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Cordesman and Fitzgerald: The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review i

THE 2010 QUADRENNIALDEFENSE REVIEW

A+, F, OR DEAD ON ARRIVAL?

Erin K. Fitzgerald

and Anthony H. Cordesman

Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy

Working Draft

August 27, 2009


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Cordesman and Fitzgerald: The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review ii

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In 2010, the Obama administration will release its first Quadrennial Defense Review(QDR). A strategic framework for the Department of Defense (DOD) as it confrontscurrent and future challenges, the QDR is intended to serve as a means to develop new

policies, capabilities and initiatives. However, these intentions have so far beenunrealized. Past reviews have been decoupled from meaningful budget figures, realisticforce plans, honest procurement decisions, and metrics to measure the success of theirrecommendations. As a result of this strategy-reality gap between concepts andresources, they have had limited practical value.

The issues the QDR must address have been greatly complicated by the Department ofDefenses past failures to develop effective plans, programs, and budgets; carry outeffective systems analysis; develop credible cost estimates; and create timely andmeaningful future year defense plans (FYDPs). Worst among these problems was thefailure to properly manage the procurement process, which reached such a point of crisis

that it forced the current Administration to take initial action. So many major weaponssystems development programs were in trouble -- with their next generation replacementsstuck in a morass of rising costs, development problems, and requirements debates thatDefense Secretary Robert Gates terminated several key programs in his FY2010 budgetannouncement in April 2009.

However, critical problems remain. Secretary Gates made decisions that should havebeen made years ago. Yet, he often provided no clear replacement procurement strategy.It also is unclear that the Department has made the kind of procurement reforms that willstop it from continuing its past behavior of undercosting and overestimating capabilitiesuntil production delays and cost escalations force another series of terminations. In spite

of recent program cancellations and cutbacks, current estimates indicate there could stillbe a procurement shortfall of some $60 billion over the next five years.

The combined cost of war, steadily rising military manpower costs, the underfunding ofoperations and maintenance, and a procurement crisis in every service will force theObama Administration to reshape almost every aspect of current defense plans,programs, and budgets in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, if the situation is to beimproved in any way.

Nevertheless, the legacy of interrelated problems raises serious questions as to whetherthe next QDR will be more meaningful than its predecessors in creating a strategy that

actually shapes US forces, procurements, and readiness. The 2010 QDR has thepotentialto be the next step in the reform process and to institutionalize the reforms Gates initiatedwith his budget cuts. It is unclear the extent to which it will realize its potential, given thescale of the need to make meaningful decisions, create an affordable force posture andplan, fund credible levels of manpower and readiness, fully restructure the Departmentsfailed procurement plans, and dealing with the real world cost and program impact of twoongoing wars.


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Cordesman and Fitzgerald: The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review iii

Ultimately, the review seeks to answer the question of whether the US should posture itsforces and focus its acquisitions on dealing with conventional threats from rising peercompetitors or more asymmetric threats emanating from weak and failing states.Secretary Gates terms of reference emphasized balance between these two competingpriorities, stressing the need to [institutionalize] capabilities such as counterinsurgency

and foreign military assistance and [maintain] the United States' existing conventionaland strategic technological edge against other military forces.1

The answers to these questions are being structured around the concept of hybridwarfare, a type of warfare that requires the broadest possible range of force capabilitiesand flexibilities across the spectrum of operations. It may be an intellectual improvementover the emphasis on conventional warfighting in past reviews, but so far hybrid warfareis so loosely defined, that it does not provide clear criteria for decision-making. Serviceefforts to define it have so far been little more that shopping lists for every possiblecontingency mixed with buzzwords that appear to have meaning only as long as theyare no examined in any detail. In practice, any concept that effectively justifies anything

ends in justifying absolutely nothing.

As a result, the review is already running into serious resource problems. It will bedifficult to use hybrid warfare to define and cost end strength goals or to develop a newforce plan, given the mixed messages coming from DOD about force-sizing. The conceptprovides no basis for shaping programs, nor does it rationalize cutting them.

The end result is that DOD is adopting a strategy that creates far more uncertaintiesregarding key decisions about forces, programs, and procurement. If the United States issupposed to be able to defeat peer competitors in conventional war yet also deal withhybrid threats from non-state actors, how should forces be sized? What high-technologyweapons systems will be necessary to defeat peer competitors? Is there a stable, costeffective procurement path to achieve them? It is unclear the extent to which the 2010QDR will answer these questions.

One thing is certain, howeverit is not enough to say that the United States should haveall capabilities yet provide no clear plan to achieve them. Every time the 2010 QDRdodges around defining force structure, procurement, and readiness choices, it will beintellectually dishonest and operationally dysfunctional: Another F instead of the A+effort the US so badly needs.

If Secretary Gates and his team are to produce a QDR that corrects the past disconnect between its concepts and the budget, they must tightly link their central concepts tomeaningful budget figures, realistic force plans, honest procurement decisions, andmetrics to measure its success. If there is any clear message to be drawn from both thefailures of the past, and the vague rhetoric of the present, it is that concepts such as

1Robert M. Gates, A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age, Foreign Affairs(January/February 2009). Available at: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63717/robert-m-gates/a-balanced-strategy
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63717/robert-m-gates/a-balanced-strategyhttp://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63717/robert-m-gates/a-balanced-strategyhttp://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63717/robert-m-gates/a-balanced-strategyhttp://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63717/robert-m-gates/a-balanced-strategy


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Cordesman and Fitzgerald: The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review iv

hybrid warfare are little more than empty buzzwords when they are decoupled fromforce plans and budget figures.

The FY2010 QDR could be a powerful tool in putting the Departments planning,programming, and budgeting efforts on a new course, and in filling the vacuum in US

defense procurement strategy vacuum left by recent programs terminations. However, aQDR can only be useful to the extent it is tied to detailed force plans, procurement plans,program budgets, and measures of effectiveness, rather than the past mix of jargon and buzzwords. This requires a near revolution in a US defense policy that has becomedecoupled from the PPB process, tangible force and budget trade-offs, and basicoperational realities. It may be overly optimistic to hope for dramatic improvements as aresult of President Obamas first QDR. Institutional inertia may be too powerful, and thetendency to issue another conceptual document that is not translated into operationrealities may be too great.


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Cordesman and Fitzgerald: The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review v

Table of Contents

I. INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................................... 1

Figure 1: Real Defense Spending FY1985-FY2019 ($US billions) ........................................ 4Figure 2: Defense Spending as a Percent of Federal Budget, Public Spending, and GDP ...... 5

II. THE FAILED HISTORY OF THE QDR............................................................................................. 6

THE END OF THE COLD WAR AND A GROWING STRATEGY-REALITY GAP ................................................. 6Figure 3: Manpower by Service (FY1980-2009) .................................................................... 7Figure 4: Army Ground Combat Vehicles (FY1990-2025) .................................................... 7Figure 5: Battle Force Ships (FY1990-2025) .......................................................................... 8Figure 6: Air Force Fighter and Attack Aircraft (FY1990-2025)............................................ 8

THE FIRST QDRAND THE REVOLUTION IN MILITARY AFFAIRS.............................................................. 9THE STOPGAP QDR:FY2001 AND THE IMPACT OF 9/11 ........................................................................11DECOUPLING ENTIRELY FROM THE PPBPROCESS AND REALITY:THE 2005QDR ....................................12

Figure 7: The 2005 Quadrant Chart ...................................................................................... 12AFAILED AND SELF-DESTRUCTIVE PROCESS TO DATE.............................................................................13

III. THE COMING QDR AND THE FY2010 BUDGET REQUEST .....................................................15

APOISONED CHALICE ...............................................................................................................................15

Figure 8: DOD Projected Budget versus CBO Estimates ..................................................... 16Figure 9: Historical DOD Funding, FY2001-FY2010 .......................................................... 18WINDS OF CHANGE ORJUST WIND? ..........................................................................................................19WILL THE 2010QDRMARK THE DEPARTMENTS FIRST EFFORT TOWARDS INTEGRITY AND HONESTY? ..20LINKING THE QDRTO THE FY2011BUDGET? ..........................................................................................21

