United States Secretary of Defense

The Secretary of Defense (SecDef) is the head and chief executive officer of the Department of Defense, an Executive Department of the Government of the United States of America.^[5][6][7] This position corresponds to what is generally known as a Defense Minister in many other countries.^[8] The Secretary of Defense is appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, and is by custom a member of the Cabinet and by law a member of the National Security Council.^[9]

Secretary of Defense is a statutory office, and the general provision in 10 U.S.C. § 113 provides that the Secretary of Defense has "authority, direction and control over the Department of Defense", and is further designated by the same statute as "the principal assistant to the President in all matters relating to the Department of Defense."^[10] Ensuring civilian control of the military, an individual may not be appointed as Secretary of Defense within seven years after relief from active duty as a commissioned officer of a regular (i.e., non-reserve) component of an armed force.^[11]

The Secretary of Defense is in the chain of command and exercises command and control, subject only to the orders of the President, over all Department of Defense forces (the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps) for both operational and administrative purposes.^{[12][13][14][15]} Only the Secretary of Defense (or the President) can authorize the transfer of operational control of forces between the three Military Departments (Departments of the Army, Navy & Air Force) and the currently nine Combatant Commands (Africa Command, Central Command, European Command, Northern Command, Pacific Command, Southern Command, Special Operations Command, Strategic Command, Transportation Command), and between the Combatant Commands.^[16] Because the Office of Secretary of Defense is vested with legal powers which exceeds those of any commissioned officer, and is second only to the Office of President in the military hierarchy, it has sometimes unofficially been referred to as a de facto "deputy commander in chief". ^[17][18] The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the principal military adviser to the Secretary of Defense and the President, and while the Chairman may assist the Secretary and President in their command functions, the Chairman is not in the chain of command.^[19]

The Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Treasury, are generally regarded as the four most important cabinet officials because of the importance of their departments.^[20]

Secretary of Defense is a Level I position of the Executive Schedule and thus earns a salary of $199,700 per year. The current Secretary is Leon Panetta who assumed office July 1, 2011.

History

The Army, Navy, and Marine Corps were established in 1775, in concurrence with the American Revolution. The War Department, headed by the Secretary of War, was created by Act of Congress in 1789 and was responsible for both the Army and Navy until the founding of a separate Department of the Navy in 1798.

Based on the experiences of World War II, proposals were soon made on how to more effectively manage the large combined military establishment over which only the President had direct line authority. The Army generally favored centralization while the Navy had institutional preferences for decentralization and the status quo. The resulting National Security Act of 1947 was largely a compromise between these divergent viewpoints. The Act split the War Department into the Department of the Army and the Department of the Air Force, each with their own Secretary, and created a sui generis National Military Establishment led by a Secretary of Defense. At first, each of the service secretaries maintained quasi-cabinet status. The first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, who in his previous capacity as Secretary of the Navy had opposed creation of the new position, found it difficult to exercise authority over them with the limited powers his office had at the time. To address this and other problems, the National Security Act was amended in 1949 to further consolidate the national defense structure in order to reduce interservice rivalry, directly subordinate the Secretaries of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force to the Secretary of Defense in the chain of command, and rename the National Military Establishment to the Department of Defense as one Executive Department. The position of the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the number two position in the department, was also created at this time.

The general trend since 1949 has been to further centralize management in the Department of Defense, elevating the status and authorities of civilian OSD appointees and defense-wide organizations at the expense of the military departments and the services within them. The last major revision of the statutory framework concerning the position was done in the Goldwater–Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. In particular, it elevated the status of joint service for commissioned officers, making it in practice a requirement before appointments to general officer and flag officer grades could be made.

Powers and functions

In the U.S. Armed Forces, the Secretary of Defense is often referred to as SecDef or SD. The Secretary of Defense and the President together constitute the National Command Authorities (NCA),^[21] which has sole authority to launch strategic nuclear weapons. All nuclear weapons are governed by this dual-authority – both must concur before a strategic nuclear strike may be ordered.

