QDR 2006: Do The Forces Match the Missions? DOD Gives Little Reason to Believe

As originally conceived the Quadrennial Defense Review was meant to help ensure the internal consistency of mid- and longer-term US defense planning. By "internal consistency" I here mean a concordance of strategy, assets, and budgets. As critics often put it in the past: the point is to show how the force fits the strategy and the budget fits the force. The exercise is supposed to “connect” our military strategy with our force development plans and, in turn, connect these with current and future budgets. In this regard, the 2006 QDR is long on assertion and short on quantification – “short” as in utterly lacking.

Secretary Rumsfeld’s second QDR confidently assures us that all the variables align, but gives us no reason to believe. Quite the contrary: the new iteration of the Pentagon’s “force sizing construct” should leave all Americans wondering where the Secretary and his staff have been these past few years.

Reasonable people can disagree about the value of the Iraq war and whether it is being won. But no one can reasonably contest that it has turned out to be a hard slog, as the Secretary belatedly has observed. While we can disagree about whether or not the effort is driving the Army and the Reserves into the ground, no one can honestly deny that the war and other post-9/11 operations have significantly “stressed” our armed forces. And no amount of “stop loss” orders, tour-of-duty extensions, or Reserve call-ups has yet allowed us to assemble a presence in Iraq able to stabilize the country.

In brief: the pedal is to the metal, but we are still not up to speed.
PDA