IV. CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS WITHOUT A BUILDING?.......................................................22

HYBRID WARFARE ....................................................................................................................................22HIGH END VS.LOW END THREATS ............................................................................................................24REBALANCING IN AN EFFORT TO CLOSE THE STRATEGY REALITY GAP? ...................................................25

V. SEEKING MEANINGFUL ANSWERS...............................................................................................27

THE SCENARIOS.........................................................................................................................................27THE RED TEAM AND ALTERNATE SCENARIOS ...........................................................................................28THENATIONAL DEFENSE PANEL...............................................................................................................29

VI. KEY ISSUES AFFECTING THE CONTENT OF THE QDR.........................................................30

FORCE SIZING............................................................................................................................................30MILITARY MANPOWER AND END STRENGTH.............................................................................................31ROTATIONAL BASING................................................................................................................................32CYBERWARFARE .......................................................................................................................................32INTELLIGENCE,SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE ..........................................................................34ARMY AND GROUND FORCES ....................................................................................................................34

Figure 10: Appropriations for Afghan and Iraq Wars by Category FY04-FY09 Bridge....... 36AIRCRAFT PROCUREMENT AND FORCE SIZE..............................................................................................37

Figure 11: Air Force F-35 JSF Procurement Plan ................................................................. 38Figure 12: Joint Strike Fighter Program Cost Growth .......................................................... 39

FLEET MODERNIZATION AND SHIP BUILDING ...........................................................................................39Figure 13: The Navy-Marine Corps Investment Crisis ......................................................... 41COST CONTAINMENT AND PROCUREMENT AND RDT&EREFORM ............................................................41NUCLEARPOSTURE REVIEW .....................................................................................................................42WHAT IS LEFT OUT? .................................................................................................................................43

VII. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................44


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Cordesman and Fitzgerald: The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review 1

I. INTRODUCTION

Every four years, the Department of Defense is required by law to conduct a QuadrennialDefense Review (QDR), a comprehensive review of the United States defense strategy,force structure, modernization plans, and budget. The QDR is intended to provide a

strategic framework for the Department as it confronts current and future challenges, and be one of the principal means by which new policies, capabilities and initiatives aredeveloped. However, these intentions have so far been unrealized. Past QDRs have beendecoupled from meaningful budget figures, realistic force plans, honest procurementdecisions, and metrics to measure the success of their recommendations. As a result, theyhave had only limited practical value.

The upcoming QDR, expected in early 2010, is the first such review to take place underthe Obama administration. It will be conducted in the context of the wide-rangingsecurity threats that the United States faces, including the rise of violent extremism; theproliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological materials and weapons both to states as

well as non-state actors; the potential for failed and failing states to destabilize regions or become safe havens for terrorists and insurgents; the existence of regional adversarieswho remain hostile to US interests; and the rise of new great powers that have thepotential to alter the global balance of power. These threats, coupled with the demands ofthe ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global economic downturn, havecreated a steadily more complicated strategic environment.

The problems the QDR must address have also been greatly complicated by theDepartment of Defenses past failures to develop effective plans, programs, and budgets;carry out effective systems analysis; develop credible cost estimates; and create timelyand meaningful future year defense plans (FYDPs). The Department has also relied on

improvised annual supplementals to fund the Iraq and Afghan conflicts. To date, thesehave totaled $915 billion through FY2009 $687 billion for the Iraq War and $228billion for Afghanistan. None of these supplemental has created a survivable funding pathor stable funding profile for the next year of either the Afghan or Iraq war.

Figure 1 shows that defense spending reached a level in real dollars unmatched since theend of World War IIover $670 billion in FY2009. Figure 2 indicates that this has notcreated a growing burden on federal spending and the US economy.Nevertheless, DODscurrent budgets still cannot fund todays forces and force modernization plans.

The Department has failed to manage manpower in terms of setting credible goals for

military, career civilian, and contractor personnel. It let salary and entitlement costsescalate. It created a major legacy problem in terms of future retirement and relatedhealth costs; and has failed to reach critical decisions about military end strength versusUS military commitments that have serious compromised the ability to manage USmilitary forces on a sustainable basis. The US has been involved in two major regionalcontingencies at a time when military personnel have fallen from 2.1 million in FY1990to 1.4 million in FY2009, and career civilians have fallen from 997,000 in FY1990 to713,000 in FY2009.


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Managing overall readiness, and operations and maintenance (O&M) costs, have led toless visible problems, but over the last eight years, the Department has quietly madereductions in non-war related O&M funding that have steadily reduced readiness andtraining levels. It also failed to provide a credible plan and funding profile for the cost of

rehabilitating and replacing the equipment and stocks consumed by the Afghan and Iraqwars. Its limited estimates of reset costs to date have been little more than guesstimatesthat do not provide for a credible effort to fund rehabilitation and replacement of used upequipment and depleted stocks.

As repeated reports by the General Accountability Office (GAO) have shown, theDepartment mismanaged many of its major procurement programs.2 No military servicedeveloped an affordable procurement program. Every service to some extent mortgagedits future by failing to contain equipment costs, and by trading existing equipment andforce elements to develop new systems that it was not able to procure in the numbers planned. Failures in cost containment were compounded by failures to make realistic

assessments of technology and production capabilities, and by failures to set reasonableperformance specifications and stop the growth of technological risk and the creation ofeven more demanding performance specifications over time. During the last decade, theUS defense procurement system effectively became a liars contest in terms ofprojected costs, risk, performance, and delivery schedules.

These failures to properly manage the procurement process reached a crisis point thatforced the current Administration to take initial action. So many major weapons systemsdevelopment programs were in trouble -- with their next generation replacements stuck ina morass of rising costs, procurement and development problems, and requirementsdebatesthat Defense Secretary Robert Gates terminated several key programs in hisFY2010 budget announcement on April 6, 2009.

However, critical problems remain. Secretary Gates made decisions that should havebeen made years ago. Yet, he often provided no clear replacement procurement strategy.It also is unclear that the Department has made the kind of procurement reforms that willstop it from continuing its past behavior of undercosting and overestimating capabilitiesuntil production delays and cost escalations force another series of terminations. In spiteof recent program cancellations and cutbacks, current estimates indicate there could stillbe a procurement shortfall of some $60 billion over the next five years.

Furthermore, the data in Figure 1 and Figure 2 precede the full impact of the nationaland global economic crisis, massive domestic spending that will vastly increase thefederal deficit and put equally massive pressure on the government to limit federalspending, and a so far unsuccessful effort to fully cost the impact of ongoing wars inprojecting future defense spending. It seems unlikely that defense will be much above4.6% of the GDP in FYU2010 which is still far below the Cold War level of effort.This does not, however, mean that the US can afford the defense program in needs to

2 GAO,Defense Acquisitions Assessment of Selected Weapon programs, GAO-08-467SP, March 2008,pp. 10-11.


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implement its desired strategy, bail out its national economy, and make major newincreases in entitlements programs all at the same time.

This legacy of interrelated problems raises serious questions as to whether the next QDRwill be more meaningful than its predecessors in creating a strategy that actually shapes

US forces, procurements, and readiness. The Department of Defense began work on theQDR for 2010 on April 23, 2009. This timing alone raises serious questions about thevalue of such a document, given the scale of the need to make meaningful decisions,create an affordable force posture and plan, fund credible levels of manpower andreadiness, fully restructure the Departments failed procurement plans, and dealing withthe real world cost and program impact of two ongoing wars.

The FY2010 QDR could be a powerful tool in putting the Departments planning,programming, and budgeting efforts on a new course. It could be a major step in movingtowards a force posture that actually meets US strategic needs with the budgets andforces required, and in filling the vacuum in US defense procurement strategy vacuum

left by recent programs terminations. However, a QDR can only be useful to the extent itis tied to detailed force plans, procurement plans, program budgets, and measures ofeffectiveness, rather than the past mix of jargon and buzzwords.

This requires a near revolution in a US defense policy that has become decoupled fromthe PPB process, tangible force and budget trade-offs, and basic operational realities. Itmay be overly optimistic to hope for dramatic improvements as a result of PresidentObamas first QDR. Institutional inertia may be too powerful, and the tendency to issueanother conceptual document that is not translated into operation realities may be toogreat.


