Girding For Battle

[selil]

Interesting piece looking at the variety of issues that are going to be coming up in the defense sector?

LINK

The Pentagon and military services are gearing up for a bruising quadrennial review that could reshape the way we fight.

Six years into the longest period of sustained combat since Vietnam, the U.S. military is suffering from strategic drift, uncertain about which of many potential security threats should determine the future size and composition of the armed forces.

The military services already are building their analytic capabilities for the looming budget battle many expect to coincide with the next Quadrennial Defense Review. The congressionally mandated QDR occurs every four years and is designed to align national security strategy to resources and force levels to address future threats. The next QDR, due in early 2010, will coincide with a new presidential administration and new management team at the Pentagon. That group will have almost a year to shape the final draft of the review. This QDR - the fourth since Congress mandated the reviews in 1997 - must issue specific guidance and make tough decisions regarding Defense budgeting and force levels. The Defense Department's base budget, not counting emergency supplemental appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan, is approaching $500 billion. Planned investment in new weapons systems has doubled from $750 billion in 2001 to almost $1.5 trillion in 2007.

Whatever the outcome of the next presidential election, it's likely that the steady growth in Defense budgets since the Sept. 11 attacks - on the order of 6 percent per year - will be slowed as ground force levels in Iraq decline and the next administration addresses neglected domestic concerns such as decaying transportation infrastructure and burgeoning benefits obligations. As mandatory entitlement spending rises, driven in large part by Social Security payments to retiring baby boomers, discretionary spending will fall. Comptroller General David M. Walker issued a clear warning to the military in congressional testimony last fall: "Given the security environment and growing longer-range fiscal imbalance facing our nation, DoD, like other federal agencies, will increasingly compete for resources in a fiscally constrained environment."

Much more at the link....

[Global Scout]

The first challenge is to clearly define our national security objectives, and then define what type of force we need to protect or achieve these objectives. Instead we'll see a bitter budget fight among the services, then within the services (strategic versus fighter versus transport for the Air Force) and conventional versus SOF for the Army, and light versus heavy within the conventional army. The fight won't be based on a clear strategy, because there won't be one, so there will be no true basis for logical arguments, just personal interests. In the end Congress will way in strongly based on pork barrel projects for their districts. What's new?

Every day Charlie squats in the jungle he gets stronger.

[Ken White]

Congress and the stupid political parties.

Defining our national security objectives is the responsibility of the Administration -- and the writers of the Constitution set it up that way as they knew a (they then thought) relatively rapidly changing Congress would not have the continuity required to develop such objectives over the long term. We used to do that but recent trends mean that each Administration comes in determined to undo what its predecessor did.

Congress should put the national interest first, instead they are concerned with party primacy, their prerogatives and reelection so they force the services (all the US government agencies, for that matter...) into the bicker and barter mode for the benefit of Congress and long term incumbency and not for the good of the country.

I could fault the services for going along with that stupid game but they actually have little choice. It will not improve until Congress fixes itself and that will not occur until we voters just routinely vote against all incumbents. It'll take a generation to get the message through but it ain't gonna get better until the way Congress operates gets changed...