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

LINK

Quote Originally Posted by Girding For Battle
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....