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Figure 1: Real Defense Spending FY1985-FY2019 ($US billions)

Source:Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller). National Defense Budget Estimate for theFY 2009 Budget (Greenbook). Updated, September 2008, Table 6-4.


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Figure 2: Defense Spending as a Percent of Federal Budget, Public Spending, andGDP

Source: Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller). National Defense Budget Estimate for theFY 2009 Budget (Greenbook). Updated, September 2008, Table 7-7.


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II. THE FAILED HISTORY OF THE QDR

The limits to the QDR process become clearer when their history is examined in detail.Soon after collapse of the Soviet Union, it became apparent that the Cold War strategy ofcontainment -- and its force-sizing and force-shaping constructs, programs, and budgets -

- had become obsolete. This led Les Aspin, the first Secretary of Defense under PresidentClinton, inaugurated the Bottom Up Review (BUR) in 1993.3

The Pentagon undertook a wide-ranging review of strategy, programs, and resources inan attempt to delineate a workable national defense strategy and plans for the military tosuccessfully execute the full range of missions within that strategy. As a result, the BURacknowledged the significant changes in the global security environment. It articulated astrategy which focused on preventing conflict by promoting democracy and undertaking peacekeeping missions. However, as a force shaping construct, it drew largely on the prior planning of the Bush Administration and on the Base Force concept of the late1980s. It advanced the notion that the United States should maintain at minimum a force

capable of fighting two major regional conflicts almost simultaneously.4

The End of the Cold War and a Growing Strategy-Reality Gap

This two major theatre war metric is still present in DOD policy and strategy literature.Almost immediately, however, it proved to be unrealistic both because of the emergingstrategic realities of the post Cold War era, and the limitations imposed by ongoing cutsin US forces. The first Clinton term produced no conventional conflicts, but it didproduce a plethora of smaller, but very complex engagements. Debacles in Somalia andHaiti showed that the demands of irregular operations could become a central concern.

However, the deeply entrenched commitment to conventional theater wars halted anyattempt to quantify the demands imposed by a range of smaller conflicts as well as therisk of the kin d of larger scale conflicts exemplified by the Iraq and Afghan Wars.Moreover, US force level and key weapons numbers dropped for every service, asFigures 3 to 6 illustrate, and created a growing gap between the metric and the forcelevels the US actually could deploy:

3 Les Aspin.Report on the Bottom Up Review, "Section I: National Security in the Post-Cold War Era".October 1993. http://www.fas.org/man/docs/bur/index.html4 Les Aspin.Report on the Bottom Up Review, "Section IV: Building An Overall Force Structure". October1993. http://www.fas.org/man/docs/bur/part04.htm
http://www.fas.org/man/docs/bur/index.htmlhttp://www.fas.org/man/docs/bur/part04.htmhttp://www.fas.org/man/docs/bur/part04.htmhttp://www.fas.org/man/docs/bur/index.html


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Figure 3: Manpower by Service (FY1980-2009)

Source: Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller). National Defense Budget Estimate for theFY 2009 Budget (Greenbook). Updated, September 2008, p. 213.

Figure 4: Army Ground Combat Vehicles (FY1990-2025)

Source: CBO,Long Term Implications of Defense Spending, March 2008, Figure 3-5.


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Figure 5: Battle Force Ships (FY1990-2025)

Source: CBO, Long Term Implications of Defense Spending, March 23 2008, Figure 3-11.

Figure 6: Air Force Fighter and Attack Aircraft (FY1990-2025)

Source: CBO, Long Term Implications of Defense Spending, March 23 2008, Figure 3-21.


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The First QDR and the Revolution in Military Affairs

This kind of problem in the US defense strategy and program helped lead the Congress toput legislation in the Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997 that directed theSecretary of Defense to conduct a Quadrennial Defense Review. It called for this review

to include: a comprehensive examination of the defense strategy, force structure, forcemodernization plans, infrastructure, budget plan, and other elements of the defenseprogram and policies with a view toward determining and expressing the defense strategyof the United States and establishing a revised defense program.5 It expressed the needfor clear link between force structure, modernization and budgets, tracing a path that ledfrom threat, to strategy, to implementation, and finally to resource issues. 6

The report shall include the following:

The threats examined for purposes of the review and the scenarios developed in theexamination of such threats.

The effect on the force structure of preparations for and participation in peace operations andmilitary operations other than war.

The manpower and sustainment policies required under the defense strategy to supportengagement in conflicts lasting more than 120 days.

The forward presence, pre-positioning, and other anticipatory deployments necessary underthe defense strategy for conflict deterrence and adequate military response to anticipated

conflicts.

The extent to which resources must be shifted among two or more theatres under the defensestrategy in the event of conflict in such theatres.7

The resulting 1997 QDR claimed to meet these goals. It stated that,

We started with a fresh, unblinking look at the world both today and over the temporal horizon toidentify the threats, risks, and opportunitiesfor U.S. national securityFrom that analysis of theglobal environment, we developed an overarching defensestrategy to deal with the world todayand tomorrow, identify required military capabilities, and define the programs and policies neededto support them. Building on the President's National Security Strategy, we determined that U.S.defense strategy for the near and long term must continue to shape the strategic environment toadvance U.S. interests, maintain the capability to respond to the full spectrum of threats, andprepare now for the threats and dangers of tomorrow and beyond. Underlying this strategy is theinescapable reality that as a global power with global interests to protect, the United States must

continue to remain engaged with the world, diplomatically, economically, and militarily.

After developing the strategy, we anchored its implementation in the fundamentals of militarypower today and in the future: quality people, ready forces, andsuperior organization, doctrine,and technology. We need quality people to operate more complex technology and undertake more

5 Department of Defense. Defense Authorization Act, Section 923 (1997).6 Department of Defense. Defense Authorization Act, Section 923 (1997).7 Department of Defense. Defense Authorization Act, Section 923 (1997).


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complex joint operations. We need ready forces in a world of sudden events that often willdemand that our forces come "as you are" on a moment's notice

Finally, the Department's plans are fiscallyresponsible. They are built on the premise that, barringa major crisis, national defense spending is likely to remain relatively constant in the future. Thereis a bipartisan consensus in America to balance the federal budget by the year 2002 in order toensure the nation's economic health, which in turn is central to our fundamental national strengthand security. The direct implication of this fiscal reality is that Congress and the American peopleexpect the Department to implement our defense program within a constrained resourceenvironment. The fiscal reality did not drive the defense strategy we adopted, but it did affect ourchoices for its implementation and focused our attention on the need to reform our organizationand methods of conducting business.8

The key tool it sought to use to bring US strategy into balance with US forces andresources, however, proved to be a failure. The 1997 QDR introduced the idea of aRevolution in Military Affairs. It sought to solve the problems in US force planning,and end the strategy-reality gap, through ambitious research, development, andprocurement efforts in areas as information technology, stealth, and long-range precision

strike capabilities.

It sought to offer an alternative to traditional force structures through a high technologyfocus on conventional warfighting at time when the Department had already becomeengaged smaller, irregular engagements in place like Haiti and Somalia, and was soon toface complicated exercises in counterinsurgency and armed nation building inAfghanistan and Iraq. It also stressed major advances in technology that exacerbated allof the problems in managing the defense procurement system and in ways that made procurement an alternative to maintaining force structure, manpower, and moretraditional forms of readiness.

The QDR kept the force-sizing standard of capability to simultaneously fight two majorregional conflicts, but offered little analysis of how to actually meet this metric other thanchanging its title: major regional contingencies became major theatre wars. USmilitary end strength stood at 1.5 million troops in 1997 and even though this was farbelow what was needed to fight two simultaneous wars, troop levels continued to decline.As Figure 3 hasshown, military manpower slipped to 1.4 million by the next QDR in2001, precisely at the moment reality began to intervene and thrust the US intomanpower intensive conflicts.

