Sack Weinberger, bankrupt General Dynamics, and other procurement reforms.

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Caspar Weinberger, Packard Commission investigation

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Sack Weinberger, bankrupt General Dynamics, and other procurement reforms.

SACK WEINBERGER, BANKRUPT GENERAL DYNAMICS, AND OTHER PROCUREMENT REFORMS

Was that really former DefenseUndersecretary David Packard standing in the Rose Garden last July, handing Ronald Reagan a blue-ribbon report blasting the way the Pentagon procures weapons? Was that really Reagan grinning away as he accepted?

It was. With White House pomp RonaldReagan consecrated defense reform views his own administration was decrying as misinformed and irresponsible a few years ago. Given the ritual of presidential commission reports--their purpose usually to appear hard hitting but in fact celebrate the status quo, a Kabuki adhered to exquisitely by the recent Rogers Commission--people may have been tempted to write Packard off. But in this instance there may actually be significance to a presidential commission report.

First, Packard's work presents specific recommendationsrather than the standard windy exortations for "a new national debate,' and so on. Most of those recommendations were right on the beam. It also comes at a time when the number of books, reports, congressional studies, and of course real-life examples concerning military ineptitude is building to a critical mass. Even bureaucracies as vast as the Pentagon do eventually respond to the sheer weight of paper heaped on them, especially when a report like this, embossed with the seal of a president, is thrown on top of the pile.

The Packard report, and the grudging acceptanceof military reform ideas currently taking place, creates an ideal political opportunity to make crucial, fundamental changes in the American defense establishment--the kind of reform which, someday, will redound much to the credit of the party which backs it. If Reagan isn't willing to reach for history in his final two years and do for the Pentagon what he did for the tax code, then perhaps the Democrats, now holding the Senate again, will embrace defense reform as a party-wide goal. With that in mind it becomes useful to take a close look at just what Packard recommended--and what new avenues of reform thinking, unmentioned by Packard, should be considered.

Extra-strength spending

Packard proposed many perceptive reforms,some straight out of the cheap hawk's handbook, reorganizing the Joint Chiefs of Staff being one of them.

Previously, the JCS chairman has been strictlya figurehead. The JCS reorganization, enacted recently by Congress, gives the chairman, Admiral William Crowe, a degree of true authority over the military as a whole, creates a vice-chief who supposedly will concentrate on interservice harmony, and also grants some autonomy to U.S. regional commanders.

A key Packard Report recommendation is thatthe Pentag...

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