co-equal executive departments-Army, Navy, and Air Force. But World War II experience had proved that no longer could warfare be effectively waged under separate Army, Navy, and Air Force doctrines. So, over all our forces the Congress established a Secretary of Defense.

This reorganization in 1947 was marked by lengthy debate and eventual compromise. In that battle the lessons were lost, tradition won. The three service departments were but loosely joined. The entire structure, called the National Military Establishment, was little more than a weak confederation of sovereign military units. Few powers were vested in the new Secretary of Defense. All others were reserved to three separated executive departments.

Events soon showed that this loose aggregation was unmanageable. In 1949, the National Military Establishment was replaced by an executive Department of Defense. The authority of the Secretary of Defense over his Department was made specific. He was vested with the power of decision in the operation of several interservice boards in his Office. A Chairman was provided to preside over the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Departments of Army, Navy and Air Force were converted from independent executive departments to subordinate military departments. They became represented in the President's Cabinet and the National Security Council by the Secretary of Defense alone. Other changes with similar effect were made.

The unifying process moved forward again in 1953. The Secretary of Defense was given staff facilities better adapted to his heavy responsibilities. Certain boards and agencies were abolished and their duties transferred to him. Additional Assistant Secretaries of Defense were provided. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was authorized to manage the Joint Staff for the Joint Chiefs.

These various steps toward more effective coordination of our armed forces under one civilian head have been necessary, sound, and in the direction pointed by the lessons of modern warfare. Each such step, however, has prompted opponents to predict dire results. There have been allegations that our free institutions would be threatened by the influence of a military leader serving as the principal military adviser to the Defense Secretary and the Commander-in-Chief. There have been forecasts that one or more of the services would be abolished. As a result, the Secretary of Defense has never been freed of excessive statutory restraints. As a result of well meaning attempts to protect traditional

concepts and prerogatives, we have impaired civilian authority and denied ourselves a fully effective defense. We must cling no longer to statutory barriers that weaken executive action and civilian authority. We must free ourselves of emotional attachments to service systems of an era that is no more.

I therefore propose, for America's safety, that we now modernize our defense establishment and make it efficient enough and flexible enough to enable it to meet the fateful challenge of continuing revolutionary change.

II.

I know well, from years of military life, the constant concern of service leaders for the adequacy of their respective programs, each of which is intended to strengthen the nation's defense. I understand quite as well the necessity for these leaders to present honestly and forcefully to their superiors their views regarding the place of their programs in the overall national effort. But service responsibilities and activities must always be only the branches, not the central trunk of the national security tree. The present organization fails to apply this truth.

While at times human failure and misdirected zeal have been responsible for duplications, inefficiencies, and publicized disputes, the truth is that most of the service rivalries that have troubled us in recent years have been made inevitable by the laws that govern our defense organization.

Parenthetically, I may observe that these rivalries, so common in the National Capital, are almost unknown in the field. Here in Washington they usually find expression in the services' Congressional and press activities which become particularly conspicuous in struggles over new weapons, funds and publicity. It is just such rivalries, I am convinced, that America wants stopped.

Coming now to specific organizational changes, I want first to emphasize the vital necessity of complete unity in our strategic planning and basic operational direction. It is therefore mandatory that the initiative for this planning and direction rest not with the separate services but directly with the Secretary of Defense and his operational advisers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assisted by such staff organization as they deem necessary.

No military task is of greater importance than the development of strategic plans which relate our revolutionary new weapons and force deployments to national security objectives. Genuine unity is indispensable at this starting point. No amount of subsequent coordination can eliminate duplication or doctrinal conflicts which are intruded into the first shaping of military programs.

This unified effort is essential not only for long-range planning and decision which fix the pattern of our future forces and form the foundation of our major military programs, but also for effective command over military operations. The need for greater unity today is most acute at two points in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and in the major operational commands responsible for actual combat in the event of war. Now as to the specifics of the revisions that I deem essential:

1. We must organize our fighting forces into operational commands that are truly unified, each assigned a mission in full accord with our over-all military objectives.

This lesson, taught by World War II, I learned from firsthand experience. With rare exceptions, as I stated before, there can no longer be separate ground, sea, or air battles.

