Reinvest Appropriate Pentagon Savings in Urgent Defense Needs

The Pentagon figures it could save $125 billion if it were making more efficient use of administrative personnel. Evidently, a million of them is excessive.

They’re the “tail” in the military’s proverbial “tooth-to-tail” ratio – the calculation of actual war fighters, compared to the vastly larger number of folks who support them.

For years, it has been clear that ratio is out of whack. But the Obama Defense Department chose to suppress this confirmatory internal audit. Presumably, that’s because the last time the armed forces wrung out significant savings on the promise they would be plowed back into desperately needed investments in war fighting priorities, Team Obama ripped them off.

As Donald Trump’s Pentagon team gets down to work next month, my bet is they are going to do some belt-tightening. This time, however, the money saved will go towards keeping us safe.