Your Own Copy of the QDR

Read it for yourself... download the PDF here.

By: Brant

QDR Analysis - Whither the Land Force?

There's a nice analysis of the recent QDR from the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute at Carlisle that asks some very good questions about how land forces are to be managed in a joint environment under the new QDR.

However, the character of the likeliest future joint “warfights” has fundamentally changed since the advent of “jointness.” And, now with the benefit of nine years of persistent conflict, future conflicts will most certainly be fought to achieve more circumspect ends as well. Finite resources and a new appreciation by defense strategists for the real — not theoretical — costs of regime change indicate that joint warfighting is entering a new era. There will be more constraints on the military’s human and material resources. By implication, there are also likely to be significant limitations on the military courses of action available to U.S. decisionmakers.

Ultimately, Secretary Gates’ full spectrum “balance” will be created between service components and not within each of them. In this regard, it is quite likely that the U.S. is nearing a revolution in force sizing, shaping, and missioning. Quasi-specialization is inevitable. Over time, two new distinct service component groups — land forces and SOF in one and air and naval forces in the other — will optimize for different “high-intensity” contingency demands and not quixotically tilt at the windmill of complete “full-spectrum” capability as the Army now portrays itself in its own doctrine

h/t SWJ

By: Brant

Interesting Perspectives on President Obama

There's an interesting editorial asking whether President Obama is the second coming of President Carter, and discussing the implications for each of the services. Nice breakdown.

Because the president has yet to articulate a formal national security strategy, the defense review is the clearest statement we have of his inward-looking orientation. The QDR's formulation of "America's global role" is telling: "America's interests are inextricably linked to the integrity and resilience of the international system." This stands American strategic culture on its head; past presidents saw that the integrity of the international system depended upon the resilience of American power. But in the Obama view, international politics is not a competition for power, but an exercise in cooperation. As the review puts it, we "advance our interests by reinforcing the rights and responsibilities of all nations."

This is an intellectual justification for allowing the U.S. military to continue to atrophy. America's armed forces are significantly smaller than they need to be, and the major weapons systems they operate were fielded in the Reagan years. In 1990, the U.S. Army had 780,000 soldiers on active duty and operated the "Big Five" weapons systems: the M1 Abrams tank, the M2 Bradley fighting vehicle, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, the UH-60 Black Hawk troop transport helicopter, and the Patriot air defense missile. Twenty years later the Army is only 70 percent as big; it can't meet its commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan without mobilizing about 100,000 National Guard and Army reservists. It operates the same Big Five, having failed five times to field a replacement ground combat vehicle, twice to field a new howitzer, and once to introduce a new armed scout chopper. Tens of billions invested in research have yielded very little procurement, except the Stryker wheeled vehicle and the Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected "MRAP" monster trucks that may not be very useful after Iraq.

The Navy has fallen to less than half of the 600-ship peak of the late 1980s. The Obama administration has slowed the pace of aircraft carrier production, which would be a bigger problem except that the Navy doesn't have enough planes to fill up the decks it has. The Navy is also suffering a serious identity crisis. It should be responding to the rapidly growing capabilities of the Chinese Navy, particularly the massive number of submarines and land-based missiles that pose an imminent and lethal threat to U.S. carriers and surface combatants. But instead of preparing to rule the sea lanes of the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean--where a huge proportion of international shipping passes through several chokepoints--the Navy prepares itself for tsunami relief and the suppression of piracy. There's nothing wrong with providing relief (imagine Haiti without the U.S. Navy) or repelling boarders, but those aren't the primary missions for a "blue-water" navy.

The Air Force also is developing a split personality. It is coming to embrace its small-war role, particularly when it comes to unmanned systems like the Predator. But in almost every other respect, the service has fallen on hard times. The 1990s, the time of Operation Desert Storm and the Kosovo war, look in retrospect like the golden age of airpower. The future looks like a nightmare. The Obama administration's decision in last year's budget to terminate the F-22 Raptor program, combined with technological and program-management problems with the F-35, raises previously unthinkable questions about the American ability to assert air superiority in a modern air defense environment. Another lethal combination--corrupt procurement officials and congressional efforts at procurement "reform"--has delayed by almost a decade the Air Force's replacement of its 40-year-old tanker fleet. The current budget contains, at last, some funding for a new bomber to replace the B-2 and the old B-52, but the money is only for studies; a new bomber, be it manned or unmanned, is decades off.

