Defense review addresses uncertain, unpredictable world

  • Published
  • By Jim Garamone
  • American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON (AFPN) --  The Quadrennial Defense Review, to be delivered to Congress Feb. 6, will be dominated by two words: uncertainty and unpredictability, senior defense officials said Jan. 25.

Congress mandates that the Department of Defense conduct the QDR every four years to ensure the armed forces have the right mix of people, skill sets and capabilities to meet current and future challenges to national security.

"We cannot predict with any certainty whatsoever how our forces may be used in the future," an official said. "We can say with a very high probability that in the next 10 years, U.S. forces will be employed somewhere in the world where they are not today."

Officials said the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, forced a change in U.S. security and military strategies. While transforming the Defense Department was already a priority, the attacks imposed a "powerful sense of urgency" on the department.

The United States is now in the fifth year of a different war, and "we need to shift our balance and (the) capabilities we have," an official said.

Officials said the 2005 review discusses four major challenges. The first is threats posed by traditional foes.

"This basically involved major combat ops and state versus state conflicts, and we looked at everything else as a lesser included case to be able to meet that," an official said.

In the future, irregular challenges will be more common. Official used Iraq and Afghanistan as examples of irregular threats facing the United States, but included operations in areas such as the Horn of Africa, the Philippines and Haiti in this challenge. The enemy in this case would be within the state, but not sponsored by the state.

A third challenge is a "catastrophic set of challenges." These are unacceptable attacks on the United States such as Sept. 11 or Pearl Harbor.

"Getting hit by a nuclear (improvised explosive device) in one of our cities would be an example of that," an official said.

The fourth is a "disruptive" challenge.

"That is a challenge or threat that would come against us and neutralize the American military as a key instrument of national power," an official said.

This review looks at developing military capabilities to address all four challenges.

A second part of the review recognizes that changing forces in the field would mean re-vamping headquarters. He said the current headquarters’ setups are not sufficiently agile to command the fighting forces America has already deployed.

This review capitalized on lessons the U.S. military has learned around the world. Lessons from experiences in the Horn of Africa, Former Soviet Republic of Georgia and Africa's Pan Sahel region figured prominently because of the new way America had to deal with allies. Developing capabilities in allies is as important as developing capabilities in the U.S. military, officials said.

Humanitarian operations are another big area for the American military. Officials said the "biggest victories to date in the war on terrorism" have been in the U.S. response to the tsunami in the Indian Ocean and to the earthquake in Pakistan. As a result of those operations the "shift away from radical Islam has been very, very significant," an official said.

The review addresses four focus areas:

-- Providing in-depth homeland defense;

-- Hastening the demise of terror networks;

-- Stopping hostile powers or rogue elements from acquiring weapons of mass destruction; and

-- Influencing countries at strategic crossroads.

Officials believe this will influence three countries at these strategic crossroads: Russia, China and India.

The review has 12 areas that cover everything from headquarters functions, to partnership capabilities, to recommending "leading-edge technologies" that could help warfighters in the fiscal 2007 budget request. Officials said major shifts in acquisition funding must be part of the Future Years Defense Plan.

Finally, the force-planning construct is basically a refined version of the 2001 review. The U.S. military will be able to do two near simultaneous major conflicts, one of which involves regime change, an official said.

"Going forward, we want one of them to be a prolonged irregular campaign," he said. "The analysis we did in the QDR clearly proved the most stressing thing on the force is not the high-intensity major combat operations, but the prolonged irregular campaign that requires a rotational base to support it."