Two landmark exams find the government stretched too thin

For a social and charitable group of which I’m a member, I recruited a federal dinner speaker earlier this week. Dr. Shoshana Weider, the Science Missions directorate of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, joined us for Chinese food and fellowship. After the cooled-off dumplings were cleared away, she gave a compelling presentation about NASA’s many recent and current planetary missions.

Earth’s moon is a big focus, of course, and Mars. For that matter, the Earth itself and its atmosphere concern NASA. But also Mercury, a moon of Jupiter,  and a good sized asteroid. The division is just one sliver of NASA. The agency runs literally thousands of programs from its many divisions, mission units and centers.

By coincidence, that morning I’d conducted an in-studio interview with one of the federal universe’s greats, namely, Norm Augustine. The former chairman of Lockheed-Martin and accomplished engineer is also chairman of the National Academies Committee on NASA Mission Critical Workforce, Infrastructure and Technology. Sharp and spry at 89, Augustine came in to discuss the committee’s recent and urgent findings.

The title, NASA at a Crossroads, might be cliche. But the findings depict an agency stretched way too thin. Too many missions and not enough money, as Augustine put it. NASA holds its mostly old infrastructure together with the proverbial chewing gum and baling wire. NASA’s increasing reliance on the burgeoning commercial space industry puts it at risk of losing engineering and science brainpower. Augustine pointed out that NASA’s special hiring authorities extend to only a few of its 17,000-plus employees. They already depend on a contractor base that outnumbers them 10-to-1.

The Washington mill turns out reports like Rawlings turns out baseballs. Literally every day my inbox has something or other about a “new report.” Most seem as remarkable as a two-strike foul ball. Everybody’s got issues. But I think I can spot the ones that count. This one counts.

Of equal, if lightly-reported, weight: This 132-page output from the Commission on National Defense Strategy. The commission chairs are former Democratic congresswoman Jane Harman, and the former Defense undersecretary for policy during the Bush administration, Eric Edelman. I think it’s more than nominally bipartisan. They were appointed by the Senate and House armed services committees, who chartered the commission.

I’ll summarize the report: Militarily, the U.S. is a paper tiger.

One detail right in the beginning of note: China, the authors report, spends more than $700 billion annually on defense. That blows up the often-repeated trope that the U.S. spends more than the next 10 nations combined. My take: China gets more for its $700 billion than the U.S. gets from its $800 billion, because in China, everybody works cheaper.

The detailed report cites numerous causes, both within the Defense Department and from politics and policy, to find “that the U.S. military lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat.” Commissions found DoD’s many components have yet to really master artificial intelligence, hypersonics, electronic warfare, integrated cyber and space capabilities and “vigorous competition in the information domain.”

It also stated, “programs that are not needed for future combat should be divested to invest in others.”

That echoed what Augustine’s committee said about NASA. It “must rebalance its priorities, even if it means investing more in people, facilities and cutting edge technology at the expense of initiating new missions.”

DoD and NASA depend inseparably on their industrial supplier bases. NASA’s industrial base is growing so robust it practically threatens NASA with irrelevance. The DoD’s industrial base “is unable to meet the equipment, technology and minitions needs of the United States and its allies and partners,” the commission found.

All of these serious challenges ultimately affect human capital, the people that turn all of the equipment and infrastructure into functioning missions.

The DoD analysis goes into length about the military’s well-documented recruitment problems. It notes, “Although the DoD workforce and all-volunteer force provide an
unmatched U.S. advantage, today is the smallest force in generations. It is stressed to maintain
readiness today and is not sufficient to meet the needs of strategic global competition and multitheater war.” The authors hint at the potential need for conscription. “The draft” ideas has lately drawn, if not advocacy, at least renewed thinking. Check out my recent interview with people at the Center for a New American Security.

DoD has civilian workforce challenges too. “DoD is routinely edged out of critical technical skills and language, and area expertise by the private sector,” the commission stated. It urges a long list of hiring reforms and a “Sputnik era” bill to imbue the public education system with curricula for helping develop people with technical and language skills.

The Academy’s NASA report similary devotes a chapter to workforce issues at NASA, an agency that always ranks at the topic of the Best Places to Work in the federal government. The majority of its 17,000 employees work in science, engineering and math. Keeping it that way, the committee said, means halting “a trend to shift focus to being contract monitors who principally rely on entities outside the agency to define and conduct new activities.” The danger? “A hollow NASA.”

NASA as merely a contract management group, Defense unable to deter — what a pair of unattractive prospects. Both studies call for more money, for sure. But averting disaster also will take grownups in Congress, the executive branch and the ecosystem of the economy to find consensus on a surer way forward.

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