rssHuge Defense Planning Document Leaks; What Does It Mean for the Budget?
Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 10:49 am
- 9 Comments
Apropos of my story today about the consistently-ballooning defense budget, Defense News has a leak of the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon’s big planning document that, among other things, is supposed to shape the budget. This is just a leak of a draft, and not the final document. But the document is entering its absolute final phase, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will be testifying about it and next year’s budget (they’re released simultaneously) before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. As I wrote today, Gates sent strong signals last year that the QDR would signal what further big-ticket items would get reined in or cut altogether.
And the draft suggests that Gates wasn’t playing around. Some bullet points:
The FY11 budget build on FY10, providing additional attention to key lines of investment that are highlighted in the reports
? Taking care of our troops and our people
? Reforming how we buy and operate
Rebalancing for:
? The current fight
? Plausible future challenges
Now, you can’t tell from that what will be cut. The defense budget is always a fight between the immediate challenges of the present and what each military service envisions as the future of war and its relevance to it. Gates has said, repeatedly — and conspicuously last year when he chopped a bunch of programs — that he’s sick of buying stuff for every conceivable challenge, no matter how hypothetical. But we need to wait and see how that cashes out. The draft’s intro says:
QDR analyses centered on the following challenge areas: defending the United States and providing defense support to civil authorities, conducting irregular operations (including counterinsurgency, stability operations, and counter-terrorist operations), defeating adversaries armed with anti-access capabilities, countering weapons of mass destruction, and operating effectively in cyberspace.
That paragraph strongly suggests — as does Gates’ entire tenure, really — that the Pentagon ought to be reoriented around immediate, manifested challenges. (I guess you could argue that the “anti-access capabilities” thing is the exception; my ignorant speculation is that’s in there so the South Koreans and Japanese don’t think we’re ignoring North Korea.) But here’s the thing: the services are really good at arguing that their existing priorities are applicable to new circumstances. That’s how the F-22, a Cold War-era fighter aircraft, survived until Gates killed it last year. So we’ll have to see how exactly the budget measures up to the QDR construct. Does it rebrand old wine or does it smash some corked bottles?
Luckily, Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, will give a speech on Tuesday, before Gates and Mullen testify, on the QDR.
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9 Comments
Comment posted January 28, 2010 @ 11:55 am
“Anti-access capabilities” refers to a lot of things, and it is the exception, but I read it to mainly refer to China and Iran. Both of which employ advanced integrated air defense systems, so stealth and jamming capabilities are needed in some quantities to protect and enable our air power. And in China's case, it is working on missiles that will be able to keep naval forces (and naval-launched aircraft) at stand-off distances and supress sorties generated from air bases like Kadena. Gates talked about this a bit at the AFA conference last fall. Iran's ability to shut down naval access, particularly by closing off the narrow Strait of Hormuz with short-range missiles, is a concern as well
War with either of those two countries would be bad, real bad, but if they feel confident that they can fight and win against the US in a relatively painless way – with the help of anti-access weapons that nullify our technological advantage – that could embolden aggressive moves on their part. Plus we want to hedge our bets just in case. Or that's the thinking, as I read it.
Comment posted January 28, 2010 @ 2:11 pm
Yeah. My guess is that it's kind of cynical. You can't write a QDR that says, “Look, let's grow up; we're not going to fight a conventional war; so we're not going to invest in this stuff.” Heads would explode. Hearings would be convened. So at least the phraseology puts the relics in their place, subsumed within actual challenges.
Comment posted January 28, 2010 @ 4:46 pm
“Anti-access capabilities” is aimed squarely at conventional war with the Chinese. Gates has been very upfront about the need to maintain conventional warfighting capacity, it's just that people push a counterinsurgency-focused narrative on his views when he wants the DoD to focus on -realistic- threats rather than the Soviet Union's offensive across the Fulda Gap in 2012. He is on record as saying that only 10% of the DoD's mammoth budget should fund capabilities that are only useful in “unconventional” war as opposed to dual-use or “conventional-only” war items.
Realistic threats to the United States consist of a number of insurgencies fueling global instability, weapons of mass destruction and China. There's you QDR.
Comment posted January 28, 2010 @ 4:55 pm
“Anti-access capabilities” refers to a lot of things, and it is the exception, but I read it to mainly refer to China and Iran. Both of which employ advanced integrated air defense systems, so stealth and jamming capabilities are needed in some quantities to protect and enable our air power. And in China's case, it is working on missiles that will be able to keep naval forces (and naval-launched aircraft) at stand-off distances and supress sorties generated from air bases like Kadena. Gates talked about this a bit at the AFA conference last fall. Iran's ability to shut down naval access, particularly by closing off the narrow Strait of Hormuz with short-range missiles, is a concern as well
War with either of those two countries would be bad, real bad, but if they feel confident that they can fight and win against the US in a relatively painless way – with the help of anti-access weapons that nullify our technological advantage – that could embolden aggressive moves on their part. Plus we want to hedge our bets just in case. Or that's the thinking, as I read it.
Comment posted January 28, 2010 @ 7:11 pm
Yeah. My guess is that it's kind of cynical. You can't write a QDR that says, “Look, let's grow up; we're not going to fight a conventional war; so we're not going to invest in this stuff.” Heads would explode. Hearings would be convened. So at least the phraseology puts the relics in their place, subsumed within actual challenges.
Comment posted January 28, 2010 @ 9:46 pm
“Anti-access capabilities” is aimed squarely at conventional war with the Chinese. Gates has been very upfront about the need to maintain conventional warfighting capacity, it's just that people push a counterinsurgency-focused narrative on his views when he wants the DoD to focus on -realistic- threats rather than the Soviet Union's offensive across the Fulda Gap in 2012. He is on record as saying that only 10% of the DoD's mammoth budget should fund capabilities that are only useful in “unconventional” war as opposed to dual-use or “conventional-only” war items.
Realistic threats to the United States consist of a number of insurgencies fueling global instability, weapons of mass destruction and China. There's you QDR.
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