required some period of duty with a different service or with a joint (i.e.,
multiservice) command.This had strong and immediate effects, loosening the
loyalties of senior officers to their separate services and causing them to think
more broadly about the military establishment as a whole.
president.The Goldwater-Nichols example is seen by some as having lessons
applicable to lessening competition and increasing cooperation in other parts
of the federal bureaucracy, particularly the law enforcement and intelligence
communities.
and unified commands outside of Washington, especially those for Strategic
Forces and for four regions: Europe, the Pacific, the Center, and the South. Posts
in these commands became prized assignments for ambitious officers, and the
voices of their five commanders in chief became as influential as those of the
service chiefs.
The Pentagon first became concerned about terrorism as a result of hostage
taking in the 1970s. In June 1976, Palestinian terrorists seized an Air France
plane and landed it at Entebbe in Uganda, holding 105 Israelis and other Jews
as hostages. A special Israeli commando force stormed the plane, killed all the
terrorists, and rescued all but one of the hostages. In October 1977, a West Ger-
man special force dealt similarly with a Lufthansa plane sitting on a tarmac in
Mogadishu: every terrorist was killed, and every hostage brought back safely.
The White House, members of Congress, and the news media asked the Pen-
tagon whether the United States was prepared for similar action.The answer
was no. The Army immediately set about creating the Delta Force, one of
whose missions was hostage rescue.
to a site known as Desert One, some 200 miles southeast of Tehran, to ren-
dezvous with Air Force planes carrying Delta Force commandos and fresh fuel.
Mild sandstorms disabled three of the helicopters, and the commander ordered
the mission aborted. But foul-ups on the ground resulted in the loss of eight
aircraft, five airmen, and three marines. Remembered as "Desert One," this fail-
ure remained vivid for members of the armed forces. It also contributed to the
later Goldwater-Nichols reforms.
cited by jihadists as evidence of U.S. weakness. A detailed investigation pro-
duced a list of new procedures that would become customary for forces