The Release to Congress of the US Military's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) Report

MR. BAILY: Good morning and welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center and thank you for coming fairly early this morning. This morning we will be having a briefing on the Quadrennial Defense Review, which copies are available out in the front if you have not already received one and available on the web. Briefing us today will be Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Ryan Henry and the Deputy Director for Resources and Acquisitions at the Joint Staff Rear Admiral Terry Blake. They'll have a short presentation on the QDR and then be happy to answer your questions.

Ryan.

MR. HENRY: Thank you. Hi, I'm Ryan Henry from the policy organization over at the Pentagon with Terry Blake from the Joint Staff. We're going to try to briefly run you through what the QDR is about. You have a briefing in front of you. We're going to hit that at the very, very top level, but so you can be somewhat informed of the scope of what the review does, and then we'll be happy to answer your questions.

First of all, this is a review that's mandated by Congress. We're asked to look at taking and developing a strategy and then coupling that into a resourcing plan, to do that over a 20-year horizon. This is the third time this has been done at the direction of the Congress. There was a fourth one part of that known as the Bottom Up Review that was conducted by Colin Powell when he was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

The thing that's unique about this review is, one is that it is occurring at the same time today the President's budget goes up. This is also being delivered to Congress. And so we're taking the strategy and a resourcing plan and putting that right against exactly the current year decisions that we are making. Again, our plan looks out for 20 years.

The second thing that's unique about it is the President mentioned in this State of the Union last week we are in a long war, a war against terrorist extremists and the networks that support them, and this is the first time that a QDR has been conducted during wartime conditions.

The QDR has two major themes that come out of it. One is that we have to change the capability of our forces and what they can do, and when we speak to capabilities we speak to the ability to generate operational effects within a battle space. But we have to change the mix of capabilities that we have. The second big takeaway from the Quadrennial Defense Review is that we have to change the way that we do business, we have to change the organization within the Department of Defense; we need to move from an industrial age organization to an information age organization. It is important to remember that this QDR doesn't represent an end to transformation, a culminating point, nor does it represent a major shift in focus; rather, it is a snapshot along a continuum of transformation. We believe the major steps of what was done in QDR '01 which came out coincident with the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Towers. And that focused us in an entirely new direction from where we had been in a post Cold War world. This continues along that path.

And speaking of the long war, it is important to remember that we exist in an age of uncertainty and unpredictability. We in the Defense Department feel fairly confident that our forces will be called on to be engaged somewhere in the world in the next decade where they're currently not engaged, but we have no idea whatsoever where that might be, when that might be or in what circumstances that they might be engaged. And if you look at the four areas of operational lessons learned that we have gathered insight from in getting ready to do the QDR, you can see that there are prolonged irregular conflicts, like Iraq, Afghanistan; there's the issue of pursuing the broader global war on terrorism, which involves us fighting an enemy that's not a nation-state but one which exists and we fight in nation-states with which we're not at war; the other area is the humanitarian efforts we've been involved in, specifically the tsunami and earthquake relief in Indonesia and Pakistan, respectively; and then finally, the type of operations that we've had to do within the United States in response to 9/11, in response to the Katrina earthquake (sic).

ll four of these different areas have given us different insights which we've applied to the QDR. Those insights fall in four general categories. I mentioned the uncertainty and unpredictability. The other ones are the imperative to build capability within partnerships, partnership we are a part of but also that we join in with alliances, coalition partners, indigenous forces. We realize that almost in all circumstances others will be able to do the job more -- less expensively than we can because we tend to have a very cost-intensive force. But many times they'll be able to do it more effectively too because they'll understand the local language, the local customs, they'll be culturally adept and be able to get things accomplished that we can't do. So building a partnership capability is a critical lesson learned in looking at the QDR.

The other one is the benefit of anticipatory measures. And what we want to do is we want to be able to do things that will prevent problems from becoming crises and crises from becoming conflicts.

And then finally, the value of unity of effort, where we need to work collaboratively and constructively within the building among the joint force -- the building we refer to is the Pentagon, but within the Department of Defense, within the U.S. Government, and then very importantly with our allies and partners overseas.

