In a story hidden behind the Inside Defense firewall, Christopher Castelli has written a story detailing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' six page response to the QDR Review Panel's report. Nobody thinks their baby is ugly, and SECDEF is no different, apparently mounting a focused defense of both the methodology and the product of the QDR 2010 process. A couple of thoughts:
1. On the QDR Review Panel's dissatisfaction with the QDR's long term force planning construct, and the force sizing and shaping constructs, I find for the Secretary. I see in the QDR an innovative and thoughtful approach to force planning, and from my familiarity with the scenarios used, I am satisfied that a broad range of potential conflict/combinations of conflict were reviewed.
2. On the Review Panel's general assertion that the QDR did not adequately address the "future" well, I find for the Review Panel. It appeared to me that this QDR's emphasis was far too near-term (as in within the POM) based. This view is not in conflict with the view rendered in #1--while I believe the QDR panel to have been innovative in its constructs, I believe much of that work gets swept aside in the near-term focus.
3. On the criticism of the Review Panel's recourse to the Bottom Up Review force, I render no clear decision. Obviously, the Review Panel was familiar with and yearned for some kind of standard force planning construct. Presumably lacking the resources (or mandate?) to create their own, they looked back into our recent past and selected the 1993 BUR force as representative of the force levels required today. To review--the Soviet Union had fallen, leaving no peer or near-peer competitor. There was no global Jihad. While there were security interests around the world, the framers of THAT force structure faced a far more benign world than we do today and yet they STILL produced a force structure far in excess of that which we have today. Yes of course, capacity does not equal capability, and the technology jumps made in the interim have erased some of the difference between that force and this one. It is an open question though, just how much was erased.
4. Specific to the Navy ship numbers, I find for the QDR Review Panel. Undersecretary of the Navy Bob Work debuted the Administration's counter-argument about the Navy ship numbers on August 3rd in a speech at CSIS, and Secretary Gates letter reflects that argument. The review panel recommends a force structure of 346 ships -- though it is fairly vague about the types of ships advocated, as opposed to the QDR which breaks them down more specifically. The Administration's response to the QDR Review Panel is summarized with a quote from the cited story: "The fleet described in the QDR, with its overall target of 313 to 323 ships, has roughly the same number of aircraft carriers, nuclear-attack submarines, surface combatants, mine-warfare vessels and amphibious ships as the larger BUR fleet, Gates notes. “The main difference between the two fleets is in the numbers of combat logistics, mobile logistics and support ships. Although it is true that the 2010 fleet includes fewer of these ships, they are now more efficiently manned and operated by the Military Sealift Command and meet all of DOD's requirements,” Gates adds." This is an artful response, containing just enough truth to be true, but not enough to be persuasive. From a simple numbers perspective, the low end of the current target is 33 ships lower than the QDR Review Panel force. This is not an insignificant gap, especially when one considers the unlikelihood that even the low end of the QDR range is achievable within current budget constraints and projections. Furthermore, while I remain a believer in the utility and effectiveness of the LCS, that so much of the QDR force is comprised of this lightly armed ship that does not kill other capital ships or project power ashore raises questions as to the a total power comparison between a 21st century rendering of the BUR force and the smaller QDR force.
On the whole, there is a lot to like in the QDR and a lot to like in its formal review. The tension among these views and others is the scale upon which national security strategy will be weighed--and there will be a heavy thumb on the scale wielded by our troubled economy.
Bryan McGrath
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