly an unreasonable request and one for which there are countless rules and regulations, but the politics of the process were vicious. Though some might find it melodramatic, Jim Burton has described the day-to-day environment in the Pentagon; as he says, even Machiavelli would be a rank amateur in some of the contests waged there.

Coalitions form and dissolve overnight between the strangest of bedfellows. Dire enemies momentarily join forces to battle someone else, then resume their old fight as if nothing had happened. The only way to get a decision to stand is to “shoot the losers”—line up everyone who opposes the decision and shoot them down. Otherwise, they begin to undermine the decision before the ink is dry on the paper. Quite often, the real debate begins only after a major decision has been made. Time and again, I have listened to senior officials express total frustration when issues they thought were settled suddenly reappeared.23

Burton says he took Boyd’s advice in coping with it: “Jim, you may not win, but you can’t give the bastards a free ride. Make them work for it.”

Burton was military assistant to three secretaries of the Air Force from June 1979 through June 1982. In that position, he did all he could to follow Boyd’s teachings and make sure bad news was delivered as well as good and to keep the system honest. The word got out that he was not a team player, and he and his old associates (Boyd, Sprey, Spinney) had to be careful about being seen with each other, leaving phone messages for Burton, or what could be said on the telephone. They devised a system of aliases to address each other. Sprey became Mr. Grau. Boyd became Mr. Arbuthnott. Burton asked Boyd where he had gotten that name; Boyd replied that it had just come to him. Months later, Burton was rereading Anthony Cave Brown’s book on allied intelligence in World War II, Bodyguard of Lies. The title is from a Churchill quotation, “In war, truth is so important it must be protected by a bodyguard of lies.” As Burton read he encountered a picture (across from page 276) of the London Controlling Section, “the secret organization formed by Churchill to plan the stratagems that would leave Hitler ‘puzzled as well as beaten.’ ”24 One of the nine members in the photo was a Commander James Arbuthnott (RN). Boyd’s mind and its habit of forming appropriate connections had scored again.

Fearing their telephones were tapped and that at certain times those assigned to their offices might keep track of conversations, the reformers resorted to meeting in front of the flags in the A ring of the Pentagon’s second floor (where the NATO displays and flags were prominently placed). Occasionally, they would meet in the parking lot of the Pentagon so as not to be overheard. All this subterfuge was for good reason, as Burton would later find out. Boyd’s daughter, Mary, recounts the experience of calling home from school one day and being connected instead to the Pentagon switchboard. Boyd figured his home phone was being tapped, but someone who wanted him to know had intentionally bungled the job.

The group’s concerns were anathema to the Reagan administration and to the defense buildup under way. The charges and countercharges, politics and leaks, personal and political leverage applied, only grew in intensity. Perhaps the high-water mark of the military reform movement came in the spring of 1983, when Time magazine wanted to do a cover story on Boyd and the movement. Boyd and others met regularly with a reporting team and the magazine’s editorial board at the Washington Bureau offices. Boyd knew that a great many people were risking far more than he was. He was retired and living off his military pension. Others were dependent on their jobs for their families’ well-being. He couldn’t see them sacrificed in the process.

Chief among them was Franklin C. “Chuck” Spinney, a young analyst in the TAC Air shop, former Air Force captain, and protégé of Boyd. Spinney had been systematically assessing the Pentagon’s weapons procurement practices in general, those of the Air Force in particular. His briefings would become almost as famous as Boyd’s, and by virtue of longevity as well as his Internet-assisted network, he has become an even bigger pain in the ass than Boyd. When Time approached Boyd to be the subject of that 1983 cover story, he demurred. Why not appeal to the public with a David and Goliath story that will both inform them and tug at their heartstrings a bit? Why not put 37-year-old Chuck Spinney on the cover and leave the old warhorse Boyd in the background? The editorial board agreed, and thus was born the Chuck Spinney cover of Time on 7 March 1983.25 It was the cheapest and most important life insurance policy Boyd could arrange for his most loyal disciple. DOD could never afford to take the heat for firing Spinney in the future. The fallout would be too great.

That article was a national public indictment of the Defense Department and the way it did its business. In the middle of Ronald Reagan’s first term as president, it questioned the entire Reagan approach to defense, its definition of the threat and understanding of the strategic environment, its national security strategy and weapons procurement programs—everything about the Republican defense buildup. It had sidebars on the ridiculous extent of mil specs (military specifications) for products that DOD bought, profiles of Spinney and of Bob Dilger (who had designed the ammunition for the GAU-8 on the A-10), and on gold-plated weapons (the B-1, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the F-18, and the Sparrow missile). There was also a picture of a Republican senator who was listed as a reform leader and prominently featured in the article: Senator William Cohen, later Secretary of Defense. How times change.