So with those four areas, let me speak a little bit to the strategy part of the QDR. You can see up there on your left-hand side a box with four different terms: traditional, irregular, catastrophic and disruptive. And those are the type of challenges that we see at the beginning of the 21st century. We know longer do threat-based planning. What we do is capability. Since the world is uncertain and unpredictable, we can't tell where our forces are going to need to be used and so we have to develop capabilities that will give them the adaptability and agility to meet any sort of challenge they might face.

We're moving away from the traditional challenge that we faced for the last century of armed conflict, forces in the field, nation versus nation, to an area where we have irregular challenges; catastrophic challenges that might be brought about by the use of WMD within our country or those of our allies; and then disruptive challenges that might put our military at risk.

In looking at those challenges, we want to develop options for the President to be able to provide security to the American people and the alliances we're a part of, and then capabilities to the joint war fighter, the combatant commanders we have in the field, so that they can generate those operational effects.

In thinking that through and preparing for the QDR, we found four focus areas where we needed to develop more options and capabilities, and those areas were: the ability to defeat terrorist networks; to be able to defend the homeland in depth; to be able to counter the acquisition or use of weapons of mass destruction; and then to be able to influence countries who find themselves at strategic crossroads.

And so with that in mind, the purpose of the QDR was to look at those different areas. We currently have a capability portfolio, broad, very extensive, the best in the world in the traditional set of challenges; but what we need to do is develop capabilities of an irregular nature to be able to meet that task and the problem set of being able to defeat terrorist networks. We need to be able to develop capabilities that can be used to counter catastrophic threats to, one, counter the acquisition or use of WMD and to defend the homeland in depth. And then finally we need to have capabilities that are viable against disruptive challenges, and we can use those to influence countries at strategic crossroads.

And so with that as a background, speaking of the strategy, how we've operationalized the strategy and being able to shift our capabilities to be able to handle these three new challenges, I'll turn it over to Terry to talk about some of those joint capabilities.

RADM BLAKE: Thank you, sir. As Mr. Henry mentioned, there were four focus areas: defeating the terrorist network; defending the homeland; countering weapons of mass destruction; and shaping choices of countries at crossroads. And that's what helped shape the discussion for the capabilities required by the Department of Defense in this Quadrennial Defense Review. As the slide here shows, we looked at where we are, or the current state, where we want to go, or the end state, and the method or path by which we were going to get there.

With regard to defeating the terrorist network, it was obvious that the value in sharing ideas, culture and technology with regional partners leads to rendering these networks ineffective. The capabilities needed to defeat terrorism networks span the spectrum of operations, from traditional methods through the reaches of irregular warfare and an increased role for our special forces and better use of collection of human intelligence, persistent surveillance and multi-purpose forces that will work closely with indigenous forces. We need to be better at finding, detecting and defeating these networks through new technologies, tactics and enhanced cultural awareness.

The next area of focus, defending the homeland in depth, we are at risk, as are other nations, from threats to our homeland from both outside and inside our borders, be they manmade or natural disasters. So what is our end state? We want to deter aggressors. We want to defeat threats at a distance and mitigate the consequences of attacks or disasters. Interagency cooperation is paramount to success in this arena and is leveraging previous investments and strength in these areas. We look to the Department's existing niche capabilities as our strength in homeland defense. Our unique experiences, like working with and rendering safe explosives, building and executing multiparty exercises and crisis response plans, and operational interconnecting communications are all capabilities we want to use as tools so as to position the Department as a real force multiplier in homeland defense. The capabilities represented here maintain and build on these strengths.

Perhaps the most disconcerting challenge we face is the production and potential use of weapons of mass destruction. We know that various nations can build these weapons and the potential for proliferation certainly exists. We also know that the combination of loosely tied networks, misguided ideologies and global connectivity can create conditions where terrorists can acquire the weapons, given their stated intentions to possibly use them.

In combating weapons of mass destruction, we need to bring unique capabilities to counter this threat to bear. The QDR vectored us these capabilities, as you see on this slide, to include enhanced intelligence and surveillance, specialized forces to locate and secure weapons of mass destruction, new lethal and non-lethal solutions for neutralization and securing of these weapons, and the expanded interdiction of capabilities to stop shipments of material and delivery systems.

