May 20, 2009 -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his deputy, William Lynn, are "very engaged" in guiding the Quadrennial Defense Review, a change from previous assessments that were "bottom-up staff exercises," the Pentagon's No. 3 official said today.
That dynamic, according to the under secretary of defense for policy, is expected to ensure forthcoming recommendations on altering weapon systems investment decisions endure.
Michèle Flournoy, a key player in the QDR, told defense reporters the sweeping assessment of the U.S. military enterprise will by summer's end lead to a new round of decisions about what ships, aircraft and ground vehicle programs can be purged from the modernization portfolio in order to increase spending on irregular warfare capabilities and efforts to deal with high-end asymmetric threats.
“To the extent we want to get out of the review insights that help frame and guide decision-making for the program in FY-11, we're aiming to have those insights by the summer time frame so that we can influence the program review,” Flournoy said.
The hands-on role being played by top Pentagon leaders, she added, “will make a difference in terms of making the results stick.”
The QDR, a congressionally mandated assessment that includes a review of force structure, strategy and equipment, recently kicked off with guidance from Gates to consider how the military might “rebalance” its capabilities to deal with an increasingly complex set of national security challenges. These include not only traditional military allies and terrorist groups, but forces like climate change and the global financial crisis.
“This QDR is going to continue the process of rebalancing that secretary Gates has begun in the FY-10 budget,”she said. “But I can't give you a sense of magnitude because we don't have the answers yet.”
Last month, Gates directed the formation of a QDR Red Team to provide an alternative to the assessment Flournoy and her office are leading. The Red Team is being led by Andrew Marshall, director of the Office of Net Assessment, and Gen. James Mattis, commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command, with participation from experts outside the government.
“The primary purpose of this Red Team effort is to introduce a different range of scenarios, some of which actually are very high-end and very intensive, and they are beyond the scenario set that has been developed inside the [Pentagon],” she said.
The scenarios, she said, are an “important tool, but only one tool in the analysis in the QDR,” Flournoy said. These scenarios “don't determine outcomes, they don't dictate decisions,” she added. “But they will help frame some of the issues that we want to look at more closely with further analysis.”
Flournoy said that an internal assessment of previous QDRs found that having a red team was beneficial in many ways, one of which is it provides an avenue for nongovernmental officials to participate.
“There are some incredibly knowledgeable thoughtful people in the think-tank world, in academia, former government officials,” she said. “So we just want to have a mechanism to bring them into the process and benefit from their wisdom and insights. It is a way to open up the process and to find expertise wherever it resides.”
Through the QDR, the Pentagon is also revising its Force Planning Construct, which since the fall of the Berlin Wall has been designed around preparing to fight two major wars.
“Reality shows that we have to be able to do multiple things,” she said. “We're trying to capture [in an updated force planning construct] not just how many things, but the diverse range of the kinds of challenges that we may be called on to deal with.” -- Jason Sherman