Rumsfeld: Terror war drives transformation

  • Published
  • By Gerry J. Gilmore
  • American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON (AFPN) --  The ongoing global war against terrorism makes U.S. military transformation efforts an imperative goal, Department of Defense’s top civilian and uniformed officer said here Aug. 14.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accompanied Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to a Pentagon town-hall meeting. Rumsfeld thanked servicemembers and civil servants both here and around the globe for their "remarkable" efforts since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

"You and your comrades and colleagues around the world have performed magnificently in so many ways (in defending the American people) against those who seek to harm this country," the secretary said.

Rumsfeld had special praise for "the brave men and women in uniform who risked their lives to help liberate" the Afghan and Iraqi people from despotic regimes.

Despite these victories, the global war on terror is far from over, he said.

“(The war) poses some difficult times ahead for us, as we've seen just in recent weeks and months since the end of major combat operations in Iraq," he said.

However, Rumsfeld emphasized that America and its allies will "win this global war on terror."

The DOD must continue its transformation to meet 21st-century threats, such as terrorism, Rumsfeld said.

He said this requires U.S. military forces to become lighter and more agile. DOD must also overhaul the way it administers its civilian workforce, such as by using performance as a metric for rewards rather than seniority, Rumsfeld said.

Along with transformation, department officials have strived to improve servicemembers' quality of life by working with Congress to achieve needed military pay raises and reducing out-of-pocket expenses for housing, Rumsfeld said.

The armed services' recruiting and retention programs are meeting or exceeding their goals in these efforts, he said.

Transformation efforts are evident even today, the secretary said. Recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq required fewer troops and less time to assemble forces and materiel than in past wars.

He also said Operation Iraqi Freedom was the most "joint" U.S. war in history.

Rumsfeld said U.S. troop presence in Bosnia, Kosovo and the Sinai is being drawn down. Every day more coalition forces and "Iraqis are taking over the police and civil defense duties" in Iraq that were done by American troops, which is “a good thing,” the secretary said.

The U.S. military is also working to establish "a more efficient deployment and re-deployment process," Rumsfeld said. That, along with a re-balancing of "skill sets" between active forces and the Guard and Reserve should assist in reducing turbulence and increasing efficiency across the force.

One example is the current heavy concentration of civil-affairs troops and other highly tasked specialties in the reserve component, which has made for those servicemembers' repeated deployments to places like Afghanistan and Iraq, he said.

The secretary said citizen soldiers did not sign up for such continuous military duty when they volunteered for the Guard or Reserve.

On a related issue, Rumsfeld said that both active-duty and reserve-component troops and their families need to know when they are leaving for deployments and when they will return.

"We're going to work on that," the secretary said. Many Guard and Reserve members have recently been called up with just five days’ notice, rather than the desired goal of 30 days. Some other troops, he said, were called up three to four months in advance only to find out later they were not going to deploy.

“(This state of affairs) is not really fair to them, and it's not fair to their families or their employers," Rumsfeld said. "We need to fix it, and we're in the process of getting it fixed."

Rumsfeld said the Pentagon is now looking over studies that say 300,000 non-core-competency military positions could be transferred to civil servants or to contractors.

If all, or part, of the studies prove workable, then DOD officials might free up more slots for uniformed members "to reduce the stress on the force," he said.

The Defense Department must continue its transformational march even as it has "the war on terror to pursue and win," Rumsfeld said. “(The armed services) will be able to meet the challenges that we face and to deter future adversaries from posing new threats to the people of our country."