Abstract:
Today's Navy is the product of the myriad decisions made over the last fifty years by leaders inside the Navy headquarters, the Pentagon, White House and the Congress. Over the last quarter of a century the number of combatant ships in the US Navy has declined and the cost of buying and operating them has nearly doubled in inflation adjusted dollars. This result has occurred even though no Navy official has ever expressed a desire for this particular outcome. The purpose of this study was to learn whether this outcome could be explained by understanding the ways that the senior leaders in the Navy headquarters interact and participate in the Programming, Planning, Budgeting and Execution System (PPBES).