The fourth focus area strikes a familiar chord: Recognition of success requires the assistance, expertise and work sharing of coalition partnerships. The objective for America and its allies is to foster cooperation and enhance mutual security while at the same time hedging against the possibility that cooperative approaches may fail.

In looking at our capability needs for shaping choices, they span the spectrum of activity: expanding security cooperation and engagement as well as cultural awareness; persistent surveillance; command and control; air, land and maritime dominance and global strike. These are the four major areas we're looking at as we go through the QDR.

With that, I'd like to turn the presentation back over to Mr. Henry as he discusses our defense enterprises.

MR. HENRY: So some other areas that we looked at was, was how do we achieve that unity of effort? And key among that is to be able to work collaboratively and constructively within the government, but more importantly to be able to work that way with our alliances and our coalition partners.

Additionally, we looked at some other areas that we needed to do in a business process. Key among them was how do we manage ourselves as a building. And so within the Department. So we're looking at different governance structures than we've had in the past, going from vertical stovepipes to more horizontally integrated processes, again going from an industrial age bureaucratic approach to a much more agile information age approach.

And then internally within the Department and our force we have a human capital strategy which we need to execute. One is developing better language and cultural awareness capabilities. The other one is to be able to do a better job to manage that force in an agile sort of way.

The last part of operationalizing the strategy deals with how do we plan to use the force. This is what's known as a force planning construct. And on the chart before you, you can see that there are three general areas in which we plan on employing the forces for operational activities, and those are: first of all, to defend the homeland; then, to be able to pursue the global war on terrorism and to be able to conduct prolonged irregular campaigns; and lastly, to be able to do conventional campaigns, which we've been doing very robustly for the last century.

As we think of these activities, we can think of them in a steady-state mode and then also in a surge mode. And so in the surge mode, we would be responding to catastrophic events or defending against them in the defending the homeland. In the irregular activities, we would be -- surge mode would be activities similar to we're doing in Iraq, in Afghanistan, participating in security and stability, transition and reconstruction operations. And then the conventional campaign is the high-intensity major combat operations, again, which we've been doing traditionally.

We want to be able to do these activities and to have an ability to do them nearly simultaneously in a surge mode, and so we would have the capacity to be able to respond to a major homeland event and then to be able to handle two major campaigns, whether they be irregular in nature or conventional in nature and, if necessary, to be able to take one of them to the level of a regime change.

Additionally, we wanted to have a tailored deterrence. In the past, our deterrence has been a one-size-fits-all massive retaliation, something that we've developed over a half a century during the Cold War. But that's no longer applicable in the world we have now when rogue powers have weapons of mass destruction, then there's terrorist networks out there that won't hesitate to kill innocent civilians. And so we have to have a deterrent capability that's tailored to the rogue powers and also one to the terrorist networks.

This represents at a very abstract level how we're approaching our force planning. And so with that, we now move on to the implementation phase of the Quadrennial Defense Review. It's up on the Hill today, again with the budget, and we are beginning an outreach phase where we want to enter into a consultive venue with our partners both overseas and within the U.S. Government to see how we best can go about implementing this. And with that, we'll look forward to taking your questions.

MR. BAILY: If I could ask you to raise your hand, speak into the microphone and identify your name -- or say your name and your news organization. Let's go to the front row.

QUESTION: My name is Tom Baldwin. I'm from the Times of London. You talk about unity of purpose and working with your coalition partners, assuming including the UK. I know there's a matter of some controversy back in London that the reluctance of the Administration to do this ITAR waiver and technology transfer. Can you tell me what the latest state of play of negotiations are on that?

MR. HENRY: Well, that's outside the scope -- where current legislation is is outside the scope of where the Quadrennial Defense Review is because we're looking out 20 years. But obviously we see the technology transfer, and as part of that building coalition partnerships, is a key to be able to go forward. We have to retool that from what it was in the Cold War. You know, there's a different set of dual-use technologies that we're concerned about now. But we have looked and talked about in the QDR about updating that and moving forward so that we can do better capacity building within partnerships.