At least the QDR does not shy from recognizing that "first and foremost, the United States is a nation at war." But this makes its fundamental failing all the more apparent: The review ducks the basic question of defense planning, How much is enough?

That's a first. There have been four previous QDRs, if you include the 1993 "Bottom-Up" Review, and while each answered the question slightly differently, each at least gave the services basic guidance. And each defined a specific force-sizing construct, most often built around a variant of the traditional "two-war standard," the idea that the U.S. military, with its global responsibilities, needed to be able to conduct at least two large-scale operations at the same time.

Perhaps not surprisingly for an Obama administration product, this review prefers nuance and complexity to clarity and simplicity. In place of a force-sizing construct, it offers a force-sizing philosophy. The philosophy itself isn't wrong, just vague. Rather than winning two wars, the military must "aggregate capacity" to "balance risks" across four "priorities." In the Pentagon, the philosophy is known as the "Four Ps"

... and go read the article for the historical perspective in the intro and the 4 Ps.

Another article looks at President Obama's approach to the wars and compares to previous wartime democratic presidents.

Suddenly and surprisingly, we have a Bush-like Obama Doctrine. To the applause of liberal hawks and formerly critical neocons, the president declared in his Nobel Peace Prize speech that the U.S. will continue to wage war—though naturally, only “just” war—anywhere and against anyone it chooses in a never-ending struggle against the forces of evil. His antiwar supporters can take seats on the sidelines. It’s all reminiscent of John F. Kennedy and the prescient George Ball, and afterward Ball and Lyndon Johnson. In the early ’60s, JFK—reluctantly, we are told by his admirers—decided to send 16,000 “trainers” to Vietnam to teach the South Vietnamese how to play soldier and to stop the Communists from sweeping over Southeast Asia. Vast quantities of money and assorted advisers were shipped without accountability to the corrupt gang of thugs running and ruining that country.

Ball, the one dissenter in Kennedy’s entourage, pleaded with JFK to recall France’s devastating defeat in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu and throughout Indochina. “Within five years we’ll have 300,000 men in the paddies and jungles and never find them again,” he warned the liberal icon in the White House. But JFK thought he knew better, caustically answering, “George, you’re crazier than hell. That just isn’t going to happen.” Ball would also press Lyndon Johnson to stand down in Vietnam before he destroyed his presidency, domestic agenda, and more importantly the lives of tens of thousands of American soldiers and their families, not to mention a few million Southeast Asians. But LBJ wasn’t going to be the first president to lose a war and be blasted by pugnacious home-front warriors. Failing to stop the North Vietnamese would sooner or later have us fighting them on Waikiki Beach, or so the Cold War line went. Ever since then, we have continued to hear about regional menaces that supposedly, if left unchecked, will threaten vital U.S. interests or even Americans at home. Ronald Reagan employed that rationale in defending the proxy war in Central America waged by U.S.-backed Contras. George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton extended the tradition of intervention, sending troops to theaters of combat as far-flung as Panama, Kuwait, and the Balkans, while the second Bush launched invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. They have all been war presidents.

But Barack Obama was going to be different, or so my fellow antiwar liberals— and a few antiwar conservatives— hoped. He was to herald the end of that uncompromising and unilateral era of preventive war. The hundreds of thousands who joyously greeted the president- elect in Grant Park or the 1.5 million at his inauguration were ecstatic with anticipation. Left-wing pundits wrote excitedly about FDR’s One Hundred Days and projected great plans onto the new Man From Illinois. In countless articles, Republicans were declared brain dead, and the Bush- Cheney policies that got us into Iraq, Afghanistan, and the torture business were buried.

