When the military buys new weapons, it insists on studying in granular detail the potential "total life cycle costs." But when it comes to the biggest expense - personnel - decision-makers have far less visibility/.../
Confusion about costs stems in part from the Pentagon budget process, which does not require the services to account for major benefits within their service budgets, said Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
"We need to take into account total costs of people, including health care and retirement benefits. Right now, the services aren't doing that because they don't have an incentive to do that," Harrison said.
Under current rules, those costs are tallied outside service budgets in one of the Pentagon's other budgetary stovepipes.
"If you move more of these forces into the Guard and reserve, you will save money in peacetime. There is no doubt about that," Harrison said.