This book examines the politics and individuals that have shaped the military reform process in the U.S.This book traces the history of various attempts to impose military reform on American armed forces, especially from Congress, from the American Revolution and Continental Congress to the present day. Particular focus will be placed on the effort of a small group in Congress and the Pentagon in the 1980s (who coined the term military reform in the modern context). Emphasis will be on the reforms these actors advocated, variously successful and unsuccessful, to fundamentally alter how the Department of Defense designs and buys hardware and how U.S. armed forces fight. The book uses the 1991 Gulf War, and the 2003 Iraq War (and the subsequent insurgency in Iraq) to demonstrate what has been reformed in U.S. armed forces and the Department of Defense, and what has not.The volume explains fundamental strengths and weaknesses in America's military forces, exploring what genuine military reform is, what it is not, and what remains to be done. Ideas are presented to compare genuine reform to cosmetic dabbling, which fundamentally improves nothing and which sometimes arrives as ill-conceived fads that promise only to burden U.S. combat forces to the point of mental and physical immobility.Part of the Contemporary Military, Strategic, and Security Issues series, this is the only current reference book that allows readers to understand the strengths and weaknesses in U.S. military forces. Both authors served in the Pentagon and Congress, and provide unique first-hand analysis regarding military reform.

"America's Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress" describes how America's armed forces are manned and equipped to fight, at best, enemies that do not now--and may never again--exist and to combat real enemies ineffectively at high human and material cost. Given that many regard America's military as "the best in the world," how can this be?
In answer to this question, 13 "non-partisan Pentagon insiders, retired military officers, and defense specialists" lay out an array of hard-hitting and well-documented charges against our current defense establishment. They demonstrate that the hugely expensive and excessively complex weapons embraced by the Pentagon and Congress as vital for our national defense are barely adequate for engaging in outmoded 20th century forms of warfare. They are woefully inadequate for fighting a 21st century "fourth generation" war, as we've learned so painfully in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least as disturbing is the condition of the US defense budget. Over time, policy makers of all political stripes have created budgets that have made our forces smaller, less well equipped, and less ready to fight--all at dramatically increasing cost.
Fortunately, the book's authors offer "real-world" solutions to all the problems they identify. At the same time, however, they remain pessimistic about the prospects for real change--arguing that in a system that measures merit by the amount of money spent, the reform proposals elaborated in this book are likely to meet intense resistance. As Winslow Wheeler remarks, "The changes require a president with an iron will who will require real, not cosmetic, reforms of a system determined to and skilled at countering them. It will also require a president who will stick with the process for years, continuously making decisions that will ultimately reverse the present disastrous course U.S. national security is now on. "

By reference to the fundamental strengths and weaknesses of America's armed forces, Wheeler and Korb establish a definition of what genuine military reform is and is not, and identify what "really" needs to be done to transform our military. They compare genuine reform with "cosmetic dabbling"--that improves nothing and often burdens US combat forces to the point of mental and physical immobility.
They focus particularly on the reforms advocated by a small group in Congress and the Pentagon in the 1980s, revealing how these reforms have fundamentally altered the ways in which the Department of Defense designs and buys hardware, and how our armed forces fight. The book uses Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom--and the subsequent insurgency in Iraq--to demonstrate what has been reformed in the US armed forces and the Department of Defense, and what has not.