IT’LL TAKE ANOTHER PRESIDENT TO MAKE THAT WORK: Pentagon Reform: Hope Springs Eternal:

Partly as a result of the cumulative, multi-year effects of sequestration, and partly because personnel and O&M (operations and maintenance) costs continue to outstrip annual overall defense budget growth, both military end strength and force posture have declined since the final year of the George W. Bush Administration. In particular, overhead and support now comprise over 40 percent of total Pentagon spending—some $240 billion out of a base budget of approximately $550 billion. As such, DoD’s overhead figure is more than twice the combined total defense budgets of France and the United Kingdom. The cost of DoD headquarters alone amounts to over $40 billion, more than the entire German defense budget.

These developments, coupled with the growing recognition that cutting-edge technology increasingly resides in a private sector that is chary of doing business with the government, have led to a renewed effort, both on Capitol Hill and (not surprisingly) to a considerably lesser extent in the Pentagon, to modernize and render more efficient programs and procedures that in some cases hark back more than half a century.

Not surprisingly, skeptics doubt that reform is possible. History certainly is on their side.

This is nice, but the Obama Administration’s unbending efforts to de-warriorize the military and turn it into a social-justice program are a bigger issue for the next president.