Fixing the Pentagon's Broken Budget

Michelle Shevin-Coetzee

Security, Americas

Defense budget reform is not only possible—it's necessary.

Utter the word “reform” inside the Pentagon and many will roll their eyes or laugh. Initiating change to government processes and procedures invites skepticism or outright rejection, particularly within the Department of Defense. It is no surprise, then, that the Pentagon’s Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process has witnessed few significant changes since its creation in 1962. Defense secretaries often focus their attention on the many external crises that dominate the headlines, and shun internal reform efforts or delegate them downward. But the Pentagon’s current leadership team is determined to change that perception. With Secretary Ashton Carter at the helm and Robert Work as his deputy, now is the time to give PPBE the attention it deserves. Now is the time to enact meaningful reform.

Designed to align ends (“what”), ways (“how”) and means (“with what”), PPBE is a crucial process that builds the future military force. But despite its underpinning of the department’s subsequent activities and operations, the process has three key problems: its timeline, its analytic system to model scenarios and its supplemental funding mechanism as reflected in the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account.