Radical Reorganization of Military Commands
The biggest reform in generations is being proposed.
WaPo (“Pentagon plan calls for major power shifts within U.S. military“):
Senior Pentagon officials are preparing a plan to downgrade several of the U.S. military’s major headquarters and shift the balance of power among its top generals, in a major consolidation sought by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, people familiar with the matter said.
If adopted, the plan would usher in some of the most significant changes at the military’s highest ranks in decades, in part following through on Hegseth’s promise to break the status quo and slash the number of four-star generals in the military. It would reduce in prominence the headquarters of U.S. Central Command, U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command by placing them under the control of a new organization known as U.S. International Command, according to five people familiar with the matter.
[…]
The plan also calls for realigning U.S. Southern Command and U.S. Northern Command, which oversee military operations throughout the Western Hemisphere, under a new headquarters to be known as U.S. Americas Command, or Americom, people familiar with the matter said. That concept was reported earlier this year by NBC News.
Pentagon officials also discussed creating a U.S. Arctic Command that would report to Americom, but that idea appears to have been abandoned, people familiar with the matter said.
Combined, the moves would reduce the number of top military headquarters — known as combatant commands — from 11 to eight while cutting the number of four-star generals and admirals who report directly to Hegseth. Other remaining combatant commands would be U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, U.S. Space Command, U.S. Strategic Command and U.S. Transportation Command.
There’s no way to evaluate the merits of this plan without more detail. There are certainly synergies to be had here, but how much efficiency and cost savings are gained will be almost entirely a function of staffing sizes. If we simply consolidate existing staff into fewer headquarters, the savings will be minimal.
The most obvious loss here is geographic relationship-building. Geographic Combatant Commanders serve as regional proconsuls, spending most of their time meeting with allies and partners. That’s hard enough to do with Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; trying to do so with all three regions will be next to impossible.
To the extent that this is about reducing the number of four-star generals, it would be far easier to do at the level of service component staff. But, even there, there are relational considerations. It’s arguably problematic to have, for example, four-star Army and Air Force commanders (USAEUR and USAFE) reporting to a four-star EUCOM commander. But if allied armies and air forces have four-star commanders, their American counterpart can’t be a three-star.
This plan—which is still pre-decisional—is far less radical than other options explored:
Senior military officials considered about two dozen other concepts, the senior defense official said. At least one discussion called for a reduction to six total combatant commands. Under that plan, Special Operations Command, Space Command and Cyber Command would be downgraded and placed under the control of a new U.S. Global Command, said other officials familiar with the discussion.
Caine is expected to share at least two other courses of action with Hegseth, people familiar with the matter said. One concept calls for creating two commands to house all of the others, with all major geographic organizationssuch as Central Command and European Command placed under the control of an entity that would be called Operational Command. Other major headquarters, such as Transportation Command and Space Command, would fall under an organization called Support Command.
One proposal suggested the creation of a new headquarters unit, Joint Task Force War, to be based at the Pentagon. It would focus on planning and strategy when the United States was not at war, and be capable of controlling forces anywhere in the world when there was a conflict, people familiar with the matter said.
There is a time-honored technique in military circles for staffs to propose three options, at least one of which is so radical as to be a “throwaway” course of action, to the boss. One has to be careful that the boss doesn’t seize upon that option.
A lot of this is just moving boxes around on an org chart. Activity vs action.
Another way of looking at organization would be, in corporate terms, product vs functional alignment. The Geographic commands would be analogous to product while Transportation and Space would be analogous to functions.
I would be interested in how this aligns with the much maligned National Security Strategy.
@Scott:
This particular reshuffling implicitly downgrades Europe/NATO to the kind of alliances that the US has with, let’s say, Egypt or Qatar.
It seems quite obvious that wanting to limit the number of 4-stars is just a rather transparent excuse.
This is the one they’ll pick. Closest to a German General Staff without having to change the law in Title 10.