One year after those celebrations, it’s the neocons cheering, seeing in Obama’s policies a vindication of the late administration. Who would have dreamed that following Obama’s West Point speech announcing 30,000 more troops destined for Afghanistan, William Kristol would laud Obama in the pages of the Washington Post, writing, “the rationale for this surge is identical to Bush’s,” and praise the Democratic president for having “embraced the use of military force as a key instrument of national power”? War makes strange bedfellows. Michèle Flournoy, Obama’s under secretary of defense for policy, has been invited to speak about the president’s hopes for a new Afghanistan on a panel led by Frederick W. Kagan at the American Enterprise Institute, the heart of neoconservatism.

Why did Obama buy what the hawks sold him? What if he had leveled with the nation and acknowledged that, however obnoxious and cruel the Taliban may be, they pose no danger to the United States? What if he had vowed that we would not dispatch tens of thousands of additional troops to a civil war in an agrarian, impoverished, largely illiterate country divided by tribal loyalties?

It was not to be. Instead, as New York Times columnist David Brooks stated approvingly, “With his two surges, Obama will more than double the number of American troops in Afghanistan.” Charles Krauthammer was direct and sharp: “most supporters of the Afghanistan war were satisfied. They got the policy; the liberals got the speech”—and no say in the construction of that policy.

After West Point and Oslo, neocons saw Obama as a more coherent Bush, an electrifying orator who had dazzled antiwar Democrats and independents and then promptly dumped them. When the New York Times printed a photo of the men and women who helped Obama reach his decision to escalate, not one dove was present.

By: Brant

BUB: Morning Update

Today's roundup starts out with these nuggets.

The military is going to start stocking the morning after pill.

The Pentagon for the first time will require military bases worldwide to offer emergency contraception or the so-called morning-after pill, a military spokeswoman said Thursday.
The decision follows a recommendation by an independent panel of doctors and pharmacists in November, said Defense Department spokeswoman Cynthia Smith. The panel determined that emergency contraception should be added to the military's list of medications that must be stocked at each military facility.

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India is not feeling the love in the new QDR.

When the US Department of Defence’s 2006 Quadrennial Defence Review or QDR was released, many analysts saw within that the prospect of cooperation between India and the US on a common threat — loose nuclear weapons in Pakistan.
When the 2010 version of the QDR was released this week, in what appears to be an attempt to mollify Pakistan, such indicators are significantly missing from the document.
In fact, while the 2006 QDR described India as a “key strategic partner”, that phrase is missing from the 2010 QDR even though the new document does refer to India as a possible “net provider of security in the Indian Ocean and beyond.”
Instead, the 2010 QDR emphasised its commitment to a “long-term strategic partnership with Pakistan”.
Washington-based South Asia analyst Walter Andersen said of the omission: “I’m not surprised; they’re sensitive to saying something in public that the Pakistanis may find offensive.” He pointed to a similar instance with regard to the original Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy of the U.S. administration adopted in March 2009 which envisaged a “new contact group” that would include India.

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The USAF and IBM are teaming up to build a cloud-computing system.

The U.S. Air Force has contracted with IBM to design a cloud computing system secure enough to support defense and intelligence networks.

The 10-month project will utilize IBM's "stream computing," a technique for real-time analysis of thousands of data streams that would be used to detect and prevent malicious attacks and system failures.

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Japan and Korea at the same joint military exercise? And not shooting each other?

South Korea and Japan, which historically have had uneasy ties, are considering their first three-way military exercises with the United States, a senior US officer said Tuesday.
South Korea is participating for the first time in the annual Cobra Gold exercises, the largest US-led war games in the Pacific that are taking place across Thailand until February 11.
Lieutenant General Benjamin Mixon, commander of the US Army in the Pacific, expected the drills to open the way for South Korea to take part in further exercises.
"We've had discussions with both the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force, South Korea and the US about putting together a multilateral or at least trilateral exercises," Mixon told a conference call with bloggers.
Any three-way exercises would focus on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, he said.

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You can't be surprised that Boeing puts on a full-court press for the Pentagon to buy more F18s and scale back on the F35s.