The most serious discrepancy between the QDRs rhetoric and operational reality lay inits treatment of the budget. Despite calls for a clear link between force structure,modernization and budgets, the QDR did not call for a substantial increase in funding orresolve the imbalance in strategy, requirements, and forces, judging that the nation isunlikely to support significantly greater resources dedicated to national defense.9 Thedefense budget finally reversed its thirteen-year decline in 1998, but without a clear

8The Secretarys Message. Quadrennial Defense Review (1997).http://www.fas.org/man/docs/qdr/msg.html9 Quadrennial Defense Review (1997), p. 57. http://www.fas.org/man/docs/qdr/msg.html


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vision of what the militarys requirements were or how its forces should be structuredincreases in funding could not solve DODs problems.

The Stopgap QDR: FY2001 and the Impact of 9/11

The next Quadrennial Defense Review was issued on 30 September 2001. PresidentClintons second-term Defense Secretary, William Cohen had prepared a peacetimereview in 2000, which was hastily rewritten by the new Defense Secretary, DonaldRumsfeld, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Even though the strategic environment inwhich the United States was operating had completely shifted, the review still largelyrepresented the pre-9/11 world. There were some amendments such as makingHomeland Defense a primary mission of the armed services but the changes werecosmetic rather than fundamental.

The Department of Defense also sought to shift from threat- based to capabilities-basedplanning. It said it would no longer focus, as previous strategies did, on exactly who the adversary mightbe or where a warmight happen. Instead, it would refocus planners on the growing range of capabilitiesthat adversaries might possess or could develop. and point to capabilities the United States itself mightneed. However, without any grounding in force plans, modernization programs, or budgets, this new

approach was no different from the old. Moreover, capabilities-based planning proved to be sounfocused and unrelated to specific scenarios and capabilities that it could and did prove to mean almost anything to anyone.

In terms of force structure, the 2001 QDR established a new standard that would becomeknown as 1-4-2-1. US forces would be sized to do the following: 10

Defend the homeland (the first 1 in the formulation); Deter aggression in four critical theatres (Europe, Northeast Asia, the East Asian littoral, Middle

East/Southwest Asia);

Swiftly defeat aggression in any two theatre conflicts at the same time; Preserve the option for decisive victory in one of those theatre conflicts, including the capability to

occupy an aggressors capital or replace his regime.11

The review did not propose any strategies or practical path to reach the force levelsnecessary to perform these different missions. This was a major omission considering thefact that in 2000 troop levels reached their lowest point since the end of the Cold War. Italso largely neglected budgetary matters. The only reference to budgeting that had any

substance was a call to streamline and simplify the planning, programming and budgetingsystem (PPBS) and the acquisition process.12 Other than that, the budget was ignored,even though the United States was about to embark on an unanticipated war in

10 Quadrennial Defense Review (September 2001). http://www.comw.org/qdr/qdr2001.pdf11 Quadrennial Defense Review (September 2001). http://www.comw.org/qdr/qdr2001.pdf12 Quadrennial Defense Review (September 2001), p. 52. http://www.comw.org/qdr/qdr2001.pdf


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Afghanistan that the Department of Defense failed to properly characterize and neverbudgeted for.

Decoupling Entirely from the PPB Process and Reality: The 2005 QDR

Like its two predecessors, the 2005 QDR was decoupled from a real world force plan,failed to take hard decisions about manpower or procurement, and made no budgetarylinkages. This was in many ways unsurprising, given that Secretary Rumsfeld hadclaimed that the QDR is not a programmatic or budget document but rather a reflectionof the thinking of the senior civilian and military leaders of the Department ofDefense.13

Describing itself as a snapshot in time of the departments strategy for defense of the Nation and the capabilities needed to effectively execute that defense, the reviewfocused on the vague chart shown in Figure 7. This described security challenges to thenation more in terms of colored blobs than real world planning needs. 14 It talked about a broad spectrum of capabilities that included traditional, conventional conflicts;irregular warfare, such as terrorism and insurgencies; catastrophic challenges fromunconventional weapons used by terrorists or rogue states; and disruptive threats, inwhich new technologies could counter American advantages. However, it made no effortto define a realignment of forces, acquisitions or budgets to accompany this shift in focus.

Figure 7: The 2005 Quadrant Chart

13Fred Kaplan, Rumsfeld Surrenders, 3 February 2006. www.slate.com14 Quadrennial Defense Review (February 2006), p. ix.http://www.defenselink.mil/qdr/report/Report20060203.pdf


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Source: Quadrennial Defense Review (February 2006)

To the surprise of those who thought the two-conflict standard was obsolete,15the 2005QDR still reverted the yardstick of fighting two major theatre wars (now calledconventional campaigns), with some adjustments.16 US forces were now to bestructured for a surge capability to win two nearly simultaneous conventional campaignsand be prepared in one of those campaigns to remove a hostile regime and destroy itsmilitary capacity.

The 2005 QDR, however, made no real effort to describe what this meant or set any broad goals that defined a future set of real world operational capabilities. PreviousQDRs had put forward fairly detailed force structure plansfighter wings, strategicforces, bombers, land divisions and brigades, warships, and submarines but in 2005 itprovided only a few details about the organizational size of the Air Force, Army, Navy,and Marine Corps.The 2005 QDR provided some information about personnel strength,but the review made no sweeping changes in the size of the armed forces. The anticipatedpersonnel increases for the ground forces did not materialize. Instead, it continued to callfor cuts.

The 2005 QDR dodged every hard decision relating to force modernization and procurement. The high-technology programs that once were seen as the key to therevolution in military affairs had already reached a clear crisis point in time, cost, andperformance and it was clear that they were out of control and so costly that they couldnever be implemented in the planned form. However, even the most problematicprograms like the F-22 survived, albeit with some reductions. The 2005 QDR also largelyfailed to address any tangible changes in force posture and structure, leaving the Ameri-can military in the outdated conventional war posture it had been in since the end of theCold War.

The decision to keep the process resource neutral prevented any chance of closing thegap between strategy, forces, and procurement. This decision bordered on the ludicrous,considering that the Department of Defense had been asking for increasingly largersupplemental to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the previous five years. Eventhen, analysts like Andrew Krepinevich warned that, Independent estimates concludethat over the long term, the defense program may be short some $50 billion a year.17Yet, Rumsfeld and his team persisted in conducting the QDR as if would be possible to

maintain defense spending at contemporary levels.

A Failed and Self-Destructive Process to Date

15John T. Correll. In the Wake of the QDR, Air Force Magazine (September 2008), p. 74.16 Quadrennial Defense Review (February 2006).http://www.defenselink.mil/qdr/report/Report20060203.pdf17Andrew Krepinevich, Old Remedies for New Evils, 14 February 2006. Wall Street Journal.


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The Quadrennial Defense Review process, from 1993 until the present, has failed to dowhat it was intended provide a link among strategy, force-planning and defensebudgeting. Indeed, with every QDR, the situation has gotten worse. Whether the 2010document departs from this tradition remains to be seen.


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III. THE COMING QDR AND THE FY2010 BUDGETREQUEST

The ineffectiveness of DODs efforts in linking strategy to resources and reality, and in

force planning, has been compounded by a crisis in programming and budgeting. Thereare a wide range of critical areas in the defense budget and FDYP where impossible goalsin performance and scheduling, and cost escalation, pose a serious problem. Regardlessof the efforts to formulate strategy at the conceptual level, the operational reality is aDepartment of Defense where far too few hard choices have been made, where keyprograms are not fully defined or cannot be implemented, and where trade-offs will haveto be made between major increases in the budget and current force plans.

A Poisoned Chalice

For at least a decade, future year defense program budgets have been increasingly based

on unrealistic cost and program estimates designed to minimize apparent cost. The 2008Future Years Defense Plan (FYDP) is typical in overpromising and undercosting. Itanticipated that defense resources would rise from $482 billion for 2008 to $497 billionfor 2013. However, CBO estimated that if the program in the 2008 FYDP was carried outas envisioned, the demand for defense resources excluding funding for contingencies,would average $521 billion a year between 2014 and 2025 8 percent more than the2008 request excluding emergency supplemental funding. CBO also projected potentialunbudgeted costs (the dashed red lines in Figure 8), estimating that resource demandswill average about $100 billion annually between 2014 and 2025, some 20 percent higherthan the amount excluding those unbudgeted costs.


