In all the festering about sequestering, one thing sticks out like a sore thumb: the Navy's decision not to deploy a second carrier to the Gulf -- a decision it is blaming on sequester.

All the other possible disruptions make sense: Civilians could see a part-time furlough, term employees might not get renewed, services contractors might be put off. But the decision to keep the USS Harry S. Truman in dock is odd.

Yes, the costs of running the Truman are part of the Navy's $59 billion operating budget, and it is operating budgets that are targeted in sequester. But that is the biggest part of the Navy budget and, by the way, the most flexible target for sequester. Defense officials have room to move funds at will in that account, even under sequester.

So why that carrier, why two days before it was due to deploy? The Navy could have kept other, less visible ships at home -- like the littoral combat ship Freedom, sailing now to much-threatened Singapore. It could have lowered readiness requirements for other parts of the fleet, or stood down a training cycle.

Rear Adm. John Kirby put it this way: "Could money have been found somewhere, anywhere, to pay for the Truman's deployment? Maybe. But without the ability to transfer money from other accounts, there aren't many places from which we could have taken it without a greater cost to readiness elsewhere."

That is nonsense. The Navy does have the flexibility Adm. Kirby says they lack -- the whole operations account is trade space under sequester. And what cost to readiness where? The Navy doesn't tell us what the cancellation of this deployment allows it to protect.

It seems likely that given overall operating tempo for carriers (one at sea, two in port), deploying two was going to stress the fleet, anyway. And the requirement for two carriers in the Gulf was, and should be, subject to review, sequester or not. So maybe the timing was just serendipitous. We were going to go to one carrier anyway, and with sequestyria the order of the day, what the heck, why not offer it up now?

The Navy could have made other choices, as Adm. Kirby acknowledges. But this one was going to get attention.

The Pentagon does it best. They are "best practice" in federal agency planning and budgeting. And they are world class in public relations. We are getting a bit of both these days. And it is striking that by-and-large, while the planning continues, as it should, the cries of pain are not getting much traction.

Planning first. I have said before that it is high time the Pentagon began to roll out its formidable capacity to plan and get down to work, not only about sequester, but about the underlying reality that we are in a defense draw-down. The five-sided building needs to forget the rhetoric about the Panetta plan and the $487 billion "already cut" (which was not a real cut, just a flattening of the budget so it is projected to grow with inflation), and start taking a good look at the options and choices we face over the next decade when the budget will actually be cut. I expect the budget to go somewhere between $500 billion and $1 trillion below the currently projected aggregate over the next decade; this would be consistent with prior draw-downs.

The Pentagon is not quite on board with this, in planning terms, but it is getting close. The new Quadrennial Defense Review is just starting to gear up. Incoming Secretary Hagel would do well to put a strategic red team together to draw up both budget options and an outline of questions for strategy, forces, procurement, and operations, for each of those budgetary options. Will he? That remains to be seen, because the services are too good at gaming such a set of options by putting the highest priorities on the table to be cut, which stops options in their tracks.

Meanwhile, the planners are stepping out on the near-term agenda. Every service chief has submitted a memo, following Deputy Secretary Ash Carter's memo of early January, as part of the effort to put together a plan, by the end of this week, about how they would manage if a sequester happens and/or if the budget this year stays at FY 2012 levels.

They are going to need those plans, even if there is no sequester, because the plans focus on the key part of the defense budget. Operations are the problem; they have always been a significant management problem for DOD. Nobody seems to be able to figure out exactly how the money is spent on operations and what we get for it.

So that's the right target. And the categories the chiefs worry about are the right ones in a draw-down. How fast do we repair equipment in military depots? What is the pace of travel and orders for the small stuff -- from pencils to computers? What is the intensity of the training cycle, now that the wars are ended/ending? How much priority should we put on support to the field? How many temporary contractor employees to we have, do we need, do we want? How many civil servants? How many bureaucrats in uniform running the back office?

Now, of course, the chiefs cannot resist what must seem to be an opportunity in this management dilemma -- an opportunity to stop sequester, spare defense, and reverse the tide. So the sensible planning is accompanied by painful cries. Rhetoric about a readiness crisis, being on the brink of hollowness, breaking the force, endangering our national security.

They don't need that; they don't need it because is it not true. We have never spent so much on defense. Our military readiness is at heights unreached at the start of any previous draw-down, in the active force and the reserves. Our operations budgets are unprecedentedly high, both in constant dollars and per soldier. The troops have never been as well trained, exercised, and experienced. U.S. global capabilities far surpass any other country.

Yes, there are many management issues at DOD; there are in every government agency. There are problems with the high costs for programs that were promised for less; problems with pay and benefits nobody can touch; health care costs that grow for defense as they do everywhere else, and problems holding down the growth of the Pentagon's large back office. And, yes, sequester is an ugly way to approach a budgetary draw-down, though DOD is better protected than most.

The challenge today is not to "save the defense budget." It is to "manage a draw down." On Thursday the Senate Armed Services Committee will grill the putative next secretary. The focus of that questioning should be less on such irrelevant issues as Israel, Iran, and gays. It should be on how Sen. Hagel intends to manage the department's adjustment to post-war budgetary realities and how he will focus the chiefs on the job they can and should do, without the rhetoric.