Top Pentagon leaders on Wednesday underscored their commitment to the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter program and challenged some of the arguments Boeing Co is hoping could help it sell more of its F/A-18 fighters before production of the F-35 gets into full swing.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said recent data showed that a multiyear contract for new Boeing F/A-18 fighters would save only 6.5 percent in procurement costs, far short of a 10 percent threshold for signing such long-term agreements.
Gates also said the Navy faced a shortfall of about only some 100 carrier-based aircraft in 2018 before the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 reached maximum production levels, far less than a shortfall of 243 planes often cited by Boeing backers.

By: Brant

QDR Fallout: "Multiple Conflicts"

The critiques of the new QDR just keep coming.

Strategically, the military recognises new, non-traditional threats ranging from failed states to cyber-warfare to climate change. But there is little change in the military spending habits of the Obama Pentagon versus that of his predecessor.

The new Quadrennial Defence Review, a congressionally mandated report on the direction of U.S. national security strategy, marks several major breaks from past reports. Whereas previous QDRs have had at their heart a strategy in which the country is able to fight two separate conventional wars, Monday's report shifts the focus to multiple and diffuse simultaneous threats.

"We have learned through painful experience that the wars we fight are rarely the wars we plan," Defence Secretary Robert Gates told reporters at the Pentagon Monday afternoon.

New threats require new responses, and the report emphasises having increased numbers of special forces, drones and helicopters as well as preparing for conflicts that take place in the realms of counterinsurgencies and cyberspace.

"Although it is a manmade domain, cyberspace is now as relevant a domain for DoD activities as the naturally occurring domains of land, sea, air, and space," the report notes.

The report no longer lays out just how many conflicts the military should be called on to fight.

Charles Knight, co-director of the Commonwealth Institute's Project on Defence Alternatives, sees this as problematic.

"They had never in the past defined what they meant [by a two-war strategy] but at least it had the number two in it... now you can go on forever dreaming up possible military engagement," he said.

Among the objectives of the Pentagon's strategy is the aphoristic "prevail in today's wars," which Gates noted is appearing in a QDR for the first time. "Success in wars to come will depend on success in these wars in progress," he explained.

By: Brant

QDR Fallout: "The Long War" term is banished

As noted by Lawyers, Guns and Money, The Long War is Over.

- References to the "Long War" in 2006 QDR: 31, not counting the 10 pages in the chapter titled "Fighting the Long War"
- References to the "Long War" in 2010 QDR: 0

The 2006 QDR was explicitly structured around the concept of the "Long War," which is essentially another name for the War on Terror. The Long War is more or less defined as follows:
Since 2001 the U.S. military has been continuously at war, but fighting a conflict that is markedly different from wars of the past. The enemies we face are not nation-states but rather dispersed non-state networks. In many cases, actions must occur on many continents in countries with which the United States is not at war. Unlike the image many have of war, this struggle cannot be won by military force alone, or even principally. And it is a struggle that may last for some years to come.

The chapter "Fighting the Long War" then includes references to the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, operations in the Horn of Africa and the Trans-Sahara, tsunami relief, earthquake relief in Pakistan, "stabilization" operations in Haiti, assistance to the government of Colombia, and domestic initiatives such as bio-terror preparedness and civil support. The Long War concept provided a unifying framework for thinking through a multi-continental strategy for fighting "terror," epitomized not simply in terrorist networks but also in terror-supporting states and in the conditions that allow terror to grow. Re-reading this chapter, I find it striking the degree to which the Cold War could easily be substituted for the Long War, with communists playing the role of terrorists. This is to say that the threats to the United States and its interests were represented in a fashion that's not quite monolithic, but is nevertheless singular. Rather than responding to multiple, quite different crises around the world, the 2006 QDR wanted us to understand US military operations as part of a coherent strategic response to the threat posed by terror, much in the same way that the various forms of Containment were responses to the threat posed by the USSR and international revolutionary communism.

In the 2010 QDR, not so much. The United States is fighting "wars" rather than a "Long War" which is a crucial distinction to my mind. "Complexity" is the watchword, and each of the major conflicts involving the United States is treated distinctly, rather than as part of a tapestry. It must be said that this change makes the argument much less fluid; a Long War makes much more thematic sense than a series of not-terribly-related conflicts that involve some interest or other of the United States in some or another part of the globe. What it lacks in narrative, however, it makes up for in general good sense.

