Name:   Talullahhound - Subject:   On government excess & inefficiency Date:   2/22/2016 4:38:22 PM

I hope I have not portrayed the government as wasteful and inefficient.  As everyone here knows, I worked for DoD, and I can really only talk about that and the other Departments that I had connections with.  I will say that I believe that DoD has a different perspective from the other Departments - a philosphy of "can do", because in most of DoD, efforts go directly to supporting the military, which I think most people recognize as pretty important and in some cases means life or death.  It's a pretty positive atmosphere. "No" or " I can't" is not an acceptable answer. 

My early years were spent in the "field" for the Army in foreign military sales.  What are the benefits of these  - well, it brings militaries closer together - by having the same equipment.  The foreign country militaries get to spend time in the U.S. training with our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and while they are here, they get a good dose of democracy, American style.  Additionally, it helps our defense industry by keeping production lines open, sometimes filling in important gaps in production lines so industry can keep their workers, and by combing foreign orders with U.S. orders, the U.S. benefits by economy of scale buys.  I did this work for the Army at 2 levels and I also worked for the Defense Security Assistance and Cooperation Agency in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.  Besides those I've mentioned, the reason to sell defense articles on a govenment to government basis, instead of a direct commercial sale has to do with capabilities or data we might not want another country to have.  All FMS personnel are paid either from a fee that foreigners pay to the U.S. government or directly funded by a "program management line" on the government-to-government contract (usually known as an FMS case) 

I mentioned above about releasability, direct commerical sales, which was another part of my career, these I did in the Pentagon at both the Army Staff and OSD.  Let me say one thing about Headquarters, Staff positions and OSD.  These jobs are considered policy making and oversight which is defined as "inherently goverment", i.e., that it is the duty of the government to set policy and oversee government programs and ensure U.S. military superiority is preserved.  Some of the things I worked on had to do with working with industry on direct commercial sales to ensure that classified miltary data and superiority is not transferred, except by government oversight.  So contractors submit a license request to the government for military technologies and it is reviewed by the DoD and we get to approve it or put restrictions on it.  Or sometimes the governernment doesn't all it at all.  Again, these are considered inherenty governmental duties (making policy).  Most of the time, this involves a lot of meetings between government and industry, trying to find a reasonable way for the contractor to move forward while perserving the military edge.  Because contractors are profit driven and not always that concerned about the long range effects on the military.  (it might be interesting to note that most defense companies employ retired military people to deal with DoD.)  It should also be pointed out offices are staffed with career civilians and military, the reason being that civilians provide the continuity and the military keeps military interests in the forefront. 

At one point, I was working exclusively on night vision.  The military did not want night vision sold, because it was an important capability to "own the night".  But over a period of time, industry developed a market for night vision, particularly thermal imagers, to firefighters cars and manufacturing.  A policy had to be developed on what could be exported and what could not, keeping in mind that the military did not want any of these exported and industry saw a legitmate market.  Inherently governmental decisions. 

Other duties that were provided by our agency:  Defense input on Freedom of Information requests, Defense input on Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CIFIUS) that is, whether a foreign company can buy a U.S. company; Participation in International Committees on international agreements to stop foreign and blackmarket sales of critial defense items (and this included nuclear and chemical); and participation in development and negotiation in internationsal agreements.  International Agreements are a State Department responsiblity (as is FMS and direct commerical sales), but the Defense Department plays a critical role.  But as far as intenational agreements, you won't find many people in Defense that are happy with the outcome but State has the Final say.  And another thing we were very involved in was the co-development of the Joint Strike Fighter with 7 foreign countries.  Very rare for cutting edge techology to be codeveloped with foreign countries and their contractors. While the program office was in charge of the program itself, our agency was very involved with release of classified information to foreign companies. 

Obviously, these are a very small part of what the Dod is involved with.  I will tell you that most civilians are intent on supporting the military and preserving our military superiority.  It can become very gray when Congress gets involved (as they regularly do on some of these thing, especially when it means jobs in their districts).  And for the most part, offices are staffed with both military and cilvilians (and increasingly contractor support for analysis) - with the civilians providing the continuity and the Miltary providing the military perspective. 

I know that no one is proposing that the Department of Defense be done away with.  There is more, much more I could say, but I will leave it here.