John G. Ferrari, Elaine McCusker & Todd Harrison
Several forces acting on the Pentagon this year could fundamentally improve its organization, weapons procurement, operational support, and personnel management. Specific recommendations for the first of these, the work of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), were presented in a February 2025 working paper.[i] A second working paper, released in March, outlined recommendations for overhauling the way America equips its warfighters.[ii] Future papers will explore the effects of budget reconciliation/appropriations and the nature of America’s strategic leadership in the world.
This third paper builds upon the recommendations from the first working paper and provides a more comprehensive set of proposals to reorganize the Department of Defense. While the number of ways one could reorganize this behemoth are infinite, this paper provides three alternative paths, each of which has elements for a template the new Administration and Congress could use to overhaul the operating structure of the Department of Defense (DoD) to empower the warfighter.
The first option, called the “Power of Three,” removes execution of tasks from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and modifies the three military departments to take on the role of executing all tasks, leaving OSD to plan, synchronize, and provide critical oversight. The second option, called the “Power of Boundaries”, would restructure the Combatant Commands around specific threats rather than geographic regions and streamline the military departments and OSD, clarifying strategic priorities and reducing redundancies. The third option, called the “Power of Core Function”, proposes a more modest initial step of refocusing and realigning defense-wide accounts on warfighter capabilities. We have a short window of opportunity to improve the way America defends its security and its interests. It is incumbent on our leaders to seize this moment. We hope that amidst the flurry of activity surrounding the Government at all levels, our leaders will have the foresight and the courage to substantively change the Pentagon. We have each seen our system’s dysfunctionalities up-close and we offer our recommendations with the hope that those whose charge it is to lead may find them useful.
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