By: Brant

Congress Already Fighting Over Jobs in QDR

Lookee here... Congress is already arguing about how to save local jobs.

Despite fears that the QDR would dramatically scale back the size of the Navy's aircraft carrier fleet, it says 10 to 11 carriers should remain in operation between fiscal 2011 and fiscal 2015. Congress has required the Navy to keep 11 carriers in service -- one of which is customarily used only for training -- but last year gave the service the temporary authority to go down to 10 ships between the retirement of the USS Enterprise in 2012 and the commissioning of the USS Gerald R. Ford in 2015.
The report also recommends that one carrier should be based in Mayport Naval Station in Florida -- a homeport preference that will renew a heated political battle between the Florida and Virginia delegations in Congress.
All carriers assigned to the East Coast are now stationed in Norfolk, Va. after the 2007 decommissioning of the USS John F. Kennedy, which called Mayport home.
"The reason for moving one of the nuclear carriers from Norfolk to Mayport is so they're not all lined up in one place like sitting ducks," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said in a statement after CongressDaily posted the QDR Friday night. "Beyond that, this is huge for the North Florida economy."
Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., issued a statement Saturday emphasizing that the QDR is a planning tool that does not have the force of law. "I continue to believe that removing an aircraft carrier from Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, would not be justified on either a strategic or fiscal level," he said.
The issue is a dicey political one for the Obama administration. Obama won both Florida and Virginia, two traditionally Republican states crucial to his 2008 victory - in part, thanks to help from Webb and Nelson.

You notice that Sen Nelson was quick to point out the economic benefit to his local area?
And oddly enough, Sen Webb, a former Secretary of the Navy, is clearly making a play for his local job market, and ignoring the sound strategic option of spreading the fleet around. It'll be interesting to see how the Obamatrons resolve this one...

By: Brant

New US QDR hits the streets

The new QDR is likely to result in a major shift away from the 2MRC conflict paradigm. This would only make sense based on realities on the ground at this point, given that one of the 2MRCs was Iraq.

The Pentagon will no longer shape the U.S. military to fight two major conventional wars at once, but rather prepare for numerous conflicts and not all in the same style, according to a draft of a new strategic outlook the Pentagon is announcing on Monday.
The new mantra for military planners will replace the almost 25-year-old combat planning style of fighting and winning two major conventional wars in two different locations in favor of a fighting force that is capable of protecting U.S. interests around the world from a range of threats, from terrorism to cyber attacks.
The change will be addressed in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, a congressionally mandated document that looks at future threats and the military's requirements to mitigate them.
"It is no longer appropriate to speak of major regional conflicts as the sole or even primary template for sizing, shaping or evaluating U.S. forces," according to a draft first obtained by Inside Defense.

A deeper look into the QDR shows how some acquisitions requirements are being shaped, too.

The QDR stresses the need for several types of long-range strike capabilities -- rather than specifying a requirement for a new bomber or another single platform -- to counter growing threats to forward-deployed U.S. forces and overseas bases.
But the department also plans to experiment with "conventional prompt global strike prototypes" -- an apparent indication the Air Force still plans to pursue a new bomber.
"Building on insights developed during the QDR, the Secretary of Defense has ordered a follow-on study to determine what combination of joint persistent surveillance, electronic warfare, and precision-attack capabilities, including both penetrating platforms and stand-off weapons, will best support U.S. power projection operations over the next two to three decades," according to the report.
The review calls for increasing the number of airborne electronic warfare assets, which have been used to counter roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report says the Navy will buy more EA-18G Growler aircraft but does not state how many more of the Boeing Co. planes it will procure.
The Marine Corps, meanwhile, will take steps to keep its EA-6B electronic warfare aircraft in service longer.

As required by law, there will be an independent panel responsible for assessing the QR.

