The purpose of the Defense Budget Process is to produce a force structure to support national security policy. To accomplish this task, the Department of Defense has designed a system built around planning, programming and budgeting and zero based budgeting. However, while these two systems help to marry policy and force structure, for several interrelated reasons the fit is far from perfect. These reasons include: resource constraints; inadequate guidance; length of the budget process; the size scope, controllability and impact of the defense budget; inadequate decision making methodology; past decisions; and domestic political constituencies. Copyright © 1979, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved
