Inside the Pentagon
Classified strategic guidance issued by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to usher in high-stakes budget decisions includes a new “hypothesis” for how to best size the military, Inside the Pentagon has learned.
Gates signed the update to the Guidance for the Development of the Force July 30, according to Geoff Morrell, the defense secretary’s spokesman. And Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Almarah Belk confirmed the update “sets forth a force-sizing hypothesis that the department will test and refine through the fall.”
The update to the GDF -- part of the Quadrennial Defense Review -- marks a key milestone in Gates’ efforts to institutionalize low-end warfare capabilities and rebalance the force to address increasingly complex threats. It could result in the services shifting as much as $60 billion over the coming years to address key gaps, a widely reported number that a Pentagon official tells ITP does not appear in the guidance itself. That figure is based on draft proposals that did not make it into the final version.
DOD policy chief Michèle Flournoy predicted earlier this year that a new force-sizing and shaping construct would be one of the “main products of the QDR.”
Belk, however, declined to comment on how the new force-sizing construct differs from the current focus on two major combat operations.
“We anticipate an unclassified version of the final force-sizing and planning construct will be included in the final QDR report to Congress,” Belk said.
But a Pentagon official told ITP early last month the new approach would for the first time move beyond the two-major-combat-operations construct and outline specifics about a number of contingencies, abroad and at home, for which U.S. forces must be properly sized and shaped. The new approach would include more language on intensity and duration than previous force-planning constructs, the official predicted. The overall framework in the signed GDF is to prevail in ongoing conflicts; prevent and deter; prepare for contingencies; and preserve and enhance the force, the official said this week.
However, another Pentagon official predicted this week that the force structure -- the numbers, size, and composition of the units that comprise U.S. forces -- will not change much.
“The spin or the rhetoric . . . will change a lot but the underlying force structure is probably not going to change a lot because the strategic position of the country hasn’t changed very much,” the official said. “So you wouldn’t expect a big change.” If the United States gets into a war, it still must be able to deter another war from breaking out, the official said.
“Now you can decide how you’re going label that,” the official said. “You can decide what you need to deter the second one. There are things you can change at the margins. But the fundamental posture isn’t going to change that much.”
David Ochmanek, who led the drafting of the guidance as deputy assistant secretary of defense for force development, noted last week at a breakfast with reporters in Washington that the Pentagon must preserve the capability to concurrently fight two wars or handle multiple engagements.
Concerns about the need for deterrence, lots of engagement and homeland defense are not new, but in past practice all the focus went to the two big wars, the Pentagon official told ITP this week, noting Gates is expected to break with that past by making a senior-level decision about what demand signal U.S. forces should meet under various conditions.
Even with the release of the GDF, though, this remains “a little complicated” with a “lot of moving parts,” the official said, noting the guidance essentially says the Pentagon’s policy shop will supply more details for Gates’ approval in August.
Following the QDR the GDF will be updated more extensively, according to Amanda Dory, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy. Dory told ITP in a July 13 interview that the GDF interim update -- as well as a “full-up” version of the GDF expected on the “back end” of the QDR -- would be “comprehensive in nature, in terms of all the different capability sets.”
Dory said the guidance would address all the issue areas in the QDR terms of reference, including capabilities tied to high-end asymmetric threats, irregular warfare and defense support to civil authorities. Also included would be guidance on force posture, she said. Force planning identifies the full range of missions DOD is expected to do and force sizing focuses on which missions will size the force.
Ochmanek told reporters July 28 that the QDR calls for the department to shift $50 billion to $60 billion across the future years defense plan to address identified gaps.
But a Pentagon official told ITP this week the GDF does not specify how much money to shift. The dollar range cited by Ochmanek is from an estimate developed by the cost assessment and program evaluation (CA&PE) shop for a set of specific programmatic recommendations that the Pentagon’s policy shop developed earlier this year and sought unsuccessfully to include in the GDF.
How far the department moves toward doing what the GDF directs will depend on routine competition for resources within DOD, the official said, noting it will likely cost roughly $60 billion, but not necessarily over five years -- depending on the availability of resources it might, for example, take longer, or a couple of items might not be funded.
Inside the Pentagon reported July 9 that debate within the Office of the Secretary of Defense led those spearheading the QDR to delete a myriad of programmatic recommendations from the guidance. The debate was about the degree to which OSD’s QDR shop should tell the services to fund specific initiatives or instead simply outline broad goals with negotiable suggestions about how to implement them.
“The specifics are gone,” the official said this week. “If anything, the final edit took even more of them out.”
Because Gates issued the guidance without the specifics, he did not personally sign up to a $60 billion bill, the official said. And Ochmanek acknowledged the services have flexibility in making trade-offs to respond to the guidance.
“The secretary made a deliberate choice in the QDR that the components” -- the services and the defense agencies -- “would have the first right of refusal, the first opportunity to make those trade-offs,” he told reporters. He said the armed services will adjust their investment plans for the coming years, which will require changes but not dramatic upheaval.
About half of the $60 billion is for just a handful of the specific initiatives mulled by the policy shop, the official told ITP. For instance, if the Army is going to convert armored divisions to Stryker brigades it has to buy a lot of Strykers, the official said, noting that is one of the costly initiatives advocated by the policy shop. Efforts like that might not proceed as aggressively as other initiatives, the official noted.
Irregular warfare capabilities are manpower-intensive, while capabilities that address anti-access challenges are capital-intensive, Ochmanek noted.
“The Army is being asked to do a number of things, mostly to enhance the availability of key enablers to special operations and general-purpose forces doing counterinsurgency and counterterrorist operations,” he said. “The Air Force and Navy are being asked to do some of that but at the same time to enhance their capabilities to confront and defeat high-end anti-access threats.”
A Pentagon official told ITP there has been debate about how much Army support structure, including aviation and logistics, should accompany U.S. Special Operations Command’s forces in various circumstances. The discussion is not about whether the Army should provide support, the official added, but rather how it should be done, including whether a dedicated Army unit is needed or if the service can provide the support by taking it out of hide.
The services are due to submit their fiscal year 2011 budget plans to the Office of the Secretary of Defense by Aug. 14. In theory the submissions will follow the GDF, the official said, but in practice they probably will not because the services do not have much time to make adjustments.
The program review, which includes representation from the policy shop, will evaluate to what degree the services are following the guidance. Officials will weigh how much they can afford to do with the resources they have. Program terminations on the order of what was proposed in the FY-10 budget cycle are unlikely, said the official, noting the low-hanging fruit has been “shot.”
InsideDefense.com reported Aug. 4 the Pentagon had established 18 new teams to scrub everything from weapon-system investment plans to the U.S. military’s vision for positioning forces around the world in the QDR’s second phase. (See related story.)
Separately, the QDR working groups will continue to work on non-programmatic issues such as interagency cooperation, organizational issues, authorities or changes in law that DOD plans to seek from Congress, and the writing of the official QDR report. (See related story.)
U.S. Pacific Command chief Adm. Timothy Keating, meanwhile, has continued to praise the QDR process for addressing the needs of the combatant commanders, noting this ensures COCOM priorities are integrated into the department’s overall strategy.
“I would hope that everyone would be assured that combatant commanders have a significant input to the Quadrennial Defense Review process under Secretary Gates’ leadership,” he told reporters last week at a briefing. -- Christopher J. Castelli
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