Roles and Missions: Are We Doing It Right?

Abstract

The US military needs to optimize its resources and cut out waste wherever possible. With the national debt topping 9.4 trillion dollars, and no end in sight in the war on terror, the military needs to do a better job allocating and spending its funding. As senior military leaders fight over the roles and missions of the services, the unacceptable easy answer is to allow the services to buy equipment they think they need to support roles they deem necessary to accomplish their missions. Alternately, the civilian leadership should play a more active role determining roles and missions. For example, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) should exert its oversight authority to influence the assignment of roles and missions and not allow a service to fund programs and buy equipment outside its assigned roles and missions. This would also force the services to more closely work together to better optimize a unity of effort, save tax dollars, and make more money available for the war on terror.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 24, 2008
Accession Number
ADA478997

Entities

People

  • James R. Hetherington

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Autonomy
  • Biomedical
  • Cyber
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Defense
  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Cargo Aircraft
  • Department Of Defense
  • Ground Control Stations
  • Law
  • Military Organizations
  • National Security
  • Navy
  • Transport Aircraft
  • United States
  • Unmanned Aerial Systems
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • War Colleges
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Aerospace logistics and air mobility.
  • Public Financial Management and Budgeting
  • Strategic Security Studies