Ash Carter this week will succeed Chuck Hagel as America’s new defense secretary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carter has spent a lifetime preparing for the job, and the past two months getting back up to speed before returning to a Pentagon and a senior leadership team he knows well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But with less than two years in office before the next presidential administration, he’s got to move fast and use his formidable intellect, insight, management skill and political savvy to both drive defense reforms and address a daunting range of global security crises, including fighting the Islamic State group, countering Russian aggression and adding muscle to Pacific pivot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He’s got a strong deputy, capable undersecretaries, seasoned service secretaries and sound uniformed leaders at DoD to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And he has built an enormous reservoir of goodwill and trust with lawmakers, which is absolutely critical to ensuring success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the first time in a generation, there is an overwhelming consensus that the Pentagon must change if it is to remain ahead of emerging threats and conquer organizational inefficiencies that sap resources and agility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New priorities must be set, bases must be closed, personnel cut, organizations revamped, and new weapons and strategies must be developed, which will need support from Congress, DoD and industry to realize. Meanwhile, a new generation of senior military leaders must be chosen, including a new chairman, vice chairman and service chiefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There will be an overwhelming temptation to fix everything that needs fixing at DoD, but it will be wiser to focus on a handful of key priorities that will deliver lasting results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ash Carter this week will succeed Chuck Hagel as America’s new defense secretary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":84143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":68,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[66,33,68,17],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1929],"class_list":["post-44271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-home","category-intercepts","category-opinion"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"75BQ22MITNG2JKLZNVTCRO7IU4","arc_canonical_url":"\/opinion\/intercepts\/2015\/02\/16\/editorial-ash-carter-s-focus\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n