MR. BAILY: I think we have a follow-up.

QUESTION: But I mean, certainly the impression of the British Government is that nothing is moving on that whatsoever. I know Prime Minister Blair has been in touch with your President about this.

MR. HENRY: I believe he has, and each time we've talked to him about different steps that have been done, we've done an awful lot in the area of information sharing with both the British Government and the Australian Government, since we do have a long-term partnership with them. And from our perspective, we are making movement. There has to be a certain degree of caution though, too, because some of these technologies tend to be extremely sensitive.

QUESTION: Mike Lavalle with Tokyo Broadcasting System. Reading the QDR on Friday, it appears that there's a major shift of assets, or a shift of assets anyway, into the Pacific, specifically naval assets. And I was wondering why that is happening, what do you view as the threat in that region and specifically which country or countries you view as a threat.

MR. HENRY: Well, we don't -- as I tried to point out, this -- and as we look to the future, we do not do threat-based planning anymore because we're not in a world we were in the Cold War where you could look at a threat, predict where they were going to be and try to jump out in front of them. Rather, we look at capabilities.

Now, clearly the movement -- not the movement but the focusing of effort and more on the Pacific than the Atlantic has to do, you know, with the nature of the relationships out there. And again, we do talk -- and one of the four areas we look at is influencing choices of countries at strategic crossroads. And if you read the report, you're probably aware that we specifically call out three countries that we think are at strategic crossroads that we're interested in being able to work with them on being able to make the right choices. And those are China, which we want to encourage to successfully manage their rise as they become a world economic power and also to take on the geopolitical role of being a constructive partner in the community of nations. There's Russia, which while we don't see it as the same sort of threat that -- or feasibility that it could become the same sort of threat that it did during the Cold War, we want to help it to be able to use democratic processes, representative processes, a certain degree of transparency and not to drift toward authoritarianism. And then finally there's China -- excuse me, India, which represents the world's largest democracy, second largest Muslim population in the world, and we think that we have a lot of common interests with them and we are interested in developing a strategic partnership with them.

So there are many countries at strategic crossroads and organizations -- the United States itself is at a strategic crossroads. But those three countries there we think needed special emphasis and you'll notice of those three countries, they all have a presence that is in the Pacific or to the west of the United States and so it just would make sense to be able to have our forces out there to be able to play a constructive and stabilizing role.

MR. BAILY: Sure, a follow-up.

QUESTION: Just quickly, one other country, specifically North Korea. Does the changing of assets to the Pacific have anything to do with that country?

MR. RYAN: Well, again, it's not based -- the QDR is not about specific countries. It is about key problem sets and developing options for the President and capabilities for the commanders to be able to look at those four key problem sets. Now, North Korea has developed a weapons of mass destruction capability and they are developing a ballistic missile delivery system and we speak in there about the new triad moving away from just a purely an attack mode to be able to balance strike with defense and an agile infrastructure. A large part of that is the defensive capability that we're trying to do in the area of missile defense, the fact that we are going to an integrated missile defense, not just ballistic missiles but cruise missiles, and we think that that capability, that missile defense capability, will not only protect ourselves but assure our allies in the region, which is a key part of the strategy.

MR. BAILY: In the front row.

QUESTION: Mounzer Sleiman with Al Mustaqbal Arabic. The term "long war," 20-year look, prolonged irregular conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, may leave the impression that you're projecting that the war in Iraq probably will go that far. I just want you to comment on that.

Directly the issue of shaping the choices of countries at crossroads strategically, there is the Nuclear Posture Review of 2002 that's been viewed as reducing the threshold of using tactical nuclear power in conventional conflict. What QDR in relation to the nuclear posture of United States and whether there is any changes of that policy or maintaining that policy?

MR. HENRY: Yes, let me deal with the prolonged war. And it is a misreading and it would be incorrect to say that we think that we are going to be engaged in a military manner in Afghanistan or Iraq over a 20-year period. In fact, we are interested in having those nations to be able to stand on their own as sovereign entities capable of their own defense as soon as is possibly feasible. And many of our -- the Secretary and the President both said that that pacing will be condition-based, but we would see it significantly faster than 20 years.

