WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- The U.S. Defense Department's Office of Force Transformation will close as part of the reorganization of DOD's policy office.
Eric Edelman, undersecretary of Defense for policy, announced the move during an Aug. 28 media roundtable, Federal Computer Week reported Tuesday. "What used to be the Office of Force Transformation, different parts of it are going to different places," he said.
No single office will replace it, he added.
Opened in 2001, OFT was an initiative Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld led personally, and he intended it to be an agent for entrepreneurial and experimental thinking in defense policy and technology.
The first and only director of OFT was retired Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski. Cebrowski was a vocal advocate of Rumsfeld's vision of a leaner, lighter, more agile force for the 21st century. Cebrowski died last November.
Terry Pudas has been OFT's acting director since then, but DOD did not choose a new permanent leader. Experts said OFT was dependent on Cebrowski's vision and energy, FCW reported.
"What it says to me is that there was nobody like Adm. Cebrowski," Philip Coyle, senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information, told FCW. "He was the power, motivation and inspiration behind that office."
Cebrowski is often credited with crafting the term network-centric warfare, and OFT concentrated on coordinating network-centric operations inside DOD. He often emphasized the importance of connectivity to the warfighter in battle, Coyle said.
Faster-moving forces depend on getting information to the battlefield and pushing it down to the lower levels. But during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, communications systems could not keep up with the moving units, Coyle said. "That was the kind of thing Cebrowski lamented and wanted to change," he added.
