PREFACE [TO BE WRITTEN BY SECDEF SPEECHWRITER]
■ Established initial administration narrative in FY2010 process
■ Strategy-based: 2008 NDS and Presidential reform priorities o Significant attention to eliminating or reducing poorly performing programs Initiated strategic reviews (QDR, NPR, SPR, BMDR) to refine approach
■ These reviews update the NDS, providing the long-term vision to guide the administration's defense activity
■ 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
■ QDR 2010
■ Acknowledges and puts top priority on succeeding in today's conflicts
■ Balance near-and longer-term risks
■ Reflects the complexity of the security environment and calls for flexible and adaptable forces o Emphasizes defense of the homeland, defense support to civil authorities, and prevention activities alongside our overseas contingencies
■ Recasts our global defense posture and our deterrence approaches
■ Focuses on creating a sustainable rotation base to support long-duration operations
Further integrate with other agencies (state, VA, AID, DOE, DHS, etc.)
The Department of Defense conducted the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) from February 2009 through January 2010. From the outset, this QDR was predicated on two principles. The first was that the Department's senior civilian and military leaders would be heavily engaged in the review. This included setting the governing structures and overall scope of the review, reviewing and approving its basic assumptions and scenarios, evaluating early insights and findings, and deciding on new policies, initiatives, and investments to emerge from it.
The second principle was inclusiveness: From top to bottom, the QDR provided vehicles for those with requisite knowledge and expertise to contribute to assessments of the force and the development of potential enhancements to it. And key stakeholders at every level had opportunities to review results as they were developed and to help shape them.
The QDR was strategy driven. It began with an assessment of the many ways in which the U.S. Armed Forces will be called upon to protect and advance the nation's interests. This assessment was grounded in the National Defense Strategy approved by Secretary Gates in June 2008 and was refined through a series of interagency exchanges in the early months of 2009 that were managed by the National Security Council staff. These efforts culminated in the President's National Security Strategy, which was published in January 2010. The QDR was analytically grounded. Very early in the QDR, the Secretary, advised by other senior leaders within the Department, reviewed, modified, and endorsed an assessment of the emerging global security environment that characterized potential threats, challenges, and opportunities that could affect important U.S. interests. This assessment informed the selection of a set of scenarios that the QDR used to help evaluate current and future forces. Many scenarios were set in the future to facilitate the evaluation of forces programmed for the end of the Future Years Defense Plan or beyond. However, the analysis also focused heavily on assessing the needs of commanders and forces in the field today, principally in Afghanistan and Iraq, in order to ensure that the Department's leaders had a clear picture of the demands of ongoing operations as they consider resource tradeoffs.
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. Teams of analysts drew upon and conducted a wide range of efforts in order to assess the capabilities and capacity of programmed and alternative forces. Insights were drawn from:
■ Assessments of field reporting and lessons learned from ongoing operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere;
■ Interactive war games and tabletop exercises involving strategists, planners, and operators;
■ Combat modeling and simulation at the tactical, operational, and campaign levels; and
■ All-source analysis of the social, political, economic, and security dynamics in countries and regions that could generate threats-deliberate and otherwise-to the interests of the United States, its allies, and its partners.
Together, these analytical efforts yielded insights regarding existing or potential gaps in the capabilities of U.S. forces as well as shortfalls in capacity in some areas. Analysis teams also gathered and evaluated proposals for addressing gaps and shortfalls in the capabilities of the force. Once these proposals were vetted, collated, and costed, they formed the basis for revised planning guidance issued by the Secretary prior to the completion of program objective memoranda by DoD components.
Lessons learned from ongoing operations and insights from individual scenarios served as yardsticks for assessing the capabilities of current and future forces. Alternative combinations of scenarios allowed decision makers to evaluate the aggregate capacity of future forces and to assess the extent to which those forces could cope with the possibility of multiple, overlapping contingencies. As such, they informed decisions about the force sizing and shaping construct promulgated by this QDR.
As the QDR generated insights and interim findings, these were shared with and reviewed by a wide range of experts, both within DoD and beyond. Over the course of the review, analysis team leaders and others provided progress briefings to Congressional staff roughly once per month. QDR staff also consulted with and briefed representatives of allied governments. The governments of the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada generously detailed full-time staff members to the Pentagon to participate in the QDR and to provide their perspectives on force planning and operational needs. And participants in the QDR held a series of meetings with leading defense analysts outside of government who represented a wide range of views.
The QDR received the closest scrutiny from a Red Team constituted by the Secretary explicitly for this purpose. The Red Team was co-chaired by Andrew Marshall, the Director of OSD's Office of Net Assessment, and by General James Mattis, commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command. Under their leadership the Red Team, which comprised retired senior military officers and other defense experts, convened through the spring and summer of 2009 and reviewed every aspect of the QDR's approach. The Red Team also conducted its own appraisal of the emerging security environment, as well as independent assessments of the capabilities of programmed U.S. forces. These assessments centered on a set of war games conducted by the Red Team. The leaders of the Red Team reported their findings to the Secretary in September.
The QDR was conducted in tandem with a number of other reviews relating to U.S. national security ends, ways, and means. The Nuclear Policy Review, Space Policy Review, and Ballistic Missile Defense Review, all led by DoD, were conducted in parallel with the QDR. Each effort informed and was informed by the others as they went forward. Each review will issue its own report. Representatives of DoD also engaged with their counterparts in the Departments of State and Homeland Security as they undertook their Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review and Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, sharing views about the process of strategic planning as well as insights regarding key missions, capabilities, and plans in issue areas that overlap their agencies' responsibilities.
The sections that follow describe a number of initiatives that, together, comprise the results of this QDR. Some take the form of new policies; others involve the development of new capabilities or growth in the capacity of a part of the force; still others call for further study of an issue that is not yet adequately understood. As is always the case, resource constraints will not allow our government to fully address all of the potential challenges that present themselves. Choices must be made. Some initiatives can be taken right away; others must be postponed. Where it has not been possible to set in motion programs to meet important operational needs, the Secretary has identified vectors for the future evolution of capabilities, calling on DoD components to devote sustained efforts toward developing new concepts and capabilities for addressing those needs. Assessments of future operating environments will refine our understanding of future needs: the Department will continue to look assiduously for savings in less pressing mission and program areas so that more resources can be devoted to filling these gaps.
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