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates announced today his appointments to a congressionally-mandated independent panel selected to review the Department of Defense’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).
The bipartisan panel is required by law to submit by July 2010 a report to Congress assessing the QDR, its recommendations, stated and implied assumptions, and any vulnerabilities of the strategy and force structure underlying the report.
The panel’s assessment will include analyses of trends, asymmetries, and concepts of operations that characterize the military balance with potential adversaries, focusing on the strategic approaches of possible opposing forces.
The panel consists of 20 members, eight of whom are selected by Congress. The 12 members announced by the secretary of defense are:

William J. Perry, co-chair
Stephen J. Hadley, co-chair
Richard L. Armitage
Jack Dyer Crouch II
Rudy F. deLeon
Joan A. Dempsey
Sherri W. Goodman
Retired Navy Adm. David E. Jeremiah
Retired Army Gen. George A. Joulwan
Alice C. Maroni
Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper
Retired Air Force Gen. Larry D. Welch

Members appointed by Congress are:
Charles Curtis
Eric S. Edelman
Retired Army Gen. John (Jack) Keane
Richard H. Kohn
John F. Lehman Jr.
Retired Army Lt. Col. John Nagl
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales Jr.
James M. Talent

There are some definite iconoclasts in there, so it'll be interesting to see what their recommendations are.

Other coverage of the QDR out there:
World Politics Review - QDR: The Triumph of Integrated Defense Thinking

I don't think anyone who's been following the military's operational soul searching and evolution over the past five years will be surprised by anything here. But I'd offer one alternative reading of the degree to which COIN figures prominently in this year's edition, as compared to conventional warfighting. Certainly it is a priority, and if we're to go by the order of appearance, it now comes just after homeland defense on the Pentagon's "to do" list. That makes sense, since we've currently got roughly 200,000 soldiers taking part in COIN operations, compared to roughly zero taking part in conventional warfare.
But operating in anti-access environments comes just after (security mentoring with partner states being an aspect of the broader COIN/CT campaign). And as I argued last week, anti-access is another way of saying China, and to a lesser degree North Korea and Iran.
Now, let's take the scenario of an armed conflict on the Korean Penisula, since it's a bit easier to tackle than one involving China and Taiwan. The immediate challenge would be deploying the necessary reinforcements in the face of North Korea's offensive missile threat and anti-access defenses. Let's also assume, for the sake of making my argument easier to defend, that the normal probablilities of warfare apply and the force with the greater capacity -- i.e., us -- prevails. Unless the fighting results in a negotiated ceasefire along the lines of the status quo ante, which is difficult to imagine, what follows is most likely the complete destabilization of North Korea, with all of the security, governance and humanitarian contingencies we've seen in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Haiti.

Information Dissemination - Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) Report Day

Am I the only one who looks at the QDR and is concerned how little the report looks ahead? While some initial reactions may be positive, I am unsure if that will last as the long term trend once budget season rolls around and everyone realizes how very little the QDR contributes to answering big lingering questions.
The QDR report does not answer questions. What the QDR report has done is shape which questions will be asked over the next year. The debate over the next 12 months will be interesting to watch, but it is unclear if yet another year of debate will actually produce meaningful results. The issue is this: there are about 9 COCOMs and Service Chiefs that will be retiring in mid 2011 - during the FY2012 budget battle. POM12 will be the last budget for a lot of leaders in the DoD, and if Secretary Gates is still around in mid to late 2011 he will decide who carries the QDR and POM12 agenda forward.

Attackerman over at FireDogLake has a collection of "Good QDR Lines", starting here.

Bloomberg asks if we've just replaced Iraq and North Korea with China and Iran as the bogeymen-du-jour.

A few definite patterns are emerging:
1. COIN is gaining a huge emphasis. While that's certainly necessary right now, it may not be the real long-term direction for the US to go.
2. Budget turf wars are still primarily being fought between the USAF and USN, since they have the big-ticket items, even if they aren't relevant to current COIN fights.
3. It's hard to project where you might be shooting people in 10 years. After all, 10 years ago we were still arguing over whether or not we should be nation-building in Kosovo and Bosnia.
4. Congress is going to get involved as they try to rescue local jobs in a tight economy. And the focus will be jobs, not national defense.

By: Brant