June 26, 2009 -- The Defense Department is drawing up the first round of "insights" from the Quadrennial Defense Review that are being translated by the Office of the Secretary of Defense into new guidance for the military services to adjust their weapon system investments in fiscal year 2011 and beyond.
Pentagon sources say these “early insights” from QDR tabletop exercises and analysis will both frame questions for senior leaders to consider as the congressionally mandated assessment continues into the autumn as well as spin off clear directives this summer for the military services to revise their FY-11 to FY-15 investment blueprints.
“They're writing planning guidance right now,” said a Pentagon official involved in the review. “They're trying to publish something to help the services refine their [FY-11 to FY-15 investment] programs by mid-July, maybe sooner.”
Pentagon officials in the office of the under secretary of defense for policy leading the QDR have promised by July to begin providing “recommendations for balance and divestment across the defense program.”
The five groups guiding the QDR are forming early insights for rebalancing U.S. military activities across different areas: irregular warfare; high-end asymmetric operations; military support to civilian agencies in domestic and foreign operations; shifting global posture; and so-called “cost drivers” -- elements of the Pentagon's budget which Defense Department leaders effectively do not control, such as health care costs.
A key issue in the forthcoming planning guidance will be how these insights are translated into changes in weapon system investment plans and how the services structure their forces, Pentagon officials said.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who in January promised the FY-11 budget would include “dramatic” changes to the Pentagon's investment accounts, continues to explain the overarching aims of his efforts to reshape the U.S. military.
Speaking to reporters on June 18 -- the first day of a two-day meeting with all of the U.S. military's brass to review the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and discuss progress on the QDR -- Gates said he is effectively looking to make changes on the margins of the Pentagon's investment accounts.
“What I am trying to do is simply get a place at the table, when resources are passed out, for those who are fighting today's wars, and to institutionalize what we've learned about counterinsurgency, so that we don't forget it like we did after Vietnam,” Gates said.
The defense secretary also took issue with the notion that his effort to reshape U.S. military forces would gut investments in the bulk of weapon programs that constitute current U.S. military inventories.
“So this notion that I'm tilting the scale dramatically against conventional capabilities, in order to fight irregular or whatever, asymmetric wars or whatever you want to call it, is just not accurate,” Gates said.
The types of challenges the U.S. military must be prepared to face are nuanced and not easily compartmentalized, he said.
“Conflict in the future,” Gates said, “will slide up and down a scale, both in scope or scale and in lethality. And we have to procure the kinds of things that give us -- the kinds of equipment and weapons that give us the maximum flexibility, across the widest range of that spectrum of conflict.”
The defense secretary added: “It's the versatility of our force and our ability to be able to respond, to a wide range of conflict, that ... I think is important, in trying to build the programs for this department, for the future. But there is a huge investment in trying to protect our technological edge for the future.” -- Jason Sherman
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