Talk:Goldwater–Nichols Act

Iranian hostage crisis

just wondering how the goldwater-nichols act and lack thereof can be correlated with the Iranian hostage crisis.

This is off the top of my head, so check out Desert One. The mission failed due to a gross lacking of coordianation. The mission used extensive assets from every agency, Army SF, USAF Air Commandos & SpecOps Wing, Navy Carrier group, and Marine Aviators. Almost none of these units were able to train together, they had incomplete objective briefings, and many units lacked mission critical skills, ie SOLL-II capabilities. These planning failures directly contributed to the fatal crash that forced the mission abort.

Neutrality

The legislation was ostensibly addressing real problems and may have improved a situation with regard to chain-of-command issues, but this is a matter of point of view. The article should state the facts of the legislation and, if significant, refer to controversies about the legislation that may have arisen. The present tone is very pro-Goldwater-Nichols Act, saying basically "thank goodness for this legislation; the military is much more efficient now!" That may be your point of view, but others might see in this legislation an early volley in the Right's struggle to concentrate power in the Office of the President, so starkly obvious in the current White House. Masarra 20:23, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Huh? The President has always had control of the Military, this simply streamlined the command of military forces. Previously command went from the President to the JCS to each services local commander, and then to the unit commanders in the field. Now command goes from NCA to the Regional commander, then the Commander of each force component (Air Forces, Land Forces, and Navel Forces), and finally on to the unit commanders. There is little change in the position of the President in this equation. also Goldwater-Nichols received almost no opposition in either house of Congress (including the House where Democrats had firm control). PPGMD 16:37, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Goldwater-Nichols really hasn't anything to do with the presidential powers over the military per se (as that authority is already covered in the Constitution), but it represents a shift in formal powers within the Department of Defense, below the Secretary of Defense: from the military departments/services to the commanders of the combatant commands. RicJac (talk) 02:38, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I believe that the comments about removing Service Chiefs from the Chain of Command is misleading in that the Service Chiefs, as Service Chiefs, had not been in the chain of command since the Eisenhower reforms of the late 1950s. Fern Street (talk) 03:22, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes and No. While the 1958 act did remove the service chiefs from the "operational chain of command", there remained contradictory provisions regarding the JCS as a collegial body, and also with respect to the administrative control of deployed service forces, which at the time made combatant commanders almost powerless in relation to the service chiefs. The title 10 authorities to "organize, train and equip" formally resides with the service secretaries, not with the service chiefs. RicJac (talk) 02:38, 30 January 2013 (UTC)