When we refer to the long war, that is the war against terrorist extremists and the ideology that feeds it, and that is something that we do see going on for decades. But that the operational realm for that will not necessarily be Afghanistan and Iraq; rather, that there are large swaths of the world that that's involved in and we are engaged today. We are engaged in things in the Philippines, in the Horn of Africa. There is issues in the pan-Sahel region of North Africa. There's a number of different places where there are activities where terrorist elements are out there and that we need to counter them, we need to be able to attack and disrupt their networks. But we also in a much broader scope need to counter the ideological support that they have. That's not an area where the Defense Department has the lead, but we support the State Department in that endeavor along with all our coalition partners and most especially the moderate Muslims in the area, who are really the victims of this terrorist extremism that exists.

Again, I just want to emphasize the long war has to do with the broader global war on terrorism. It does not have to do with the specific operations that we are currently engaged in in Iraq and Afghanistan, other than that they are a subset of that long war.

In relationship to the 2001 Quadrennial -- Nuclear Posture Review, and it was also updated by a Strategic Capabilities Assessment that occurred in 2005, both of them reiterated the need for a new triad. The old triad used to be one of offensive capability, which dealt with bombers, manned bombers that could deliver nuclear capability; submarine-launched ballistic missiles; and land-based ballistic missiles.

And the Nuclear Posture Review talked about a new triad, which in that triad would be composed of offensive capabilities, strike capabilities; it would also be composed of defensive capabilities; and then the infrastructure to be able to respond. Within the strike capabilities there are three elements of that also. There is a nuclear component, there is a conventional component and then there's the non-kinetic component.

On the -- let me just speak to the conventional component. One of the steps that we've taken this review is to develop within two years to develop a conventional ballistic missile capability that would be launched from submarine and so that we would have a long-range conventional strike, very, very responsive capability.

On the non-kinetic, we have done a number of things and are making progress in the area of information operations, computer network operations which would be one element that one might work up in the non-kinetic area.

On the nuclear, one of the things coming out of the Moscow Treaty was is that we would bring our level of inventory of nuclear warheads down to somewhere between 1700 to 2200. And this QDR keeps us on the roadmap to be able to do that. We continue on that glide path. We want to keep a nuclear capability as a robust deterrent. There's no moving away from that. We think that there are things that we can do to update that, to use the technologies that are available today to make it better and more effective.

MR. BAILY: A follow-up here in the front.

QUESTION: The Nuclear Posture Review identified countries that may be targeted for nuclear -- potential nuclear retaliation or attack. My question is that is still remaining the same countries, and especially with the situation now with Iranian case, with North Korean still lingering, is United States willing to use nuclear -- tactical nuclear power in -- not in retaliation of nuclear attack?

MR. HENRY: Yeah, well, you use the word "tactical nuclear power." Actually, we think of nuclear weapons as a strategic component rather than one tactical that we use for battlefield advantage. And normal -- and we think also of these capabilities not in an offensive mindset but one that we use for deterrent capability to demonstrate to anyone who might want to use nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction against us or our interests or our partners, that we have the ability to impose significant costs on them what would far outweigh any gain that they would have in using these weapons.

But one of the things coming out of the Quadrennial Defense Review is to understand that the classic nation-states, the near pure competitor was which we built these weapons for during the Cold War, is not the only thing we have to deter against. We have to deter against rogue powers who might be irrational in nature. And so while nuclear weapons are a key to that deterrence, we might need other capabilities. And then we have the problem with terrorist networks, and one of the major things coming out of this Quadrennial Defense Review is a reaffirmation that the greatest threat to the nation right now, and we think to other nations, is the nexus between countries that have weapons of mass destruction that proliferate, terrorist networks that will use them as soon as they get their hands on them, and they will do it without a second thought, and the globalization that allows the transfer and the proliferation of both knowledge and materials much more fluidly than have happened in the past. And it's those three things coming together that we need to develop capabilities on and that's what this tailored deterrence theory is meant to support.

