By Ann Roosevelt
Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey expects change toward a balanced strategy in the Defense Department from the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), stemming from a common view of the strategic environment and threat.
“One of the first things we need to do with the new leadership both the OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) and the Army is to sit down and have a discussion about how we see the strategic environment,” Casey said following an Institute for Land Warfare breakfast Jan. 13. “I’ve found that if you don’t have a common view of where you are or at least understand where you disagree, people go in different directions.”
Change will come as a result of the finished QDR.
Casey pointed to Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ article in Foreign Affairs (January/February 2009) calling for a balanced strategy. “What he’s asking us is how do we achieve a balanced strategy in the department,” Casey said.
In his article, Gates writes: “Just as one can expect a blended high-low mix of adversaries and types of conflict, so, too, should the United States seek a better balance in the portfolio of capabilities it has–the types of units fielded, the weapons bought, the training done.”
However, the balance Casey describes for the Army is different. Particularly since the demand for forces exceeds the available force.
For Casey, the service is in the second year of a four-year plan to return to balance and at the same time prepare for the future.
“I’ve been saying since the summer of 2007 that we’re out of balance; that we are deploying at unsustainable rates-unsustainable from a perspective of sustaining our soldiers and families, and developing the strategic flexibility to do other things,” he said.
The service will achieve balance in 2011, Casey said. To reach that goal, the service plans to complete increasing the number of soldiers, boost the time they spend at home, complete the modularization of the organization; broaden the soldier’s skill sets across the spectrum of conflict, complete the force restationing required by the Base Realignment and Closure of 2005, and implement the Army Force Generation Model.
When Casey considers the strategic environment, the reality is that no one can accurately predict the future, he said, but some facts are clear: “We’ve been at war for seven years. “The future is uncertain. We know we’re going to be committed in Iraq and Afghanistan for a while, but what else is out there?”
U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Joint Operating Environment helps to point to trends and potential problems in the future, and its companion volume, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Capstone Concept for Joint Operations, offers considerations of how the joint force would operate in the face of security challenges.
The Army is heading toward a 21st century force that is “versatile, expeditionary, agile, lethal, sustainable, and interoperable,” Casey said.
The Secretary of Defense is required every four years in the first year of every administration to conduct a QDR. The report goes to Congress the following year no later than the budget for the coming fiscal year, DoD says.
Gates is considering all the options, to include accelerating the QDR schedule to implement any policy changes the new administration might want. The review also is part of the DoD process to provide strategic direction to the services.
OSD leads the 2010 QDR effort.
The Army supports the OSD work, and its input is led by G-8, which is responsible for the future Army, with help from G-3, Operations.