Leadership: August 7, 2002

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President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld came into office with promises to rebuild and modernize the military, and warnings that this would be a painful process. Rumsfeld's reforms ran head-on into the uniformed military establishment and all but disappeared, even before the War on Terror began. But now, Rumsfeld is working on the 2004 budget and is determined to find a revolutionary change in the way the military does business. Some of his leaked ideas (which may be more threats for purposes of getting the military to agree to less-radical ideas) include disbanding one of the Army's Divisions, cutting the F-22 program to only 150 planes, canceling the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter, killing the V-22 Osprey, and even (horrors!) taking the Marine Corps out of the fixed-wing aviation business and transferring all of their planes (and most of their fixed-wing pilots) to the Navy. --Stephen V Cole