Toward Unification

Separate ground, sea and air warfare is gone forever. If ever again we should be involved in war, we will fight it in all elements, with all services, as one single, concentrated effort.

So saying, President Eisenhower last week sent Congress a hardheaded, sense-making set of recommendations for Defense Department reorganization that, if fought through to fulfillment, may be ranked among the major accomplishments of his Administration. The chief point: in cold war, and under threat of instant hot war, the U.S. military organization must be designed for instant action.

To give the U.S. the power of action, the President proposed a tremendous increase in the authority of the Secretary of Defense. Bypassing the Army, Navy and Air Force Secretaries, the Defense Secretary would command the armed services directly through the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Though emphatically subordinate to the civilian Defense Secretary and the civilian President, the Joint Chiefs would have the kind of direct operational control over the fighting forces that they have in wartime, would, in effect, outrank the cadres of civilian service secretaries and assistant secretaries who have laid a heavy bureaucratic hand on peacetime operations.

The "I" Appeal. Into the plan's making went three months of hard work by Defense Secretary Neil McElroy. service chiefs, former commanders. Congressmen, civilian experts, a staff of advisers--and by General Eisenhower. Fortnight ago McElroy began sending his conclusions to the President, who took the recommendations as raw material, retooled them in the shape of his own convictions on military organization. Almost every paragraph bristles with Ike's first person singular, e.g., "I have long been aware . . ." "I have directed . . ." "I therefore propose . . ." Many conclusions are based directly on his service as World War II Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, his postwar tour of duty as Army Chief of Staff (1945-48) and adviser on earlier unsuccessful attempts at unification. Principal recommendations:

SECRETARY or DEFENSE. As the unchallenged boss of the Pentagon, the Defense Secretary should have the right to transfer, reassign, abolish or consolidate functions in his department. He should also have "adequate authority and flexibility" to transfer funds within and between the Army, Navy and Air Force, including not only research and development funds but also funds for strategic planning and for operations. With the consent of Congress, the President would remove one present stumbling block to the Defense Secretary's authority: the incongruous statement in the National Security Act that the Army, Navy and Air Force must be "separately administered." Since the same act also states that the Defense Secretary should work out "integrated policies and procedures," this requirement, originally inserted to preserve traditional service prerogatives, has caused needless confusion and misunderstanding. Said the President: "Let us no longer give legal support to efforts to weaken the authority of the Secretary."

SERVICE SECRETARIES. Relieved of their duties as operational bosses of their respective services, the Secretaries of Army, Navy and Air Force should have major responsibilities for administration, training and logistics. This, said the President, is quite a job in itself, since each Secretary heads up a "department much larger than any executive department except the Department of Defense itself." Each would be allowed one under secretary and a minimum of two assistant secretaries. One or both of the two remaining assistant secretaries would be eliminated. But the President promised that he would not lay a glove on the Army, Navy, Marine Corps or Air Force themselves. Said he: "I have neither the intent nor the desire to merge or abolish traditional services."

JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF. The present J.C.S. would be elevated to the responsibility of a staff directly assisting the Defense Secretary in his command of the military services (see chart). With rare exceptions personally approved by the President, the operational forces would be regrouped into streamlined unified commands, e.g., Alaskan Command, European Command, Caribbean Command. These the J.C.S., under the Secretary of Defense, would command directly, instead of having the chain of command pass through the service secretaries and the service chiefs. Moreover, the separate services would not be able to move their officers in and out of the unified commands at will. So that members of the J.C.S. can devote more time to J.C.S. operational duties, the President urged that Congress authorize the chiefs to pass major service responsibilities along to their vice chiefs.

JOINT STAFF. This little-publicized staff of bright officers now serves the J.C.S., is limited by law to 210 members. It should be enlarged, and assigned its duties by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs subject to the approval of the Defense Secretary. While the President's message leans over backward to avoid special mention of the J.C.S. chairman, this quiet reform could --if the Defense Secretary so wished--make the J.C.S. chairman an effective chief of staff.

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT. To head off such costly duplications as the Army's Jupiter IRBM and the Air Force's Thor, a new post of Director of Defense Research and Engineering would replace the present Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. The new director would be a scientist and engineer advising the Defense Secretary, and overseeing, assigning and initiating research projects within the three services and also in the new Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of the Director of Guided Missiles. "Unavoidably, we are engaged in a race with potential enemies for new, more powerful military devices," said President Eisenhower. "The Secretary of Defense must have full authority to prevent unwise service competition in this critical area."

SENIOR OFFICERS. As a start toward developing a body of general officers with broad, all-service loyalties, the President said that he is issuing orders that promotions above two-star ranks must be passed on by the Defense Secretary. He will consider whether candidates have demonstrated, "among other qualities, the capacity for dealing objectively--without extreme partisanship--with matters of the broadest significance to our national security." In reassigning or removing officers, the President will take undue service bias into account. This was a long step toward the Rockefeller Report's recommendation for a nonpartisan senior service (TIME, Jan. 13). Moreover, said the President, qualified technical officers and even nontechnical officers of lower rank could be shifted from service to service without forfeit of seniority, with the individuals' consent.

Toward One Service. All in all, while it studiously avoided such red-flag terms as "single service" and "general staff," the reorganization plan added up to a huge stride along the road toward unification in fact. It was so solicitous of civilian control, so careful to avoid offense to individual services, so accurately pitched to the iron logic of present-day warfare, that the enemies of unification would be hard put to destroy it. But something of a miracle would be required to prevent the independent-minded U.S. Navy and the Navy's powerful friends on Capitol Hill from closing ranks to stop it. In the end, much would depend on whether President Eisenhower was willing to fight for reorganization with the kind of "single, concentrated effort" he wants for the Pentagon.

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