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Figure 8: DOD Projected Budget versus CBO Estimates

Source: CBO. The Long-Term Implications of Current Defense Plans: Detailed Update for Fiscal Year2008. March 2009, p. 2.

Similarly, DODs current baseline budget projections for operations and maintenancecosts have made far too little no allowance for ongoing wars, and are little more thanabsurd. There is no clear plan, program, and budget for dealing with the growing reset

problem of coping with wartime losses and wear, deciding what to transfer or leave behind, and how to make trade-offs between existing equipment, modifications andimprovements, and new systems.

Rising military manpower costs are a critical part of the problem in rising operating costs, but the problems go far deeper. Many of what are supposed to be wartime costs arealmost certain to become de facto military entitlement costs that will continue indefinitelyinto the future. The United States has also made cutbacks in force size and militarymanpower in the past that put US force levels far below the level need to implement isdeclared strategy, and that current efforts to increase Army and Marine Corp end-strengthonly begin to address.

The strains of over-deployment on a relatively small total volunteer force already threatenthe ability to recruit and retain the proper mix of force quality and quantity. It is clearthat, at a minimum, the United States will have to rebalance the size and relative role ofits active and reserve forces, and that it should comprehensively reexamine the real-worldtrade-offs between military personnel, career civilians, and a growing dependence oncontract personnel. Yet, no service has a credible program for shaping and maintaining itspresent forces and or/force goals.


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At the same time, the Department faces a crisis in procurement that Secretary Gates only began to address in his program cuts in CY2009. Every service has to some extentmortgaged its future by failing to contain equipment costs, and by trading existingequipment and force elements to develop new systems that it may never be able to

procure in the numbers planned. These failures in cost containment have beencompounded by the failure to make realistic assessments of technology and productioncapabilities, and the failure to set reasonable performance specifications and then stop thegrowth of technological risk and even more demanding performance specifications overtime.

Anyone who has studied the history of the Department of Defense, and its past planning,programming, and budgeting problems, knows that these problems are an all too familiarproblem that first received large-scale recognition during the Eisenhower Administration.The crisis did, however, sharply accelerate during eight years of the Bush Administration.

In addition to its failure to develop a meaningful long-term strategy or plan for the Iraqand Afghan Wars, the Bush Administration failed to properly resource its wars andproduce sound budgets. Since the start of the wars, the Department of Defense requestedemergency supplemental or bridge funding outside of the regular defense budget to payfor them.

The scale of this dual-track budget process is shown in Figure 9, and it created numerousproblems in terms of ensuring both effective planning and resource of the wars and inensuring suitable Congressional and media review. Emergency funding is exempt fromceilings applying to discretionary spending in Congresss annual budget resolutions.Given the urgent timing for supplementals -- and the reality that they receive less scrutinyand easily become laden with Congressional add-ons or pork, defense budgetdeliberations are short-circuited and oversight is reduced.


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Figure 9: Historical DOD Funding, FY2001-FY2010

Source: Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller), Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Request: SummaryJustification. May 2009, p. 4-1.

CBO estimates indicate that it may be possible to make major reductions in the cost ofthe Iraq War, especially now that all US combat units are scheduled to withdraw from

Iraq in the summer of 2010, and the remainder by the end of 2011. The problem,however, is that the Afghan War has long been underfunded, and continues to escalate.The rising cost of the Afghan conflict might offset any savings from US force cuts and ashift in the US mission in Iraq to strategic overwatch.

The combined cost of war, steadily rising military manpower costs, the underfunding ofoperations and maintenance, and a procurement crisis in every service will force theObama Administration to reshape almost every aspect of current defense plans,programs, and budgets in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, if the situation is to beimproved in any way. The QDR will need to:

Bring the overall pattern of operations and support into a well-managed and affordable path.

Deal with a crisis in defense manpower. Manage the problem of escalating military medical costs. Properly fund O&M and reset costs. Deal with a major crisis in defense procurement and the failure to manage military modernization.


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Winds of Change or Just Wind?

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates laid the foundation for some of these changes in April2009, when he proposed a large shift in budget priorities in the FY2010 Defense budget.The proposed budget cut many programs geared toward conventional warfare, such as

new orders of the F-22 Raptor and further development of Future Combat Systemsmanned vehicles, but increased funding for programs like the Special Forces.18 With the2010 Quadrennial Defense Review coming on the heels of these radical changes, theprospects for the QDR need to be examined in the context of the budget.

For FY2010, the Department of Defense requested a total of $663.8 billion. This requestbreaks down into $533.8 billion in discretionary budget authority to fund the base defense programs of operations and maintenance (O&M), modernization, housing, andhealthcare, and $130 billion to support overseas contingency operations (OCO), primarilyin Iraq and Afghanistan.19 By including the OCO request in the baseline, the FY2010budget proposal ends the use of supplemental requests to fund the Afghan and Iraq wars,

a move that will alleviate the oversight and budgeting problems associated withsupplemental requests.

However, even more significant than what was included in the baseline budget, was whatwas cut. Secretary Gates terminated the F-22 fighter jet, the VH-71 Presidentialhelicopter, and the Transformational Satellite (TSAT) program.20 He also outlined cuts inthe Armys Future Combat Systems, Navy shipbuilding operations, and missile defenseprograms.21 These cuts were designed to begin adjusting the military servicesmodernization plans to shift their focus away from a high technology focus onconventional warfighting, and the Revolution in Military Affairs, toward a morebalanced approach to fighting both conventional and irregular wars.

However, Secretary Gates cuts faced serious opposition in Congress at least in partbecause the Department had systematically lied to Congress for years about the cost andsuccess of the programs involved, and has systematically structured procurements toaffect as many districts and states as possible in an effort to make key programs difficultto cut. It should be noted that the Department has been even more systematic in lying byomission about the fact it does lobby in such a form, allows military officers toinformally lobby for such programs, encourages defense contractors to dispersesubcontracts and production efforts, underbudgets areas it knows the Congress will thenfully fund, and fails to report meaningful parametric and regressive cost estimates that

18

Robert M. Gates, Opening Statement to the House Armed Services Committee, Washington DC (13 May2009). Available at: http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=135019 Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller),Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Request: Summary Justification. May2009.20 Office of Management and Budget. Terminations, Reductions and Savings. Budget of the USGovernment Fiscal Year 2010. Washington DC, 2009. Available at:http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2010/assets/trs.pdf21 Office of Management and Budget. Terminations, Reductions and Savings. Budget of the USGovernment Fiscal Year 2010. Washington DC, 2009. Available at:http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2010/assets/trs.pdf
http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1350http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2010/assets/trs.pdfhttp://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2010/assets/trs.pdfhttp://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2010/assets/trs.pdfhttp://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2010/assets/trs.pdfhttp://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1350


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might discourage Congressional support. Ironically, it then blames the Congress for thepork it does so much to institutionalize in every aspect of DOD operations.

The most heated battle was fought over the F-22 Raptor, when the House AppropriationsCommittee added $369 million to the budget as a down payment for twelve fighters,

contrary to Gates wishes to cap the order at 187.

22

Although the Secretary argued thatthe fighter was a Cold War relic that has never been deployed in combat, supporters ofthe plan contended that it was necessary to deter peer threats.

In the end, the funding was stripped from the bill but only after a threatenedPresidential veto and efforts by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levinand the committees ranking Republican Senator John McCain. The Secretary did notwin every battle. Congress added $485 million to the militarys FY2010 budget to buythe first versions of the VH-71 helicopters and $560 million to buy a second engine forthe F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.23

In addition to the congressional opposition to his preliminary cuts, Secretary Gatesdecisions only began to address the fact that the military services have shown virtually nocapability to create a stable, affordable path towards modernization. Despite thecancellations, the United States still lacks a clear path towards modernizing its forceposture and its ability to implement a coherent force modernization strategy to actually bring conventional and irregular warfare capabilities into balance, or deal withcombinations of state and non-state threats.

Will the 2010 QDR Mark the Departments First Effort towards Integrity and

Honesty?

