Requirement dates back to FY-07
Inside the Pentagon
The Pentagon is due soon to name an independent panel to assess the Quadrennial Defense Review, but pending legislation could have big implications for the effort.
The Fiscal Year 2007 Defense Authorization Act directed the Defense Department to establish the panel not later than six months before the submission of the Quadrennial Defense Review report to Congress, which essentially means Defense Secretary Robert Gates must act this month.
The ongoing QDR is the first since the call for the new panel became law.
Not later than three months after the QDR is submitted to Congress, the independent panel is due to submit to lawmakers an assessment of the QDR’s recommendations and stated and implied assumptions, as well as the vulnerabilities of the strategy and force structure underlying the QDR.
The panel’s assessment must include analyses of the trends, asymmetries, and concepts of operations that characterize the military balance with potential adversaries, focusing on the strategic approaches of possible opposing forces, the law states.
But differences between the House and Senate Armed Services committees’ versions of the FY-10 defense authorization bill could alter the playing field somewhat. This fall House and Senate authorization conferees will mull a House provision that would establish a separate National Defense Panel to review the QDR, as well as Senate language that would let lawmakers add personnel to the panel called for in the FY-07 legislation.
The Senate bill, which notes the panel is slated to include 12 members equally divided on a bipartisan basis, would add eight more members appointed by lawmakers: two from the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, two from that committee’s ranking member, two from the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and two from that panel’s ranking member.
The Senate bill also says the panel will conduct an independent assessment of a variety of possible force structures of the armed forces, including the force structure identified in the report of the 2009 QDR, and make any recommendations it deems appropriate.
The House legislation would create a 12-member bipartisan and independent panel to review the National Defense Strategy, the National Military Strategy, the defense secretary’s terms of reference for the QDR and any other materials providing the basis for, or substantial inputs to, the review. It would also conduct an assessment of the assumptions, strategy, findings, costs and risks of the report of the QDR. And it would require that panel provide its recommendations and findings to Congress and the defense secretary in at least two interim reports as well as in a final report due by Feb. 15, 2011.
Despite their differences, the House and Senate provisions both aim to ensure there is an independent review of the QDR by a panel not solely selected by DOD. It is unlikely conferees will adopt both provisions, but at this point the way forward remains undecided, a congressional source said. With Congress on recess until early September, the conference process might not be resolved until the start of October, the source noted. That could pose a challenge for DOD because it means questions about how Congress might change the law will still be unresolved when Gates confronts the deadline set in the FY-07 legislation, the source said.
Earlier this year, Gates created a “red team” led by Andrew Marshall, the head of the Pentagon’s net assessment office, with assistance from U.S. Joint Forces Command chief Gen. James Mattis. But a Pentagon source told Inside the Pentagon the panel called for in the FY-07 law cannot have any government or military people on it, so the red team and panel need to be two separate things entirely. -- Christopher J. Castelli
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