If loose lips sink ships, this Pentagon is taking on a lot of water.
The release of the Pentagon's massive-yet-smaller budget is just weeks away, but budget decisions like the number of ships the Navy will buy or the size of the National Guard have been dribbling out in the media for months. That has pleased reporters looking for scoops and those defense officials who seek to shape the debate about weapons programs in a budget cycle that has produced much anxiety before it has even begun. But one man is not pleased: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
Hagel has told his senior officers, service secretaries, and other senior civilians that he expects they'll keep it zipped until the budget is unveiled. But that hasn't stopped the leaks. One day last month -- the day after a media report indicated that the Navy's buy of the prized littoral combat ship would be cut by 40 percent -- Hagel walked into a high-level meeting of his service secretaries, chiefs, and combatant commanders to tell them again that he was really unhappy. He wasn't shrill, said one individual in the meeting, and he was measured. As he looked around the room, he was pointed and he was firm, reminding everyone there again that he expected them to keep quiet/.../
But the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments' Todd Harrison, a well-known defense budget analyst in Washington, sees many of the reports about the budget not as leaks as much as trial balloons. "The services and to a lesser extent [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] are testing ideas to see where the resistance would be," he told Foreign Policy. "The services are doing their own thing, and as a result we're seeing more trial balloons."
It's not necessarily a bad thing, he said. The more transparent approach may unnecessarily anger some constituents, who are able to mobilize and counter a proposed cut before it sees the light of day when the budget is released -- tying the hands of Pentagon leaders. But on the other hand, there's a level of accountability and openness that allows for public debate.
"If they are making the right decision, then that decision should be able to stand up to public scrutiny and debate," Harrison said. "And if you really have a good case for what you're doing, you should be able to make that case and win the argument."