The 2010 QDR has the potential to be the next step in the reform process and toinstitutionalize the reforms Gates initiated with his budget cuts. Defense officials workingon the Obama administrations first QDR have identified capability gaps for the missionsthey anticipate, such as counterinsurgency and confrontations with regional adversaries.24

According to Michle Flournoy, the Under-Secretary of Defense Policy and the head ofGates QDR team, these capability gaps will be filled through a new round of decisionsabout what ships, aircraft, and ground vehicle programs can be purged from themodernization portfolio in order to increase spending on irregular warfare capabilitiesand efforts to deal with high-end asymmetric threats.25

22 Ann Gerhart and Perry Bacon Jr. Aggressive Coordinated Effort Led to F-22s Demise. The WashingtonPost(26 July 2009). Available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/25/AR2009072502370.html23 Tony Capaccio. House Panel Rejects Bid to End Lockheed Helicopter.Bloomberg(16 July 2009).Available at: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=at1ZXDWjtDiI24John T. Bennett. Shaping the Future,Defense News (3 August 2009). Available at:http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=421818525Flournoy: Gates, Lynn 'Very Engaged' in QDR, Will Ensure Budget Decisions 'Stick.' Inside Defense.(20 May 2009).


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However, more cancellations will not fill the procurement strategy vacuum that currentlyexists. The Department of Defense has not made any mention of a modernizationstrategy, a procurement plan, or a credible and affordable path forward, rendering thecurrent proposals a series of one time fixes that leave virtually every aspect of future

weapons systems modernization unresolved.

Linking the QDR to the FY2011 Budget?

As the previous analysis has shown, past QDRs have involved a critical strategy-realitygap between concepts and resources, and a near total disconnect between what the QDRsays and what the budget actually requests. This Secretary Gates has stated his intentionof rectifying his problem in the 2010 QDR. Defense officials have explicitly stated thatthe QDR is intended to shape the FY2011 defense budget.

At present, the Defense Department is drawing up the first round of insights from theQDR that are being translated by the Office of the Secretary of Defense into newguidance for the military services to adjust their weapon-system investments in FY2011.These early insights from the QDR analysis will both frame questions for senior leadersto consider as the congressionally mandated assessment continues as well as yield cleardirectives for the military services to revise their FY2011 to FY2015 investmentblueprints.26

Although it is a positive sign that Secretary Gates is attempting to correct the failings ofpast reviews, there are problems in the way he seems to intend to link the QDR to theFY2011 budget. Officials involved in the QDR say that the military reform effort isproducing new costs of up to $60 billion for equipment and other items deemed essentialfor American military missions.

Yet, according to David Ochmanek, deputy assistant secretary of defense for forcetransformation, the QDRs baseline assumption for defense spending is zero percent realgrowth in the budget from FY2011 to FY2015, which means that the budget in nominaldollars would grow only with the rate of inflation.27 Ochmanek later reversed his positionand stated that if the Secretary will ask for real growth if he believes it appropriate.

What is increasingly clear, however, is that because the 2010 QDR is being conductedwith the assumption of flat US defense budgets from FY2011 to FY2015, the services arebeing directed to adjust FY2011 spending plans to fill the capability gaps the review hasrevealed.28Work on the services lists will wrap up in late August, but the Pentagon has

already have ordered the services to begin nominating programs for funding cuts.

26 Jason Sherman. First Round of QDR Insights, FY-11 Budget Decisions Being Drafted. Inside the AirForce (3 July 2009).27John T. Bennett. Shaping the Future,Defense News (3 August 2009). Available at:http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=421818528John T. Bennett. Shaping the Future,Defense News (3 August 2009). Available at:http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4218185


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IV. CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS WITHOUT ABUILDING?

The Pentagon has announced the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review will examine the

national security implications of trends that complicate the exercise of Americanstatecraft, including the global economic crisis, climate change, cultural and demographicshifts and the increasing scarcity of resources like water and energy.29

Ultimately, however, the review seeks to answer the question of whether the US should posture its forces and focus its acquisitions on dealing with conventional threats fromrising peer competitors or more asymmetric threats emanating from weak and failingstates. Secretary Gates terms of reference considerably shorter than his predecessors60-page guidance in 2006 emphasized balance between these two competingpriorities, stressing the need to [institutionalize] capabilities such as counterinsurgencyand foreign military assistance and [maintain] the United States' existing conventional

and strategic technological edge against other military forces.

30

Hybrid Warfare

The concept of hybrid warfare, a type of warfare that requires the broadest possible rangeof force capabilities and flexibilities across the spectrum of operations, is expected to beinfluential in this years QDR.31 The concept of hybrid warfare garnered attention afterthe 2006 Lebanon War, a case study that will play a central role in QDR analysis.According to Under-Secretary Flournoy, it is the primary challenge facing the UnitedStates: Americas conventional dominance gives our adversaries, both state and non -state actors alike, incentives to explore asymmetric strategies strategies that they canuse to undermine our strengths and exploit our weaknesses.32

The rise of hybrid threats diverse, dynamic combinations of conventional, irregular,terrorist and criminal capabilities33will make pursuit of singular approaches difficult,necessitating innovative, hybrid solutions involving new combinations of all elements ofnational power. On the one hand, the United States has to be ready for irregular forms ofwarfare in which non-state actors use tactics such as IEDs and camouflage themselvesamong the non-combatant population. On the other hand, high-end asymmetric threatshave become a concern. Rising regional powers and rogue states may use highly

29 Michle Flournoy. Rebalancing the Force: Major Issues for QDR 2010, Center for Strategic andInternational Studies (29 April 2009). Available at:http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdf30

Robert M. Gates, A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age, Foreign Affairs(January/February 2009). Available at: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63717/robert-m-gates/a-balanced-strategy31 John J. Kruzel. US must prepare for hybrid warfare. USJFCOM. (13 February 2009). Available at:http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2009/no021309.html32Michle Flournoy. Rebalancing the Force: Major Issues for QDR 2010, Center for Strategic andInternational Studies (29 April 2009). Available at:http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdf33 George W. Casey Jr.http://www.ausa.org/publications/armymagazine/armyarchive/October2008/Documents/Casey.pdf
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdfhttp://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63717/robert-m-gates/a-balanced-strategyhttp://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63717/robert-m-gates/a-balanced-strategyhttp://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2009/no021309.htmlhttp://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdfhttp://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdfhttp://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2009/no021309.htmlhttp://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63717/robert-m-gates/a-balanced-strategyhttp://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63717/robert-m-gates/a-balanced-strategyhttp://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdf


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sophisticated technologies to deny the United States the ability to use its technologicaladvantages. Thus, Under Secretary Flournoy has indicated that one of the principalintellectual challenges of the QDR will be examining hybrid warfare and understandingits implications for how the United States shapes its forces now and in the future.34

Senior defense officials have also made it clear that the shift in focus to hybrid warfare isintended to insure that the military is prepared to deal with a spectrum of possible threats,including computer network attacks, attempts to blind satellite positioning systems,strikes by precision missiles and roadside bombs, and propaganda campaigns waged ontelevision and the Internet. Accordingly, the new strategy has broad implications fortraining, troop deployment, weapons procurement and other aspects of military planning.While some think that it signals the end of the two-theater metric for force-sizing, the oldmeasure is not necessarily dead - during early QDR sessions, Secretary Gates made clearthat the US military must still be able to project power into two regions at once.35

At the same time, however, hybrid warfare can easily become yet another concept

underpinning US defense posture that has very little operational meaning and which isdefined so broadly that it effectively asks the Department to prepare for every possiblekind of war and civil-military operation without setting clear priorities, creating clearlydefined force and procurement plans, and make well-defined and transparent trade-offsbased on suitable scenario, net assessment, and program-cost analysis.

Hybrid warfare may be an intellectual improvement over the emphasis on conventionalwarfighting in past reviews, but so far the concept is so loosely defined, that it does notprovide clear criteria for decision-making. Service efforts to define it have so far beenlittle more that shopping lists for every possible contingency mixed with buzzwordsthat appear to have meaning only as long as they are no examined in any detail. In practice, any concept that effectively justifies anything ends in justifying absolutelynothing.

