ber 1952 Secretary of Defense Robert A. Lovett commented on the difficulties he had had in asserting effective control over supply matters because "certain ardent separatists occasionally pop up with the suggestion that the Secretary of Defense play in his own back yard and not trespass on their separately administered preserves."

There are seven technical services in the Army. Of these seven technical services, all are in one degree or another in the business of design, procurement, production, supply, distribution, warehousing and issue. Their functions over-lap in a number of items, thus adding substantial complication to the difficult problem of administration and control.

It has always amazed me that the system worked at all, and the fact that it works rather well is a tribute to the inborn capacity of team-work in the average American.

A reorganization of the technical services would be no more painful than backing into a buzz saw, but I believe that it is long overdue.1

Explaining the lack of progress in carrying out the financial reforms called for in the National Security Act amendments of 1949, Lovett told a Congressional investigating committee that it was very difficult to obtain accurate statistics from the Army's technical services. Adequate supply control was impossible at that level, he said, because a single depot might receive its funds from fifty or a hundred sources. The basic problem, he said, was the resistance of the technical services and the Army's General Staff to change combined with a natural dislike of outsiders trespassing on their preserves of authority. All this had led to a "mental block," he maintained, in some of the services against financial reforms.2

Karl R. Bendetsen, an attorney and former Under Secretary of the Army, submitted a proposal to Secretary Lovett in October 1952 for reorganizing the Army and the technical services along functional lines. The weakness of previous reorganizations, he said, had been that they treated symptoms instead of attacking the basic issue, the Army's fragmented field organization where seven major commands were each involved in buying, mechandizing, warehousing, distributing, and even

1

Army, Navy, Air Force Journal, vol. 90, 10 Jan 53, pp. 542-43.

2 U.S. Congress, Implementation of Title IV, National Security Act of 1947, as Amended, Hearings Before the Preparedness Subcommittee No. 3, Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, 83d Congress, 1st Session, November 2, 3, and 4, 1953 (Washington, 1954), pp. 25-27. Hereafter cited as Flanders Committee Hearings.

research and development. They were "virtually self-contained" autonomous commands, each with its own personnel and training systems, no matter what its designation might be as part of the Army staff. He could not identify any consistent functional pattern in their arrangement. They were organized rather on a professional basis with civil engineers, electrical engineers, and mechanical engineers in separate commands. There was fragmentation and duplication of effort in research and development and no effective means of bringing the user, the combat soldier, into the picture. Disagreement among the technical services forced the General Staff, particularly G-4, to intervene in matters for which it lacked both the staff and authority to act. The continental Army commands followed different personnel policies and procedures, forcing G-1 into personnel operations of the Army although it lacked the necessary staff. There was the administrative chaos and friction created by housekeeping functions, especially repairs and utilities, performed for technical service installations by local Army commanders. Here again disagreement forced administrative details "which have no business in the Pentagon" to the top.

To provide more effective management Mr. Bendetsen proposed to reorganize the Army from the bottom up, replacing the continental armies with seven nationwide functional commands, using the Secretary's new authority to distribute nonmilitary functions within the Army as he saw fit. (Chart 19)

A Personnel Command would be responsible for all personnel operations in the Army, including manpower procurement, induction of draftees, replacement training centers, prisoner of war camps, and disciplinary barracks. It would provide basic training for individuals. A Combat Command would take up where the Personnel Command left off, concentrating on organizational training and mobilization. It would have four subordinate commands: an Eastern Defense and a Western Defense Command, an Antiaircraft Command, and the “Army University," a school command including all training schools, Reserve training, ROTC, and the U.S. Military Academy. A Development Command would be responsible for both research and development and for combat development functions, including operations research, war gaming, and human resources research. A Service Command would include most of the

CHART 19-THE BENDETSEN PLAN, 22 OCTOBER 1952

Quartermaster Corps functions, Army hospitals, finance centers, transportation, maintenance facilities, and surplus disposal facilities. A Procurement Command would combine the procurement and production functions of the Ordnance Department with the construction activities, both military and civilian, of the Corps of Engineers. It would be, like them, organized geographically into regional divisions or districts.

Bendetsen thought there might be a continued need for a separate Army headquarters command like the Military District of Washington. Turning to the organization of the General Staff and the Department of the Army, Bendetsen criticized the Pershing tradition of attempting to run the department as if it were a field command. The organization of a field army, he said, was inappropriate for the department because the latter's mission was not to direct military operations but to supply matériel and trained manpower for such operations. He would relieve the General Staff of all operational responsibilities, leaving five staff divisions: Manpower, Intelligence, Operations, which he would separate from Force Development (Training), and Procurement, Supply, and Services. The technical services would become staff agencies with no field commands or installations under them. At the special staff level he would assign Military History and Troop Information to the Adjutant General's Office.

There would be a vice chief and two deputy chiefs, Bendetsen went on, to assist the Chief of Staff, one for Plans and Research who would link long-range strategic planning with research and development and a deputy for Operations and Administration. Like others, he insisted that combining plans and operations in one agency did not make sense. He would also appoint special assistants for political-military affairs and for Reserve Components.

The Secretary of the Army would have three assistant secretaries, one for Personnel, another for Procurement, Supply, and Services, and a third, the Comptroller, because the latter should parallel the role of the Comptroller of the Department of Defense who was a civilian.3

While nothing came of Mr. Bendetsen's plan at the time, it

Address by K. R. Bendetsen before the Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pa., 1 Dec 52. The substance of this talk appeared also in Military Review, vol. XXXIII, No. 10, January 1954, pp. 39–60, as “A Plan for Army Reorganization."

was representative of the continuing criticism of the Army's organization and management outside the department. Some of its criticisms and recommendations were also reflected in the reports of various committees that were appointed by or under General Eisenhower when he became President in 1953.

President Eisenhower appointed Charles E. Wilson as Secretary of Defense. One of Wilson's first acts was to designate Nelson A. Rockefeller on 19 February 1953 as chairman of an ad hoc committee on the organization of the Department of Defense. It was a blue-ribbon jury, consisting of General of the Army Omar N. Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Dr. Vannevar Bush, both of whom had publicly criticized the national defense organization; Dr. Milton Eisenhower; former Secretary of Defense Robert A. Lovett; Arthur S. Flemming, Director of the Office of Defense Mobilization; and Brig. Gen. David A. Sarnoff, U.S. Army Reserve, of RCA. Other senior military consultants were General of the Army George C. Marshall, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and General Carl Spaatz, U.S. Air Force.

The Rockefeller Committee examined the entire spectrum of defense organization and procedures. It sought a Department of Defense so organized and managed that it could "provide the Nation with maximum security at minimum cost and without danger to our free institutions." This required a flexible military establishment "suitable not only for the present period of localized war, but also in time of transition to either full war or relatively secure peace."

The committee severely criticized the various boards created under the National Security Act of 1947 which had been hamstrung, as Mr. Lovett pointed out, by interservice rivalry. It recommended replacing them with seven Assistant Secretaries of Defense with power to act for the Secretary. For the Research and Development Board, the committee recommended one Assistant Secretary for Research and Development and another for "Applications Engineering," who would act in the area of development engineering, thus linking research and production. To replace the Munitions Board it recommended an Assistant Secretary for Supply and Logistics. Other assistant secretaries would be responsible for Properties and Installations, for Legislative Affairs, and for Health and Medi