Top Pentagon officials preview results of major defense review

Pentagon leaders Wednesday publicly touted the much-anticipated Quadrennial Defense Review as laying out an aggressive strategy to better position U.S. forces to combat terrorists and other unpredictable enemies and continue what the Bush administration now calls "the long war."

The document contains more than 100 recommendations for realigning military forces around a broad scope of missions, working with other government agencies and foreign allies and improving the Defense Department's organization, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England said Wednesday night.

England, speaking at a public forum, said the so-called QDR is the Defense Department's "most inclusive undertaking" to date, and stressed that officials are committed to implementing all recommended changes.

"This will not be a fire [and] forget document," he said, using military parlance for a guided missile.

But England and other Pentagon leaders also cautioned the document is part of an ongoing attempt to adjust defense strategy and plans to defeat changing and emerging threats that began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"It's best understood as a way point along a continuum of change that began some years past and will continue some years hence," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters at a Pentagon press briefing earlier in the day.

The document, which is expected to be released with the fiscal 2007 Defense budget Monday, focuses heavily on planning and budgeting for joint service programs based on essential military capabilities -- a "radical departure" from the way the Pentagon has done business in the past, England said. And it also attempts to streamline the department's archaic acquisition processes, an issue of particular congressional scrutiny and concern.

During the year-long review, a team of Pentagon officials consulted with other U.S. government agencies, as well as 146 defense attaches and ambassadors from other countries in a wide effort to build closer partnerships both domestically and internationally, England said.

The first major defense review since 2001, the QDR is a "perfect storm for setting the Defense Department on a new course," said Andrew Krepinevich, the director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, who served as a Pentagon consultant during the quadrennial review.

The review provides a "good diagnosis" of the international security environment, as well as the many challenges military forces will face in the future, Krepinevich said.

The fiscal 2007 budget will include the initial down payment for many of the recommendations in the review, including plans to accelerate the Army's transformation into a more modular, brigade-based force, as well as efforts to increase substantially the size of special operations forces, said Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. One goal is to restructure the military to fight both "conventional combat operations to irregular or asymmetric operations," he explained.

Several officials have stressed, however, that the Pentagon plans to implement -- and pay for -- the bulk of the recommendations in its fiscal 2008 and fiscal 2009 budgets.

But while the review covers a broad scope of Defense Department activities, England said it is not intended to be a program document detailing cuts to some of the military's most expensive weapons systems.

Indeed, draft pages of the QDR and briefing charts signal that the Defense Department does not plan to cut or otherwise dramatically alter many of the military services' core technology transformation plans.

But that does not necessarily mean those programs will be immune to cuts down the road, particularly as the Pentagon faces an expected procurement budget crunch as many research programs head into production in the next several years.

"A lot of these tough choices are kind of kicked down the road," Krepinevich said.

The Pentagon has historically been reluctant to cut or scale back major programs during budget and strategic reviews, said Gordon Adams, former Office of Management and Budget associate director of national security programs.

"The number of people ... who think realistically about the funds available in the out-years, you can count on one hand," Adams said. "Most budget ... as if manna was going to fall from heaven."