Two key indicators of an organization’s real priorities – money and leadership attention – point to a Pentagon that is drifting off its core mission.

While recently looking for promotional videos of military capabilities in preparing for a class on the defense strategy and budget, the diffusion of Pentagon leaders’ attention from their main mission was on display.

Twelve of twenty-five featured videos on the defense.gov web site were about climate change, environmental protection, earth day, military children, and small business. Some of these are nice, and even important, things. But they are not reflective of the core military mission nor the urgent necessity of actual military power.  

As a matter of fact, none of the videos emphasized military power. Nothing on the pervasive importance of unmanned systems, accomplishments of cyber teams, upcoming space launches, soldiers doing drills, exercises with allies and partners, or even the always-exciting carrier landings. I am sure there are videos of these things somewhere, but they were sure not highlighted. No. The prominent videos were about almost anything but the stated mission of the Department of Defense (DOD)—“to provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security.”

Looking further, the Department’s website “spotlights” are a bit better, covering topics such as NATO, support for Ukraine, and news from the Indo-Pacific in addition to DOD sports, National Hispanic Month, and a focus on families, but the diffusion of attention from core functions remains ever present.

Money is another key indicator of real priorities. But here too, when we look at the DOD budget, the diffusion of attention and resources from core functions is also prevalent. The defense budget is loaded with programs and activities that do nothing to produce military capability.

For example, the Department’s budget contains billions for cancer research that duplicates the work of the National Institutes for Health, for environmental work that should be managed by the Environmental Protection Agency, and for education programs that should be a priority for the Department of Education.

We wonder why we are losing competitiveness against the pacing challenge of China, why a declining Russia felt emboldened to wage a war of aggression against Ukraine, why the Armed Forces are facing recruiting challenges, even before the demographic cliff hits, why the defense industrial base is struggling to support the war in Ukraine and maintain US stockpiles, and why we don’t have the military capacity to do more than one thing at once.

It is because defense money and leadership attention are trying to do too much outside of the core defense mission that only DOD can do.

In its defense, the Pentagon is aligning itself to the National Security Strategy, which is so nebulous in defining what the nation needs that everything is national security. The National Defense Strategy perpetuates this root problem by straying from its primary purpose, yet generating a force that is only capable of fighting one war at time, and under-resourcing the capabilities for that fight, to the point we could lose. As evidenced by two prominent independent commissions, America’s defense strategy and strategic posture must be updated to protect vital interests.

But not only that, the US military is also struggling with insufficient budgets, annual delays in funding, vulnerabilities in its industrial base and supply chains, and manpower shortages, all while it adheres to an outdated strategy in a world desperate for an actual military backbone. These problems demand our time and focus, and the brave men and women who serve our nation in uniform deserve diligent attention to solving these problems.

Leaders within the Department of Defense must exhibit the courage to publicly acknowledge the problems we face and to make the military capacity, capability, and posture necessary to do the things only it can do a real priority. In doing this, they can not only define the stakes and risks, but also set forth a positive vision of how they will keep the nation—and those that defend it—safe. Priorities must be made clear within the Department and then reflected outward to the citizenry in how Pentagon leaders spend their time, the programs they resource, and the signals they send through the public-facing website.

We shouldn’t divert defense resources to tangential tasks. Nor should we need to conduct extensive searches for impressive videos of the military doing what only it can do on its own website. 

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