Defense Secretary Mark Esper speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, Monday, March 2, 2020.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, Monday, March 2, 2020. AP / Susan Walsh

Esper’s Reforms: An Interim Report Card

What progress has the defense secretary made on his ambitious goals to reorient the Defense Department?

It’s tough to be secretary of defense. It’s even tougher to be one for this president, who with a single tweet can upend months and years of careful Pentagon planning, overrule his own executives without their input, and change controversial policies on any issue, no matter how small, in an instant. He can even embarrass or undermine you while you’re trying to run the world’s strongest military. 

To his credit, Defense Secretary Mark Esper has accomplished much of what he set out to do behind the scenes and without much fanfare—on top of a global pandemic. The secretary, who took office 15 months ago, has spent the past year attempting to shift 1) dollars, 2) people, and 3) tasks toward his department’s top challenge: long-term competition with China. Esper gets high marks for the first objective, notable progress in the second, and his successor will have to duke it out with the bureaucracy regarding the third. 

Money. Esper extended his “night court” review process across the defense enterprise, including to combatant commands. The savings manifest from these efficiency drills are respectable. And no “reform” was considered too small or too controversial by this secretary. For example, the department used to print so many extra paper maps that they took up the equivalent of five Pentagon courtyards of warehouse space. Now, maps are printed as needed, saving money and freeing up real estate for more worthy needs. 

Esper even considered very modest reductions over five years to the military health system that would have come over with next year’s budget in the spring. While Trump promptly killed that internal deliberation of a $2.2 billion reduction, its mere consideration shows the seriousness of his effort to better align dollars with strategy. 

On a bigger scale, the services are all moving money to better implement the National Defense Strategy. Just last week, Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite told USNI News that he’s “done a deep-dive into the budget and found tens of billions of dollars in cuts” that will help pay for the new 500-ship fleet endorsed by the defense secretary.

In the budget for this fiscal year, Esper requested historic levels of research and development funding for new technologies such as artificial intelligence, hypersonic weapons, directed energy, and 5G networks. The Navy awarded a contract for a new class of frigates, the Maritime Security Initiative has provided $400 million in allied assistance in Asia, and all the services oversaw manned-unmanned teaming in new high-tech experiments.

People. Esper has also been busy putting like-minded thinkers in charge when given the opportunity. In August, the new Air Force chief of staff, Gen. CQ Brown, released guidance titled “Accelerate Change or Lose.” In it, Brown agrees that winning the long-term competition will require “ruthless prioritization,” which means identifying impediments to change and reducing redundancies across the services, such as air base defense and deep strike capability. 

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger has gone even further with his Force Design 2030, which orders up six major capability changes to better focus on China. While controversial, his plans also drew wide acclaim for their candor and his willingness to “gore a few sacred cows.”

While Esper has valiantly tried to reorient the entire defense workforce toward the strategy, this is the hardest hurdle to overcome in a bureaucracy of this size. The secretary opened a new China policy office, established a China Strategy Management Group to better integrate efforts, and directed the National Defense University to dedicate half of its coursework to the PRC, thereby making the People’s Liberation Army the pacing threat in all defense schools, programs, and training.

Another handicap has been the high turnover and many vacancies in senior political positions, which partly explain why the Department has yet to complete and send to Congress several key documents, including the 30-year shipbuilding plan, new Navy force structure assessment, and new joint operational concept — all of which may be obsolete by the coming election, new Congress, and budget cycle.

Tasks. Esper has begun to tackle the true source of the tasks challenge by clean-sheet reviewing the regional combatant commands, but his successor will have to work hard to drive any progress forward and solidify its true shift to competition. The next secretary will also need to oversee a real roles-and-missions review, in part to get at the insatiable demands by combatant commands for forces for peacetime training, assurance and deterrence missions all over the world each day. 

Services are conducting missions of lesser importance when they should be using this time to regenerate combat power, develop leap-ahead technologies, and refine still-nascent operational concepts. For example, earlier this year Esper oversaw the doubling of military resources to U.S. Southern Command for drug interdiction. Additional assets deployed included Navy destroyers and littoral combat ships, Navy and Air Force patrol and ISR aircraft, helicopters, and even a Security Forces Assistance Brigade company. This kind of firepower “is expensive for counterdrug operations — and is not the most effective, either.” When you’re “not expecting drug runners to have torpedoes” in the words of Bryan Clark at Hudson Institute, less expensive resources can and should be used for these types of missions, especially with a Navy currently pushed to the brink. U.S. warships are out on record-long deployments with shorter rest and training periods upon coming home. In 2015, the Navy reported that it couldn’t meet even half of combatant commands’ requests for forces, and the trend has since only worsened. 

Conclusion

While all this was going on, Esper oversaw the standing up of a new military service in the Space Force and managed a global pandemic response operation by the Defense Department involving more than 60,000 uniformed and civilian personnel during the same time as U.S. service members were “serving in more than 100 nations deterring enemies, reassuring allies and building capabilities.” 

Esper stayed committed to his ten targeted goals—each with subtasks—under these three broad objectives to begin achieving “irreversible implementation” of the National Defense Strategy. He has made laudable progress — while leaving plenty of work for next year. 

NEXT STORY: The Coming F-35 Fiasco

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.