Inside Pentagon
Pentagon leaders are defending the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, punching back at critics who assert the department’s report downplays the requirements for deterring and defeating other countries in high-end war.
Rep. Howard McKeon (R-CA), the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, confronted Defense Secretary Robert Gates with such criticism in a hearing yesterday.
“In my view the QDR understates the requirements to deter and defeat challenges from state actors and it overestimates the capabilities of the force the department would build,” he said. “This QDR does an excellent job of delineating the threat posed by those with anti-access capabilities -- notably China -- but does little to address the risk resulting from the gaps in funding, capability and force structure.”
Gates pushed back hard against the criticism.
“I would take the strongest possible issue with those who say we are neglecting the potential future fight or the capabilities needed to take on high end adversaries,” Gates said. “The reality is in this budget, half the procurement budget is going for systems that are purely associated with modernization of conventional capabilities, about 7 percent for, if you will, the fights we’re in, and about 43 percent for dual-purpose capabilities -- C-17s, and other capabilities that will be used no matter what kind of fight we’re in.”
The Pentagon budget is modernizing conventional capabilities, he said, ticking off examples such as long-range strike, prompt-global strike, a new bomber, new nuclear ballistic missile submarines, attack submarines, Army vehicles and cyber systems. Even with the restructured Joint Strike Fighter program, the Pentagon will be way ahead of the Chinese and Russian militaries in terms of acquiring fifth-generation fighter aircraft, Gates said.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen agreed. While the QDR stresses winning today’s wars it also advocates a significant investment in the future, he said, citing capabilities such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; rotary-wing aircraft and special forces. While the Pentagon is rebalancing its capabilities, by no means has the pendulum swung too far away from preparing for conventional war, he said.
At the Council on Foreign Relations on Tuesday, Pentagon policy chief Michèle Flournoy noted the QDR puts particular emphasis on high-end asymmetric threats.
“How could very powerful state adversaries, often rising regional powers, use their sophisticated technologies and forces to actually counter U.S. interests?” she said. “And so, along with investments in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism capabilities, for example, you’ll see targeted investments in capabilities that are related to deterring and defeating aggression in anti-access environments -- so, for example, modernizing long-range strike capabilities.”
Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks defended the QDR yesterday in a teleconference with bloggers. The QDR explicitly spends a lot of time and energy on long-term threats, including the high-end threat area, which DOD generally talks about in terms of anti-access, area denial and the limitations it may present to U.S. power projection capabilities, she said.
Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday morning that the Air Force might not field its Next-Generation Bomber until the 2020s. At yesterday’s House hearing, Gates stressed the QDR and the budget provide for a family of long range strike initiatives. He noted DOD must grapple with substantial questions.
“Should it be standoff or attack?” he said. “Should it be manned or remotely piloted? So there are some fairly fundamental issues. We have money in the budget, as we mentioned earlier, for both B-2 and B-52 modernization, and so, we’re looking at something that will be in our inventory until 2060 or 2070 and so, and based on the life of the B- 52, it may be there until 2100. But all kidding aside, I think that the key is trying to figure out what the right technologies are for the future. We have put money, we worked with this committee in particular to put money in the budget, to sustain the technology base in industry, in terms of materials and so on, so that we will still have those choices.”
At yesterday’s hearing, Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) asked the witnesses about the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program. The system, made by General Dynamics, came under heavy scrutiny during the QDR. Ultimately, though, the department opted not to kill the program but rather to delay the low-rate production decision by a year (Inside the Pentagon, Jan. 7, p1). The fate of the program depends on how prototypes perform in upcoming tests.
Mullen endorsed the need for some kind of forcible entry capability to carry Marines ashore. But he noted the EFV program’s costs have “exploded” over the years, signaling a waning appetite to invest further in the troubled effort.
“What’s the vehicle? EFV is it right now, and it’s in the program,” he said. “But I also think there are limits about how much money we can spend there. [Marine Commandant] Gen. [James] Conway wants to get to a point, post- Afghanistan, if you will, where the Marine Corps is a lot lighter. It has gotten a lot heavier. So there’s a lot of work to do about what the future of the Marine Corps looks like, specifically not just tied to one vehicle or one shipyard.”
The final version of the long-anticipated QDR shakes up budget plans to fix military capability gaps, outlines a new force-planning construct and downplays an earlier draft’s language on China as a potential enemy.
The QDR, the culmination of a year’s work, is an important step toward “fully institutionalizing the ongoing reform” at the Pentagon and reshaping the military to meet the “urgent demands of today and the most likely and lethal threats of the future,” Gates writes in a letter introducing the report. InsideDefense.com obtained an advance copy of the final QDR report prior to its official release Feb. 1.
“To meet the potential threats to our military’s ability to project power, deter aggression, and come to the aid of allies and partners, this QDR directs more focus and investment in a new air-sea battle concept, long-range strike, space and cyberspace, among other conventional and strategic modernization programs,” Gates writes in the cover letter, which was not included in an earlier, much-publicized draft.
The assessment leading up to the report uncovered “a significant number of possible shortfalls in the capabilities and capacity of programmed U.S. forces,” the document states. “In some cases, opportunities exist to remedy these shortfalls by investing in new systems or additional force structure. In other cases, no readily available solutions are at hand but greater investments in research and development or concept exploration are warranted.”
Many of these enhancements will be costly, according to the QDR, which describes some of the tradeoffs that Defense Department leaders identified to rebalance the military’s capabilities. These include the previously reported decisions to halt production of the Air Force’s C-17 aircraft, delay development of new Navy command ships and terminate the Navy’s CG(X) cruiser program as well as the Pentagon’s Net Enabled Command and Control program.
