DOD Announces Large Reinvestment From Efficiencies Savings: "Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has announced a series of efficiencies decisions designed to save the Department of Defense more than $150 billion over the next five years primarily by reducing overhead costs, improving business practices and culling excess or troubled programs.
Most of the resulting savings will be used by the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force to invest in high priority programs that strengthen warfighting capabilities.
In anticipation of an era of modest defense budget growth, Gates launched a comprehensive effort last May to reduce the Department's overhead expenditures. The goal was to sustain the military's size and strength over the long term by reinvesting those efficiency savings in force structure and other key combat capabilities.
Specifically, the military services were directed to find at least $100 billion in savings that they could keep and shift to higher priority programs. To achieve the savings targets, service leadership conducted a thorough and vigorous scrub of bureaucratic structures, facilities, programs, business practices, civilian and military personnel levels, and associated overhead costs.
The measures announced are the latest in a series of DoD reform initiatives, to include the President's last two annual defense budgets, which have rebalanced the Department's spending habits while increasing investments in proven capabilities most relevant both to current wars and to the most likely future threats."
