US Defense: Some Intriguing Historical Info
The United States Department of Defense (DoD) is the federal department which deals with coordinating and supervising all agencies directly involved with national security and military affairs. The DoD is one of the most important tenants at The Pentagon and is made of three chief sub-departments, the Department of the Army, the Department of the Air Forceand the Department of the Navy.
Alternative DOD groups include the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the Missile Defense Agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the infamous National Security Agency (NSA).
In terms of the department’s history, it was set up based on some specific plans drawn up by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and 19 December 1945, President Harry S. Truman proposed the creation of a new unified Department of National Defense. The plan was debated over and was not made law until 1947.
On July 26, 1947, Truman passed the National Security Act of 1947 which set up the National Military Establishment which began active operations in September, 1947. The Establishment had the ill-fated abbreviation NME which resembles ‘enemy’ and it was, in 1949, dubbed the DoD.
Until the creation of the DoD, US armed forces were separated into varied departments which lacked any real central authority. The Marines remained as a separate service under the Naval Department while the Coast Guard remained under the auspices of the Treasury Department.
The Department of Defense’s budget was about 7 billion in 2007 though this figure does not include tens of billions more in spent on ‘supplementary’ things like nuclear weapons tests.
The Department has authority over the Coast Guard in wartime. According to the US Code, the Coast Guard is always considered one of the five branches of the US armed services. During times of declared war the Coast Guard operates as a part of the Navy even though the Coast Guard has not been under the full control of Navy since World War 2.
The official command structure of the DoD is defined by the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, made law by President Ronald Reagan in October, 1986. The Act changed the chain of command of the US military and it introduced the most significant changes to the Department since it was established.
Under the Act, the chain of command passes from the US President, through the Secretary of Defense, to the commanders of all military forces (COCOM). The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is mainly responsible for readiness of the US military and behaves as the President’s chief military adviser while remaining outside of the chain of command.