“More such tradeoffs could be necessary in the future,” the report adds.
“The QDR concluded that the U.S. military must balance resources and risk among four major objectives,” Gates told reporters Feb. 1. “The first is to prevail in today’s wars -- the first time this objective has appeared in a QDR. Achieving our objectives in Afghanistan and Iraq has moved to the top of the institutional military’s budgeting, policy and program priorities. We now recognize that America’s ability to deal with threats for years to come will depend importantly on our success in the current conflicts.”
The second major objective, he said, is to prevent and deter conflict by better employing and integrating all elements of national power and international cooperation, and should those fail, by possessing superior military capabilities and the means and will to use them.
In addition, DOD must prepare for a wide range of contingencies, including the disruptive, high-tech capabilities being developed by other nations, he said.
The fourth major objective is to preserve and enhance the all-volunteer force, he added.
The final report differs in key ways from the Dec. 3, 2009, draft prepared before Gates and other senior officials provided their input. In the section on a new force-planning construct aimed at addressing a wider range of potential challenges, an added phrase -- “including two capable nation-state aggressors” -- underscores the force must still be able to fight two wars at once.
“This QDR likewise assumes the need for a robust force capable of protecting U.S. interests against a multiplicity of threats, including two capable nation-state aggressors,” the report states. “It breaks from the past, however, in its insistence that the U.S. Armed Forces must be capable of conducting a wide range of operations, from homeland defense and defense support to civil authorities, to deterrence and preparedness missions, to the conflicts we are in and the wars we may someday face.”
The world is “very much more complex” than in the early 1990s when the construct focused on two major wars came together, Gates told reporters.
“And what I wanted to convey was a much more complex environment, in which you may have to do not just two major conflicts, but a broad range of other things, as well, or, perhaps in the future, one of those conflicts and then a number of other contingencies,” he said. “So I just felt that construct was too confining and did not represent the real world that our country and our military forces are going to face in the future.”
Mullen, in his assessment of the QDR included in the back of the final report, says this construct is “properly focused on balancing capabilities to fight today’s wars with those needed to counter future potential adversaries. It enables us to build a ready and agile force with sufficient capacity and capability to defeat adversaries across the range of military operations. And finally, it places priority on our ability to defend the homeland and support civil authorities.”
Managing risk under the new QDR force-planning construct requires further analysis, including new scenarios to test joint concepts of operation and force mixes as well as the development of associated operational and strategic assumptions, Mullen writes. Planning and assessment efforts will vary the size, duration and simultaneity of operations and account for associated policies and goals for force rotation, disengagement and access to the reserve component, he adds.
Unlike the draft report, the final version of the QDR states explicitly that DOD will homeport a carrier in Mayport, FL. The subject is controversial with lawmakers from Virginia, the only state that now hosts a home port for carriers on the East Coast. Virginia lawmakers peppered Gates with questions on the topic at yesterday’s House Armed Services Committee hearing.
The QDR’s section on force structure describes the force levels required for each of the armed services. Much of this is similar to the draft, which was reported at length this past week by InsideDefense.com and others. But the final report notably calls for maintaining only eight Stryker brigade combat teams in the Army, though the draft proposed nine to 13. The total number of brigade combat teams listed is 73, as in the draft. This includes 40 infantry brigade combat teams and 25 heavy brigade combat teams.
The final report adds language stressing the importance of strengthening “key supporting capabilities” for strategic communication, which is considered “particularly essential” in counterinsurgency, counterterrorism and stability operations, “where population and stakeholder beliefs and perceptions are crucial to our success, and where adversaries often enjoy the advantage of greater local knowledge and calibrate their activities to achieve sophisticated information objectives.”
Relative to the draft, the final report tones down discussion of China as a potential threat. The draft warned Russia has sold many modern surface-to-air missiles to China, but the final version of this section does not mention China. Also gone is a section from the draft that warned Chinese military doctrine calls for pre-emptive strikes.
The final report calls for institutionalizing a rapid-acquisition capability, noting DOD must not only prepare better for threats that can be anticipated but must also build agile, adaptive structures capable of quickly identifying emerging gaps and adjusting program and budgetary priorities to rapidly field capabilities that will mitigate those gaps. In addition to acquisition improvements, DOD needs a way to quickly prioritize and quantify needs as well as to ensure the resources are available to quickly field the systems, the report states.
The QDR notes the Pentagon recognizes the value of not only the U.S. industrial base but also the industrial capacities of allies. “We will continue to value our allies’ capabilities, ensure that when they bid on U.S. contracts that they are treated fairly, just as we expect our firms to be treated fairly in international competitions, and deepen our collaborative effort to innovate against 21st century threats,” the report states.
In order for the defense industry to remain a source of strategic advantage well into the future, DOD and the nation require a consistent, realistic, long-term strategy for shaping the structure and capabilities of the defense industrial base, according to the QDR. Toward this end, the Pentagon is “committed to being more forward leaning in its ongoing assessments of the industrial base -- refocusing our efforts on our future needs, not just our past performance; working much more closely with the services to foster an integrated approach to the overall industrial base; and placing transparency and dialogue with industry at the forefront of our agenda.”
The QDR also strongly advocates reform in export control, noting the current system poses a potential national security risk.
Further, the final report adds language stressing the importance of addressing national security issues in the Arctic. -- Christopher J. Castelli
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