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United front

Adm. Michael Mullen, the relatively new chairman of the Joint Chiefs, wants the chiefs to take a united stand on any major changes lawmakers demand in President Bush’s military budget for fiscal 2009.

Mullen told me he has a commitment from the chiefs to take this unified approach, rather than have each service lobbying directly with lawmakers to save this or that program.

In this presidential election year, Congress almost certainly will redistribute Bush’s defense dollars, either out of conviction or to make political points. Cuts in such expensive programs as the Air Force’s F-22 fighter plane, now priced at $130 million per plane — not including research and development costs — probably will be attempted. And the ailing national economy will generate political pressures that will test the unity Mullen has forged.

Besides fighting the battle of the budget, Mullen will be under the gun as the Pentagon complies with congressional orders to take a new and extensive look at the division of labor among the services to see whether it still makes sense given the changed threats.

Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, championed the reappraisal of the roles and missions of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps every four years.

One life-and-death question the chiefs and civilian defense leaders must address in any serious roles-and-missions reappraisal is what armed service or agency should be given the lead role to prevent terrorists from attacking the U.S. with a nuclear bomb.

Another question, less significant but still controversial, is whether the Air Force should be put in charge of unmanned aircraft.

As one who has watched the Pentagon undertake, during both Democratic and Republican administrations, the congressionally mandated Quadrennial Defense Review of what the armed services are doing and why, I fear the new roles-and-missions exercise will end up being a similar self-justification of what the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps are already doing, rather than a bold blueprint for restructuring.

Perhaps Mullen will find a way to get the military establishment out of its defensive crouch, but I doubt it.

I have fewer doubts about him achieving another of his big objectives: caring for today’s service members not only when they are in uniform, but also afterward.

“I have very comfortable quarters near the State Department,” Mullen told me, his voice rising with passion. “I look out and see homeless men and women lying in the street. I realize I served with some of them in Vietnam. We cannot let this happen again to the men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m paranoid about this.” As chairman, he has publicly vowed to focus on the needs of the wounded and on the mental health problems of present and former soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.

Mullen is a sailor who never expected to rise to the military’s top job. But now that he has it, he strikes me as a skipper who is not afraid of rough water ahead.