A Defense Department official rejected the notion that the Quadrennial Defense Review did not meet its mandatory requirements and therefore should be rewritten, as House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) said when the document was released last week.
Christine Wormuth, deputy undersecretary of defense for strategy, plans and force development, told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Monday that “we’re very aware of Chairman McKeon’s statement about the QDR” but stand by the document as a solid strategy that meets all legal requirements.
McKeon announced on March 4, the day the QDR and president’s 2015 budget request (PB ’15) were released, that the QDR missed three key requirements: it was budget-constrained instead of including resources that military officials believe they need that are not included in the five-year spending plan; it looks out only five years instead of 20; and it accepts risks beyond the “low-to-moderate” level required by law. He said he would seek legislation, either included in the National Defense Authorization Act or as standalone text, to require the Pentagon to rewrite and resubmit the report.
Wormuth noted the budget request asks for $115 billion more than is allowed under sequestration over the next five years, showing that the department is not viewing its way forward in a budget-constrained manned.
“We think that the strategy we’ve put forward is the right strategy for the country, and we think the additional resources are needed and warranted to be able to execute that strategy,” she said. Like past QDRs, the report to Congress is a “strategy-driven but resource-informed document” that represents more than a year’s worth of tough considerations and negotiations from services secretaries and chiefs, combatant commanders and top DoD officials.
“The secretary has pointed out he’s working on the real business of conducting and protecting our national security and to develop a strategy completely disconnected from the resource picture is more of a graduate seminar exercise as opposed to trying to figure out what we really should be doing and how we really should be developing our force going forward,” she added.
On the issue of risk, Wormuth said the president’s budget request has “increased risk in some areas” because of funding restrictions, but “the secretary’s been very clear that he believes we can manage those risks, and I think the service chiefs are comfortable with that statement as well.”
The problem with assessing risk level is that there is no way to quantify low, moderate or high risk, and each aspect of the defense strategy has its own unique risk levels that, all together, put the strategy in what DoD would characterize as “low-to-moderate” risk.
“Our view is that we can manage the risks at the PB ‘15 level, and I think it’s fair to say based on the characterization of what we think permanent sequestration would do to the strategy that, at that level, it would be higher risk,” Wormuth said. “It would certainly be moderate to high risk, and the secretary has gone so far as to characterize the sequestration level risk as unacceptable risk to our national security.”
As for the notion the report only looks out five years instead of 20, Wormuth said the department looked out 20 years or more at the security environment when determining what its strategic objectives should be, what threats it would face and what investments and capabilities the force would need to operate effectively. Some charts in the report include numbers for only five years, but she said that was simply because the department only plans its budgets for five years out.