The Secretary's staff element is called the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and is composed of a Deputy Secretary of Defense (DEPSECDEF) and five Under Secretaries of Defense in the fields of Acquisition, Technology & Logistics; Comptroller/Chief Financial Officer; Intelligence; Personnel & Readiness; and Policy.

The Secretary of Defense by statute also exercises "authority, direction and control" over the three Secretaries of the military departments (Secretary of the Army, Secretary of the Navy, and Secretary of the Air Force), the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Chief of Staff, Commandant of the Marine Corps, Chief of Naval Operations, and Air Force Chief of Staff), the Combatant Commanders of the Unified Combatant Commands, the Directors of the Defense Agencies (for example the Director of the National Security Agency) and of the DoD Field Activities. All of these high-ranking positions require Senate confirmation.

The Secretary is one of few civilians^[22] who is authorized to act as convening authority in the military justice system for General Courts-Martial (10 U.S.C. § 822: article 22, UCMJ), Special Courts-Martial (10 U.S.C. § 823: article 23, UCMJ), and Summary Courts-Martial (10 U.S.C. § 824: article 24 UCMJ).

List of Secretaries of Defense

The longest-serving Secretary of Defense is Robert McNamara, who served for a total of 2,595 days. Combining his two non-sequential services as Secretary of Defense, the second longest serving is Donald Rumsfeld, who served ten days less than McNamara.

Parties

      Democratic       Republican

Status

Succession

Presidential succession

The Secretary of Defense is sixth in the presidential line of succession, following the Secretary of the Treasury and preceding the Attorney General.^[24]

Secretary of Defense succession

In Executive Order 13533 of March 1, 2010, President Barack Obama modified the line of succession regarding who would act as Secretary of Defense in the event of a vacancy or incapacitation, thus reversing the changes made by President George W. Bush in Executive Order 13394 as to the relative positions of the Secretaries of the Military Departments. All of the officials in the line of succession are civilians appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate:

Living former Secretaries of Defense

• 10th: Melvin Robert Laird
• 12th: James Rodney Schlesinger
• 13th and 21st: Donald Henry Rumsfeld
• 14th: Harold Brown
• 16th: Frank Charles Carlucci III
• 17th: Richard Bruce Cheney
• 19th: William James Perry
• 20th: William Sebastian Cohen
• 22nd: Robert Michael Gates

See also

• List of United States Secretaries of Defense by time in office

References

Federal law

• Title 10 of the United States Code
• Title 50 of the United States Code

Directives and doctrine

• Gates, Robert M. (2010-12-21). [[1] Department of Defense Directive 5100.1: Functions of the Department of Defense and Its Major Components]. Department of Defense Directive. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense. [2]. 
• Mullen, Michael G. (2009-03-20). [[3] Joint Publication 1 – Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States]. Joint Publications. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense. [4]. 

Print sources

• Trask, Roger R.; Goldberg, Alfred (1997). [[5] The Department of Defense 1997-1947: Organization and Leaders]. Washington, D.C.: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense/U.S. Government Printing Office. ISBN 0160491630. [6]. 

Online sources

• "Histories of the Secretaries of Defense". U.S. Department of Defense. http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/secdef_histories/. Retrieved September 3, 2002. 
• "The Department of Defense Organizational Structure". U.S. Department of Defense. http://www.dod.mil/odam/omp/pubs/GuideBook/DoD.htm#Secretary%20of%20Defense. Retrieved November 13, 2006. 

Footnotes

External links

• The Reinvention of Robert Gates by Michael Crowley, The New Republic, November 9, 2009
• "Top Civilian and Military Leaders". U.S. Department of Defense. http://www.defenselink.mil/osd/topleaders.aspx. Retrieved October 13, 2007.  – Includes the Secretary of Defense
• More information on each position and biographies of the current Deputy Secretary (DepSecDef) and Under Secretaries (USDs)