The Corp needs friends willing to intervene on V22, before Murtha/Hunter's boondoggle leaves guys bleeding in the dust... while their $100M ride is laid up for maint, or doing executive shuttles from hard tarmacs.

Will the Secret Service let Obama on the V22, now that he's CIC? Does SOCOM want them? Go figure.

The USN surface fleet has triple booked their H60 Seahawks to perform everything from minesweeping and ASW to VertRep and plane guard. What happens when all those missions come due on the same day? The constant since Nam is 'never enough lift when you need it.'

How long can we go without replacing VN era medium and heavy lift utility birds, while deploying expensive experiments against a Long Dong 2 that may never get built?

The model for control of a military service is the tenure of John Lehman as SecNav. It takes someone of this tenacity to force the system to conform to new vision and to accept a disciplined approach to acquisition decisions and execution.

The scene of effective action is the immediate office of the service secretary. SecDef is too remote. The service chief is ineffective and probably already co-opted by service parochialism of some breed.

Plug in 3 really tough, really smart service secretaries - loyal to SecDef and the Commander In Chief - and real change is possible.

Why not start with three assumptions..first, the greatest threat to the future of the United States is financial instability (ie a pillaged treasury, maybe); second, how can the limited resources available for best deployed or invested (implication investment analysis and SarBox verification matters); third, the current phalanx of admirals, generals and senior executives in the defense business (public and private) is not any better in quality than that in the auto industry, banking, et al that have marched smartly and expensively off the precipice and contributed to the first assumption.

Change in this environment will require far more fundamental analysis,actions - all with imagination that deficiency addressed by the 911 Commission.

....this week to Washington, to the Pentagon, to anywhere at home or abroad on the taxpayer's dollar without any consideration of the costs. While Congress and the White House are excoriating Detroit and name calling Bankers and Wall Street, the Defense Travel System (DTS) is pumping out frequent miles and hotel reward bonuses to anyone with a CAC card and a pair of Credit Cards with US embroidered.

The days of all funding all the time and cost is for suckers and private concerns won't stop until a single call from the White House to those Secretaries of...closes this buffet and directs the use of all those expensive Video conference centers, email, telephones, paper mail assets that remain under utilized.