QUESTION: Hi, my name is Takimoto with the Ryukyu Shimpo, Okinawa, Japan. United States have reached an agreement with the Japanese administration last October about the United States forces realignment in Japan, and so in that agreement, for example, some problems over Marines in Okinawa were removed to Guam and their are new army headquarters will be constructed. But could you give me some ideas that these related to this united forces -- United States forces realignment in Japan in QDR?

MR. HENRY: Yes. No, the specific country realignment of forces are not specifically called out in the QDR. But what is reinforced is what that was part of and the DPRI process was part of was to do what we call a Global Force Posture, and it was moving our forces in the past that had been garrison forces and they were expected to be in place and the fight would come to them, and those forces largely were stationed where World War II stopped. We looked at that and said in a post-9/11 world we need to have forces that are globally deployable; rather than garrison, we probably need to have rotationary expeditionary forces and we have to have different ways that we can use them and we have to do it much more in partnership with other countries. And so as part of that effort are the force realignment both within Japan and within Korea. That is an ongoing process and it is one that decisions have been made to incrementally go forward. They have not been implemented yet and they'll be implemented in the coming years.

MR. BAILY: Any other questions? One more up here.

QUESTION: The issue of special operation forces increase of I think maybe 15 percent, is really the trend to reduce the reliance on regular army toward more special forces or create some sort of special forces in other branches and there is also new command for to coordinate the force, when this will be in place -- COMINT coordinate between the different branches and each branch has their own special forces in a way?

RADM BLAKE: I think what you're looking at when we did the Quadrennial Defense Review, what we were trying to do was look at the capabilities that we predict would be required, and part of that went into the -- part of that was the increase, as you say, in the special operations forces. The overall goal was to make our forces more flexible, more agile, and one of the ways we were able to do it was with the special operations forces. Another way that it is being done in the Army is using a program for modularity in which they are making their brigade combat teams more flexible, more agile, more sustainable. So we took all those factors; we pushed that into the equation and then we said, okay, this is where we need to, if you will, shift our capabilities in order to meet the four areas that we were looking at in the Quadrennial Defense Report.

MR. HENRY: But you bring up a very important point and one that is important to us here as we build the force, is that in the past we had forces that we called general purpose forces and they were to fight those large conventional wars, and then we had special operating forces but we thought the things they would do would be minor operations; we call them lesser included cases. One of the things that we've done during the QDR though, in the middle of it because it was so important, was is that we designated stability and security and transition and reconstruction operations, those sorts of operations; we put them on an equal par within the Department of those major combat high-intensity operations, and we said we are going to be equally prepared to be able to handle both. We're not de-emphasizing the major combat operations but we're bringing up the other ones on a level of that.

And so one of the things that this QDR does is it takes the force and it says that they will have a capability across the continuum, which is a greater operational threat than we've had in the past. And it also said on the special operating forces we'll invest even more in them to bring them up to a higher level of capability, not just for civil affairs and being able to communicate with the local populace but also to be able to do things such as direct action. We've doubled the number of unmanned air vehicles. We've given a squadron, a specific squadron, to the special operating forces. The Marines now have a special operating command so now all four services do. We already had the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Florida, situated to be able to do the coordination among the services and bring those forces forward, but now we have all four services participating in this.

So this is a major thrust in building capabilities and I tried to speak to it in this Force Planning Construct we have. Not only do we have the forces that have the capability, but we believe it will be in the activities that will put those two type of operations -- high-intensity; stability, security, transition, reconstruction -- on an equal footing.

MR. BAILY: I think we have one more question in the back.

QUESTION: Hi, Hugo Alconada from La Nacion, Argentina. You just mentioned before that the QDR is not focused in any specific country, but in the case of Latin America the QDR specifically mentions Venezuela as one of those populist/authoritarian political movements in some countries. Could you elaborate a little bit more about Latin America, those (inaudible) countries and all of that?

MR. HENRY: Well, we think that Latin America is an area where the United States needs to focus on and we need to see what we can do in the areas of security cooperation to work with our allies and partners in that region. We do view with concern what's happened in Venezuela. We think that that's going in the wrong direction. We don't think that that's helpful for the stability in the hemisphere and we would like to work along with people that are likeminded in the way that we see things.