Our unified commands (by which term I also include the joint and specified commands which exist today) are the cutting edge of our military machine-the units which would do the fighting. Our entire defense organization exists to make them effective.

I intend that, subject only to exceptions personally approved by the Commander-in-Chief, all of our operational forces be organized into truly unified commands. Such commands will be established at my direction. They will be in the Department of Defense but separate from the military departments. Their missions and force levels will conform to national objectives.

I expect these truly unified commands to go far toward realigning our operational plans, weapons systems and force levels in such fashion as to provide maximum security at minimum cost.

Because I have often seen the evils of diluted command, I emphasize that each unified commander must have unquestioned authority over all units of his command. Forces must be assigned to the command and be removed only by central direction-by the Secretary of Defense or the Commander-in-Chief—and not by orders of individual military departments.

Commands of this kind we do not have today. To the extent that we are unable so to organize them under present law, to that extent we cannot fully marshal our armed strength.

We must recognize that by law our military organization still reflects the traditional concepts of separate forces for land, sea, and air operations, despite a Congressional assertion in the same law favoring "their integration into an efficient team of land, naval and air forces . . .' This separation is clearly incompatible with unified commands whose missions and weapons systems go far beyond concepts and traditions of individual services.

Today a unified command is made up of component commands from each military department, each under a commander of that department. The commander's authority over these component commands is short of the full command required for maximum efficiency. In fact, it is prescribed that some of his command powers shall take effect only in time of emergency.

I recommend, therefore, that present law, including certain restrictions relating to combatant functions, be so amended as to remove any possible obstacles to the full unity of our commands and the full command over them by unified commanders.

This recommendation most emphatically does not contemplate repeal of laws prescribing the composition of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, or Air Force. I have neither the intent nor the desire to merge or abolish the traditional services. This recommendation would have no such effect. But I cannot too strongly urge that our operational commands be made truly unified, efficient military instruments. Congressional cooperation is necessary to achieve that goal.

2. We must clear command channels so that orders will proceed directly to unified commands from the Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of Defense.

The number of headquarters between the Commander-in-Chief and the commander of each unified command must be kept at the very minimum. Every additional level courts delay, confusion of authority, and diffusion of responsibility. When military responsibility is unclear, civilian control is uncertain.

Under existing practice the chain of command is diverted through the Secretaries and service chiefs of the military departments. The department with major responsibility for a unified command is designated by

the Secretary of Defense as "executive agent" for that command. The department's Secretary functions through his chief of military service.

So today the channel of military command and direction runs from the Commander-in-Chief to the Secretary of Defense, then to the Secretary of an executive agent department, then to a chief of service, and then, finally, to the unified commander. In time of emergency, the Secretary of the executive agent department delegates to his service chief his authority over the strategic direction and conduct of combat operations. Thus, ultimately the chief of an individual service issues, in the name of the Secretary of Defense, orders to a unified commander.

The role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in this process is to furnish professional advice and staff assistance to the Secretary of Defense.

I consider this chain of command cumbersome and unreliable in time of peace and not usable in time of war. Clearly, Secretaries of military departments and chiefs of individual services should not direct unified operations and therefore should be removed from the command channel. Accordingly, I have directed the Secretary of Defense to discontinue the use of military departments as executive agents for unified commands.

To facilitate this effort I ask Congressional cooperation. I request repeal of any statutory authority which vests responsibilities for military operations in any official other than the Secretary of Defense. Examples are statutory provisions which prescribe that the Air Force Chief of Staff shall command major units of the Air Force and that the Chief of Naval Operations shall command naval operating forces.

3. We must strengthen the military staff in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in order to provide the Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary of Defense with the professional assistance they need for strategic planning and for operational direction of the unified commands.

For these purposes, several improvements are needed in the duties and organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

I consider the Joint Chiefs of Staff concept essentially sound, and I therefore believe that the Joint Chiefs of Staff should continue to be constituted as currently provided in law. However, in keeping with the shift I have directed in operational channels, the Joint Chiefs of Staff will in the future serve as staff assisting the Secretary of Defense in his exercise of direction over unified commands. Orders issued to the commands by the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be under the authority and in the name of the Secretary of Defense.