Boyd and the military reform movement provided nearly all the information. It was one of the reformers’ most impressive coups in the public relations war. It led to much more publicity, but the victory was only temporary. The system carried on much the way it had before, despite the occasional pinpricks of disclosure and embarrassment over some of its practices. Senators Hart and Nunn have retired from the Senate. Chuck Spinney still works in the Pentagon. Although a few reformers continue to take on the system, most of the group have moved on to other jobs and different issues. Many of the debates are still the same, with little progress being made over the last two decades. The embers of reform may glow, but the fires have been quenched.

An Assessment

The bottom line on the defense reform movement is hard to establish. It is a mixed bag of people, issues, successes, and failures. Is American national security better off for the experience or worse? The answer would probably depend more on one’s bias and conviction than a rational assessment. There are many who see failure, and they may well be right.26

The many critics and criticisms of the military reform movement are not totally without merit, but the movement was broad and its members (formal and informal) numerous. The movement’s causes and subcauses reflected a diverse set of opinions about weapons systems, commentaries on doctrine, and readings or misreadings of military history by amateur and professional alike. I do not seek to label the reformers right and their opponents wrong on all issues. Many of the critiques of the larger effort at military reform have some validity; so too do some of the claims of the reformers. Both had their zealots and excessive rhetoric. A case-by-case analysis of claim and counterclaim is beyond the scope of this summary. Suffice it to say both sides overreached at times.

Reformers think of William Perry (the former director of Defense Research and Engineering, described as a man who never met a technology he didn’t like) as Secretary of Defense and know that the last fifteen years have reversed whatever modest gains they may have made. Technologists can point to the B-2, work on the airborne laser, JSTARS, and a host of studies on the future (Spacecast 2020, New World Vistas, Joint Vision 2010, Air Force 2025) and know that American eggs rest squarely in the technological basket. There are still some, both in uniform and out, who ask questions reminiscent of the reformers. Just how much value is an F-22 against an asymmetric threat represented by a mujahideen and a goat? Can the Apache helicopter or the B-1B ever be used effectively in sustained combat? Has the technology of deception surpassed the technology of timely verification?

Perhaps more important than some subjective test of success or failure is a recognition that what was important about the military reform movement was that it occurred and tried to keep the system honest. Such a movement (it was not an organization, a committee, or a lobby) would be difficult to institutionalize and sustain. Many of the systems the reformers railed against are now the backbone of American military might, but many perform better or cost less than they would have without reformer questions and publicity. The A-10 ground attack plane, a major success for the reformers and spectacularly effective in the Gulf War, has been relegated to the reserves and mostly mothballed. Even the successes are short-lived. It is also clear that the scrutiny the reformers provided is a necessary antidote for the less efficient and effective business-as-usual doldrums with which all large organizations must contend. The problem is, there are no John Boyds around to give a new reform movement life and orchestrate its success. We do have Boyd’s thought, and that is a good place to begin. The Department of Defense, in its civilian and military guises, needs to reexamine the fit, or lack of it, among all the components of the puzzle. These include the environment, budgetary support in the coming years, national security strategy, national military strategy, and our training, organization, and equipment to accomplish the entire range of military missions.

Although there are many loyal, dedicated, exceptionally well-trained officers, enlisted personnel, and civilians in the Department of Defense, from time to time it is healthy, even necessary, to challenge the way things are done, who is in control, and how decisions are made (or not made) in “providing for the common defense.” The decade of the 1980s was one of those times. So too is the first decade of the twenty-first century. To applaud some of the work of the military reform movement is in no way meant to demean the contributions of the men and women who have served their country as part of the all-volunteer forces during that period. It is meant to question the politics in the process of decision-making on national defense.

Whatever the success or failure of individual programs and weapons systems, all pales in comparison with the systemic problems in defense planning, budgeting, and procurement. All three systems are broken, a fact that most senior general officers will readily admit in private, but they cannot agree on how to fix them in public. At least there is more awareness, and there have been some changes in thinking about the problems encountered. Whether they last or have any real impact depends as much on the simultaneous appearance of a coterie of mavericks in the military, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Hill, and the executive branch as on any injunctions to pursue efficiency and effectiveness. To change the system in any lasting and meaningful way would require a string of John Boyds, all strategically positioned at the right place for a decade or more. Even then, true reform would be doubtful and not likely to happen. The system endures.