DOD Advisers Wonder: Are Combatant Commands Becoming “Contractor” Commands? A Defense Department advisory panel says Secretary Robert Gates should start at the top to cut spending on overhead—in his own office, the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the combatant commands. “There has been an explosion of overhead work because the Department has failed to establish adequate controls to keep it in line relative to the size of the warfight,” a task group of the Defense Business Board wrote. “The majority of this new work is being done by contractors, the cost of which is nearly invisible to the Department as it is buried within [operation and maintenance] accounts rather than in the more visible personnel accounts.” “Without this [being] fixed, the Department will be unable to provide adequate resources to its warfighters,” the task group warned. The business board voted unanimously on July 22 to forward the preliminary recommendations to the secretary. The panel called for a hiring freeze in the Office of the Secretary, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the combatant commands, and a departmentwide reduction of about 15% of civilian personnel. It urged abolition of the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, VA, where contractors outnumber military and civilian DOD employees. The task group said nearly 11,000 contractors work for the 10 combatant commands. One of its briefing charts asked, “Are some of the Combatant Commands becoming ‘Contractor’ Commands?” The task group said DOD’s biggest contractor is not Lockheed Martin Corp., but the Defense Logistics Agency, which buys supplies for the entire department. DLA and most other defense agencies “would rate in the Fortune 250 and several are in the Fortune 50,” said the task group chair, Arnold Punaro, during a briefing for the board, the newspaper Federal Times reported. “Yet again, they are not managed as businesses even though one is a grocery business, another is a worldwide communications provider, another is one of the world’s largest and most expensive health care providers.” Gates had asked the business board to advise him on how to reduce spending by $100 billion on overhead and other unnecessary costs. The board has estimated that overhead eats up 40% of the defense budget, but acknowledged that nobody knows the true figure. Some of its recommendations are likely to hit a roadblock in Congress, such as a call for changes in military retirement. The task group said military personnel spend 20 years on active duty, then may draw pensions for 40 more years.