It already is running into serious resource problems. It will be difficult to use hybridwarfare to define and cost end strength goals or to develop a new force plan, given themixed messages coming from DOD about force-sizing. More generally, however, theconcept provides no basis for shaping programs, nor does it rationalize cutting them.While Secretary Gates cut several high-technology weapons systems in the FY2010budget and argued that the money should instead be spent on programs like warplanesthat carry out a broader array of missions, from countering enemy air forces to bombinginsurgent militias in hiding, these cuts amount to a series of one-time fixes rather than along-term procurement programs.

34Michle Flournoy. Rebalancing the Force: Major Issues for QDR 2010, Center for Strategic andInternational Studies (29 April 2009). Available at:http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdf35John T. Bennett. Shaping the Future,Defense News (3 August 2009). Available at:http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4218185
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The Secretary did not announce a modernization strategy, a force plan, a procurementplan, or a credible and affordable path forward, and the concept of hybrid warfare willnot help him do this without tying it to the FYDP. Unless radical efforts are made toclarify the definition of hybrid warfare, it will be not a pillar of US strategy, but a buzzword for vague goals decoupled from specific force, modernization, or readiness

plans.High End vs. Low End Threats

Going from a quasi-two waror two regional contingencystrategy to an every possiblewar strategy can only make all of the Departments problems worse. US strategists areunquestionably correct in warning that religious and ideological structures, and theinability of states to meet the basic needs of their populations, may also be an increasingdriver of conflicts that require a US military response. In weak and failing states, there isthe danger that large ungoverned spaces will emerge and become safe havens forterrorists and criminal organizations.36 The 2010 QDR must take this end of the spectruminto account.

At the same time, the Pentagon cannot focus on todays wars and relatively low-endthreats; it must also seek to maintain the ability to counter high end conventional foes.While the United States continues to be the economically and militarily dominant power,Russia has achieved regional hegemony and states such as China and India are emergingas major players. The 2008 National Defense Strategy concluded that although USpredominance in conventional warfare is not unchallenged, it is sustainable only for themedium term given current trends. Thus, the 2010 QDR deliberations will attempt todetermine what programs are necessary to deter aggression, project power whennecessary, and protect US interests and allies around the globe.

Responding to this range of high end and low end threats requires the ability to bothadapt to irregular warfare by major powers while the maintaining both conventional andnuclear military capabilities. Thus, even as the United States begins to shift resourcestowards a strategy that seeks to support its ongoing wars and meet the threat other potential irregular campaigns, it must still find ways to main forces, procurementprograms, and levels of readiness to contend with the security challenges posed by themilitary forces of other major powers, particularly those at the strategic crossroadsinvolving large-scale conventional warfighting or the use of weapons of massdestruction.37

The end result is an inevitable debate over how to go from broad, vague, and/orbuzzword concepts to shaping actual force plans and resource choices. In some corners,

it has been argued that the Pentagon is neglecting the high end of the threat spectrum.Throughout the budget discussions in Congress, Secretary Gates was accused of

36Michle Flournoy. Rebalancing the Force: Major Issues for QDR 2010, Center for Strategic andInternational Studies (29 April 2009). Available at:http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdf37 Michle Flournoy. Rebalancing the Force: Major Issues for QDR 2010, Center for Strategic andInternational Studies (29 April 2009). Available at:http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdf
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdfhttp://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdfhttp://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdfhttp://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdf


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allocating too little funding to US conventional weapons systems and sacrificing USconventional dominance to bolster irregular capabilities. In response, he told legislators:

Some will say I am too focused on the wars we are in and not enough on future threats. Theallocation of dollars in this budget definitely belies that claim. But, it is important to rememberthat every defense dollar spent to over-insure against a remote or diminishing riskor, in effect,

to run up the score in a capability where the United State s is already dominantis a dollar notavailable to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in, and improvecapabilities in areas where we are underinvested and potentially vulnerable. That is a risk I willnot take.38

The fact is that the US cannot afford every form of hybrid warfare and must make hard,well-defined, and affordable choices that involve serious risks. For example, some of theequipment decisions that Secretary Gates made in his FY2010 budget request have amajor impact on conventional warfighting capabilities in the future, but he provided nodetails or no clear force plans to explain what choices have actually been made about thestrategic goals for US warfighting capabilities and how these translate into shifts in forceplans, future equipment strength, and budgets.

The end result is that DOD is adopting a strategy that creates far more uncertaintiesregarding key decisions about forces, programs, and procurement. If the United States issupposed to be able to defeat peer competitors in conventional war yet also deal withhybrid threats from non-state actors, how should forces be sized? What high-technologyweapons systems will be necessary to defeat peer competitors? Is there a stable, costeffective procurement path to achieve them? It is unclear the extent to which the 2010QDR will answer these questions. One thing is certain, howeverit is not enough to saythat the United States should have all capabilities yet provide no clear plan to achievethem. Every time the 2010 QDR dodges around defining force structure, procurement,and readiness choices, it will be intellectually dishonest and operationally dysfunctional:Another F+ instead of the A- effort the US so badly needs.

Rebalancing in an Effort to Close the Strategy Reality Gap?

It is far too early, however, to judge what the Department will do. Defense officials haveannounced that the QDRwill examine how the military might rebalance its capabilitiesto deal with the increasingly complex set of national security challenges in faces. 39 DODis looking to create a force that is flexible and versatile enough to conduct a wide rangeof operations in order to strike a balance between these competing requirements.

The shift is foreshadowed in the FY2010 budget request, which set aside billions ofdollars for procurement to support overseas contingency operations from remote-

controlled aircraft to new helicoptersbut cut high-technology weapons systems. One ofGates priorities in the budget was to rebalance the Defense Departments programs inorder to institutionalize and enhance capabilities to fight the wars the United States is in

38 Jim Garamone, Gates Lays Out Budget Recommendations, DefenseLink (6 April 2009). Available at:http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=5381239Michle Flournoy. Rebalancing the Force: Major Issues for QDR 2010, Center for Strategic andInternational Studies (29 April 2009). Available at:http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdf
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=53812http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdfhttp://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdfhttp://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=53812


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today and the scenarios it is most likely to face in the years ahead, while at the same timeproviding a hedge against other risks and contingencies.40

Secretary Gates has argued the Pentagon must focus on the current fights in Iraq andAfghanistan instead of preparing for hypothetical threats, such as the one posed by China.

The most likely threats that is, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will purportedlygarner the majority of the militarys planning focus, while the decades-old approach ofprioritizing the most deadly scenarios planners can foresee will be abandoned.

If Secretary Gates and his team are to produce a QDR that corrects the past disconnect between its concepts and the budget, however, they must tightly link their centralconcepts to meaningful budget figures, realistic force plans, honest procurementdecisions, and metrics to measure its success. If there is any clear message to be drawnfrom both the failures of the past, and the vague rhetoric of the present, it is that conceptssuch as hybrid warfare and high-end asymmetric threats are little more than emptybuzzwords when they are decoupled from force plans and budget figures.

40 Robert M. Gates, Speech, Army War College, Carlisle, PA (16 April 2009). Available at:http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1345
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V. SEEKING MEANINGFUL ANSWERS

There are indications that the conceptual foundations of the 2010 QDR will have aneffect on the budget. The Department has announced that Under Secretary Flournoys

staff has drafted a range of new investment options -- from $25 billion to $75 billion overthe next five years -- to improve US military capabilities against high-end asymmetricthreats, hybrid warfare and weak and failing states.41 These investments will be financedlargely through cuts made to programs in the services fiscal year FY2011 to FY2015spending plans. However, in the grand scheme of the defense budget, this amount isrelatively small, and more extensive links with the budget will have to be established ifthe results of the review are to have any significant meaning.

The Scenarios

Under Secretary Flournoy and her team are structuring the QDR around a series ofscenarios in an attempt to ground some of the concepts of hybrid warfare and high end

asymmetric threats in real-world events and decisions. Five issues teams will examine11 scenarios that represent a broad cross-section of the threats that the United States facesand is likely to face in the near future:

Issue Team 1 is examining how to ensure irregular warfare capabilities are expanded and adoptedacross the defense enterprise. It will analyze four scenarios revolving around US-led stability andreconstruction operations: operations in Iraq (post-2003), operations in Afghanistan, regimecollapse in North Korea and a loss of control over nuclear weapons in Pakistan.

