Rumsfeld the Radical

...combat power directly, either today or in the future...

...Fairly or not, Cambone has long been viewed as Rumsfeld's henchman, almost universally loathed—but more important, feared—by the services...

...Rumsfeld has also learned from his success in terminating the Crusader howitzer program that the political price of change is far less than originally feared...

...Rumsfeld emerged as a dynamic "secretary of war"—a charismatic figure in a time of crisis—and he now has an opportunity to be a great secretary of defense, to reshape the military establishment...

...And it appears he has learned the lessons of his initial failure...

...Back then, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's mission to transform the U.S...

...Through the summer, the defense trade press has been filled with predictions of dramatic force cuts in the Army...

...For example, he has all but named Gen...

...These sorts of decisions, while revealing new energy in Rumsfeld's leadership and a fresh opportunity to introduce new ideas and weaponry into U.S...

...military to exploit the "revolution in military affairs"—par-ticularly the effects of information technologies on the art and science of warfare—had ground to an inglorious halt...

...First, Rumsfeld has seized the bureaucratic initiative, making subtle but key personnel changes...

...Steven Cam-bone the head of analysis and evaluation, bringing him directly into the budgeting and programming process...

...It's not yet clear the administration is willing to commit to this...

...And Rumsfeld was widely expected to be the first cabinet casualty of the Bush administration...

...While the actual numbers may be smaller, it does look as though there will be real reductions: In his cover letter transmitting the Navy's budget memo to Rumsfeld, Navy Secretary Gordon England proposes a cut of 8,500 active-duty sailors in 2004 and promises more to come in future budget years...

...what was done at Crawford could come undone in Washington...

...Also on the plate are personnel cuts...

...Even if none is cancelled outright, the number of each to be bought would be severely limited...

...The services are thus bracing themselves for big changes to come...

...the service chiefs could rightly point out that preparing for the future was at odds with preserving the peace today...

...This is a complete reversal of the situation one year ago, before September 11...

...The message is that, this time, Rumsfeld will get what he wants...

...But cancelling or even capping a big aircraft program will be much more controversial than killing the Crusader, which, at a few hundred million dollars a year, amounted to no more than a rounding error in defense budget terms...

...And over the next few weeks, as program decisions are made and leaked, even the media may notice the changes afoot in the Pentagon...

...Similarly, retired Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, whose idea of a smaller "streetfighter" warship has now been enshrined as the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship program, has returned to lead the Pentagon-wide "office of force transformation...

...The vaunted array of Crusader supporters in the Army and on Capitol Hill collapsed rapidly and completely once the decision was reached...

...Indeed, much of this year's highly touted defense increase will be consumed by the operational costs of the war on terrorism and the proper accounting of past expenses...

...The 2004 budget won't go to Congress until next February, by which time Iraq-war fever may reach a still higher temperature...

...And what appears to be a normal turning of the bureaucratic wheel— the preparation of the 2004 defense budget request—stands every chance of heralding a profound reengineering of the Pentagon and the armed services...

...Over the next few weeks, decisions on a wide variety of programs will be made as the process of budget preparation nears its conclusion...

...Yes, defense "transformation" is about to rise from the grave, revitalized by the sweeping changes in American and international politics caused by the events of last September 11...

...Perhaps even more important, Rumsfeld has made Dr...

...defense budget could not support all the programs needed for a smooth transition...

...As one insider puts it, "Rumsfeld is determined to clear away some tall timber to allow for new growth...

...As England wrote, "It is evident that we cannot rely on topline growth alone to buy down future risk...

...While the figures are still to be reckoned and rationalized, it's clear that lots of major weapons projects are in jeopardy, from the Army's Comanche helicopter to the Navy's F/A-18 Hornet, the Air Force's F-22, and the Marines' V-22 Osprey...

...In a time of war, congressional resistance to executive energy on national defense issues proved—sur-prise!—difficult to build or sustain...

...Keane is a paratrooper by trade (who at a transformation conference this past week declared that the Army had bought its last main battle tank), and Keane knows he will be judged by his ability to change his army...

...So, even though Bush and Rumsfeld have regained the initiative on transformation, big hurdles lie ahead...

...John Keane as the next Army chief of staff...

...But the wartime urgency generated in the wake of the September 11 attacks shattered the status quo...

...forces, also reflect the money problems that still hamper the transformation project...

...Even the Bush administration's ambitious plans for missile defenses are in line for reorganization, with the emphasis probably shifting to space-and sea-based efforts, along with some greater effort to expand (or at least preserve) international participation in missile defense through the so-called MEADS program...

...That's Pentagonese meaning: "There's not enough money to do all the things we should...

...In other words, more than a third of the increase did nothing to improve U.S...

...The military services had successfully dominated the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review process...

...It's hard to say how that will influence the politics of defense spending...

...The meeting at the Crawford ranch was to rehearse the scope of defense program and budgetary changes, and the political storm that might result...

...The losers could be the more mature current systems like the PAC-3 version of the Patriot missile...

...Engaging in a transformation of the military—in addition to fighting a war—will require repeated, substantial increases in the defense budget...

...As England admits, "It is important to recognize that over $6 billion of the $17 billion increase in [the Navy's] budget relative to what was projected from the prior administration has gone not to manpower costs, current readiness, transformation, or recapitalization, but to accounting changes that expense future retirement and health costs in the current period...

...He hasn't fired any generals, but he has shifted some of those most opposed to change...

...BY TOM DONNELLY PARALYZED BY AN ALL-IRAQ, all-war, all-the-time fever (not to mention a desperate opposition to the possibility of said war), the media managed to miss one of the central stories of President Bush's Crawford vacation: the administration's emerging plan to remake the structure of U.S...

...military forces...

...The Tom Donnelly is senior fellow at the Project for the New American Century...

...This had the effect of sharply limiting the prospects for reform...