QDR will reflect tomorrow’s, not today’s, challenges

  • Published
  • By Donna Miles
  • American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON (AFPN) --  Military leaders will resist any temptation to assume the force needed for the future will be a cookie-cutter version of today's needs, Gen. Richard B. Myers said here July 25.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was talking about how the military will examine its forces, resources and programs during the upcoming 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review.

The QDR, he told the group, needs to consider the broad range of missions the U.S. military could be called to support. These run the gamut from full-scale combat operations to nontraditional missions ranging from counterinsurgency missions to stability operations as well as homeland defense.

"We want to make sure, when we get our forces set here in the early part of the 21st century, that they can deal with a wide variety of threats," General Myers said. "We cannot focus on just one area." Similarly, he said, planners cannot assume future operations will be run like today's.

"The way Afghanistan was fought was different than the way Iraq was fought, and Iraq will be different than whatever we will be called on to do next, whether it's humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping or whatever it might be," General Myers said. "We have to be careful that we don't fall victim to templates of what we are currently doing now."

How to create the best-structured, -trained and -equipped force for these various missions will be the QDR's "essence," the general said.

Defense and military leaders already recognize that there is too much conventional force structure in some areas, the general said. The Army is working to rebalance the skills within its active and reserve components, and to transform some "heavy" units into lighter, more agile units.

The report, which examines emerging threats and balances them against current capabilities, is instrumental in shaping budgets, strategy and force structure.

The most recent Quadrennial Defense Review, conducted in 2001, occurred just before the U.S. entered the war on terrorism later that year. Much of that review's emphasis was on transforming the military from its Cold War posture to a lighter, more capable and deployable force better suited to 21st-century threats.