Issue Team 2 will analyze three scenarios that involve major conflicts against state adversaries:China and Taiwan, Russia and its coercion of Baltic states, and an Iran armed with nuclearweapons

Issue Team 3 is focusing on how to strengthen Defense Department support to civilian agencies inboth domestic and overseas operations. This team will examine homeland defense, civil support,disaster consequence management, and cyberattacks.

Issue Team 4 is focusing on recalibrating U.S. military presence around the world. It will examinesteady state strategic planning (SSSP). In this scenario, the Pentagon aims to capture dailyactivities by the combatant commanders that have not traditionally been accounted for in terms ofplanning and programming (e.g. short-term missions on a routine basis that require a persistentlevel of effort).

Issue Team 5 is working on managing the Defense Department's internal business processes toimprove their efficiency and effectiveness. This team will examine business processes and costdrivers behind defense programs.42

The practical question is whether a study of potential regional contingencies arisestructured around relatively abstract scenarios will provide a coherent basis for making

41 Jason Sherman. Flournoy: QDR Must Prepare for End of U.S. Lead in Global Commons. Inside thePentagon (9 July 2009).42Jason Sherman. Secretary of Defense Taps Red Team to Critique Process, Scenarios. Inside the Army.Vol. 21, No. 19 (18 May 2009).


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hard decisions about end strength, procurement, and key FYDP and PPB issues. Only thefifth issue team is costing defense programs. With the teams working concurrently, it isunclear that the others will be able to take their findings into consideration.

Moreover, Pentagon officials have repeatedly stressed that the QDR will focus on the

most likely threats to the United States. However, both the concept of hybrid warfareand the scenarios outlined above encompass a vast range of threats that the United Statescould face and does clearly provide a basis for prioritizing them in ways that can shapethe PPB process. If most likely functionally becomes everything, then the approachwill merely be an unaffordable, capabilities-driven expansion of the old most deadlythreat analysis.

As has been discussed in analyzing the broad concept of hybrid warfare, examining allpossible threats provides no criteria upon which the services can structure their forces.Secretary Gates recognizes that to fight irregular wars and take on peer competitors suchas China, the military will need to be flexible; however, without prioritizing the scenarios

and using that ranking as a platform for clear force, procurement, and budget plans, theQDRs analysis will remain abstract and can never be made operational in a systematicand effective form.

The Red Team and Alternate Scenarios

Secretary Gates has also established a QDR Red Team to provide an alternative to theassessment that Under-secretary Flournoy and her office are leading. Andrew Marshall,director of the Office of Net Assessment, and General James Mattis, commander of USJoint Forces Command, are leading the Red Team, which involves the participation ofexperts outside the government. Marshall led the QDR Red Team for the 2006 QDR,while Mattis has led Marines in Afghanistan and during two tours in Iraq.43

Marshall and Mattis have devised a classified set of alternative defense planningscenarios for the QDR to consider. Pentagon officials who have read the QDR Red Teamalternative scenario set said it tracks closely with some of the notional plots described inthe book 7 Deadly Scenarios by defense analyst Andrew Krepinevich, which inspiredSecretary Gates to create his Red Team.44 Scenarios in the book include:

A radial Islamist group acquires Soviet-era atomic weapons and conducts a protracted series ofnuclear strikes against the U.S. homeland;

Coordinated attacks on offshore energy production facilities, container ships and underwatercommunication lines that collectively are designed to upend the domestic and global economies;

A US retreat from Iraq; A Chinese invasion of Taiwan that triggers global war;

43 John T. Bennett, Marshall, Mattis to Lead Red Team,Defense News (May 15 2009). Available at:http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=409235644 Christopher J. Castelli. QDR Shakes Up Planning Process for Future Military Missions. Inside the ArmyVol. 21, No. 21. (June 1 2009)
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4092356http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4092356


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A Pakistani civil war that raises questions about the safety of the South Asian nation's nucleararsenal;

Confrontation with North Korea that involves a nuclear strike; and A global pandemic.

Which scenarios are used in the will form the basis of fundamental questions about whatsort of organizational design and what types of capabilities the future military requires,even if they are not tied to real-world force and procurement plans. The models selectedand simulations run during a review have a profound impact on its output. With theintroduction of an alternative set of scenarios, whichever batch is given greater weightduring the deliberations will largely determine the findings of the review.

According to Under-Secretary Flournoy, these scenarios don't determine outcomes, theydon't dictate decisions, but they will help frame some of the issues that we want to look atmore closely with further analysis.45 However, although scenarioswhether blue or red

team can be useful tools in revealing weaknesses in military readiness, too often theanalysis stops there and merely highlights issues for future consideration and deferstangible action. Thus, while it is useful to analyze non-linear cases, translating twocompeting sets of abstract scenarios into probabilities and then into programmatic, force,and budget decisions is an immensely complex undertaking that could distract from themost pressing issue at hand grounding the QDR in meaningful force plans andbudgetary decisions.

The National Defense Panel

There also will be outside advice and pressure to close the strategy reality gap. On June18, the House Armed Services Committees FY2010 defense authorization billestablished a congressional commission for critiquing the Quadrennial Defense Review.

The National Defense Panel's task will be to conduct an independent review of the QDR'seffectiveness and issue recommendations on how to improve the decision making processfor determining national priorities.46 Although it is still unclear exactly what authority itwill have, the National Defense Panel will likely be used as a platform for interestedparties to attempt to review the termination of the F-22 and other major procurements orto advocate for a greater commitment to irregular warfare.

45Jason Sherman. Secretary of Defense Taps Red Team to Critique Process, Scenarios. Inside the Army.Vol. 21, No. 19 (18 May 2009).46 Inside the Pentagon. House Bill Boosts Special Ops Funding, Creates QDR Commission. Inside thePentagon (18 June 2009).


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VI. KEY ISSUES AFFECTING THE CONTENT OFTHE QDR

It is also clear that the 2010 QDR can only be meaningful if it provides a clear basis for

addressing the most critical issues in US force planning, procurement planning, readiness,programming and budgeting. Regardless of scenarios, these issues have to be addressed ifonly because strategy and planning have created so many near and mid-term problems inthe existing US defense effort.

Force Sizing

The QDRs emphasis on hybrid warfare will have significant implications for how thePentagon goes about determining the kinds and quantities of tools and troops it will need,and for what kinds of conflicts.Since the Cold War, the Pentagon has used a force-sizingconstruct that focused on a need to fight two conventional wars at once. Despite the riseof irregular threats, the two major wars metric has persisted through all past QuadrennialDefense Reviews.

Secretary Gates has declared his intention to change this construct: If there is one majoraspect of the QDR that I have insisted that we try and get away from, it is this constructthat we've had, for such a long time, that we size our forces to be able to fight two majorcombat operations.47

The question is whether the Pentagon can make hybrid warfare a practical basis forreorienting its decades-old force sizing and basing constructs.48 Ii must be careful toshape its long-term security strategies and force structure to create an affordable set oftrade-offs, rather than overcompensate for its past neglect of the strategic realities of theAfghan and Iraq Wars by structuring its forces to deal primarily with counterinsurgency.This is especially important because altering the force-sizing construct will affect nearlyevery aspect of US military operations, from which weapons the services buy to how theUS military is positioned around the world.

No decision has yet been made about finding the proper balance, roles and missions, andreadiness and equipment levels for any element of the active forces, reserves, and National Guard issues with critical outyear resource, force planning, and missioncapability requirements that are inevitably affected by the past over-deployment of forceelements involved in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Reform depends on successful actions, not intentions. Despite Gates public exhortations

that the force-sizing construct must be changed, it is useful to remember that there wassimilar talk of change in this area in the lead-up to the 2005 QDR. Moreover, David

47Robert M. Gates. Press Conference with Secretary Gates and Adm. Mullen Department of Defense (18June 2009). Available at: http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=443548General James E. Cartwright. Military Strategy Forum: Whither the Forward -Basingo