Claim: Interservice rivalry hurts U.S.

WASHINGTON, June 20 (UPI) -- Interservice rivalries remain costly and damaging to the U.S. armed forces and need to be ended, a presidential candidate said Wednesday.

Many of the "roles and missions of the services have become blurred to a degree that not only results in inefficiencies and duplication, but also hampers jointness. If the roles and missions are not clear, then it becomes nearly impossible to determine requirements for capabilities," Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., the ranking Republican on the U.S. House Armed Services Committee and a conservative candidate for the GOP's presidential nomination, said in a statement

This confusion "tends to cause the services to think in terms of competing for funding for a program they would really like to have, rather than trusting on their sister service to bring the needed capability to the fight," Hunter said. "In a fiscally constrained environment, we simply cannot afford to have each service equipped for every mission of the (Defense) Department.

"I believe there is little disagreement that these challenges are real and that corrective actions are needed," he said.

"There have been a number of studies, internal and external to the Department of Defense, that have looked at these issues," Hunter said.

"The deputy secretary of defense, at Congress' request, chartered the Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment project, which also reported several recommendations in this area," he said. "The department's own Defense Science Board in its summer study on transformation made key findings regarding roles, missions, and the requirements process.

"Each has agreed on the problem. However, each has offered different recommendations on how to respond," Hunter said.

The complex interservice requirements of fighting the guerrilla conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have added to the pressures on the Pentagon to develop more effective and economical programs for inter-service cooperation.