Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the U.S.'s worsening economic problems meant the Pentagon had to slash its bloated bureaucracy and purchase cheaper weapons systems, moves that would dramatically change the Defense Department's normal ways of doing business.

Mr. Gates arrives at Kansas City Municipal Airport in Missouri, Friday. Associated Press

Mr. Gates, speaking at the Eisenhower Library in Kansas, warned that the long run-up in defense spending in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was coming to an end, forcing the Pentagon and the nation's military services to become far more disciplined about how they spent money on manpower and materiel.

The defense chief noted that the Pentagon's base budget more than doubled in the years since the attack, with Congress appropriating trillions of dollars in additional spending tied to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the current economic and political climate, Mr. Gates said, those enormous budgetary increases were no longer possible.


Mr. Gates and his staff chose a highly symbolic location for the speech. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose portrait hangs behind Mr. Gates's desk at the Pentagon, was a committed defense budget hawk who famously warned about the possible "acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."

Mr. Gates told the crowd at the Eisenhower Library, which was marking the 65th anniversary of the victory in Europe in World War II, that under President Eisenhower "real choices were made, priorities set, and limits enforced" when it came to the defense budget.

That fiscal discipline has been largely missing at the Pentagon in recent years, the defense chief said.



In recent months, he axed the Air Force's advanced F-22 fighter jet to help drive home the message that the military needed to focus on winning today's unconventional conflicts rather than on preparing for possible future wars with China, Russia or other major powers.


The defense chief's moves have sparked controversy on Capitol Hill, where many lawmakers from both parties are staunch supporters of the defense contracting industry whose companies are major employers in their states and congressional districts.

Mr. Gates is currently locked in a showdown with lawmakers who are trying to force the department to fund the development of an alternate engine for the next-generation Joint Strike Fighter and to purchase more C-17 cargo planes.

The defense chief has asked President Barack Obama to veto any defense budget legislation that contains either item.

Mr. Gates has been increasingly vocal in his calls for greater Pentagon financial discipline. On Monday, the defense chief told an audience of naval officers and defense contractors that the Navy needed to reduce its reliance on multi-billion-dollar ships and submarines and instead seek cheaper alternatives.

The Navy's current budget for buying new ships and subs, he added Monday, wouldn't see "any significant top-line increases" in the foreseeable future.

The defense chief went even further Saturday, arguing that the nation's darkening fiscal picture meant that the overall defense budget would no longer increase by enough money each year to fund the military's current force structure.

He said the Pentagon's coffers were also being depleted by the military's skyrocketing health-care costs, which have risen from $19 billion a year a decade ago to $50 billion a year today.


The defense chief said the combination of rising health-care costs and stagnating defense budgets required the Pentagon to save money wherever it could by cutting its bureaucracy and reducing it overhead costs.


A decade ago, then-Defense Secretary Robert Rumsfeld estimated that there 17 layers of bureaucracy separating him from a lower-ranking Pentagon action officer. Today, Mr. Gates said, there can be as many as 30 levels of bureaucracy between him and the same officer.

The defense chief offered other examples of bureaucratic bloat. Sending new troops to Afghanistan requires paperwork to be processed and approved by five separate four-star commands. Decades after the Cold War end, meanwhile, the Pentagon still had more than 40 generals, admirals, or senior civilian equivalents deployed to Europe, each with significant personal staffs.

Mr. Gates also criticized the military services for continuing to buy large quantities of expensive, high-end weapons even though the U.S. already has more of those armaments than the rest of the world's militaries combined.

"Does the number of warships we have and are building really put America at risk when the U.S. battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined, 11 of which belong to allies and partners?" he asked. "Is it a dire threat that by 2020 the United States will have only 20 times more advanced stealth fighters than China?"

Mr. Gates said he was directing the military services, the Joint Staff and the Pentagon's civilian officials to "take a hard, unsparing look at how they operate," with the goal of sharply cutting the Defense Department's overhead costs.

The defense chief acknowledged that such far-reaching changes would be sure to face tough opposition, but said the fiscal reality meant there was no alternative.

"It is not a great mystery what needs to change," he said. "It takes the political will and willingness, as Eisenhower possessed, to make hard choices — choices that will displease powerful people both inside the Pentagon and out."

Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at