David Cloud. Los Angeles Times, 01 June 2012.
http://defensealt.org/NW22HP

Excerpt:

…the Pentagon plans to increase the Pacific fleet from 50 warships to 58, according to two Pentagon officials who discussed the plans on condition of anonymity.

In addition, Panetta said that more than 40 Navy ships in the Pacific would be replaced with “more capable and technologically advanced ships” over the next five years.

But the number of warships “forward deployed” at any one time — operating in Asian waters rather than moored in San Diego or other U.S. ports — will grow by only four, from 23 to 27, by 2020. The reason: It is far less expensive to base troops, ships and planes in U.S. ports than abroad.

The six aircraft carriers now assigned to the Pacific will drop to five later this year. An additional carrier, now under construction, is scheduled to enter the fleet in 2014, returning the number to six.

Several hundred Marines have begun rotating into northern Australia on a training mission, and the force may grow to as many as 2,000 by 2016. But U.S. troop levels in South Korea, Japan and elsewhere in the region are likely to remain flat.

Wilbert van der Zeijden. Open Security, 07 May 2012.
http://defensealt.org/Jcdn7A

Excerpt:

Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany have acknowledged publicly that they would like to see the US nuclear weapons all three are hosting removed from their territories. Yet the debate in NATO on this issue lacks transparency and accountability.

Carlo Munoz. The Hill, 06 May 2012.
http://defensealt.org/IDlUxL

Excerpt:

President Obama’s pledge to not build any permanent military outposts in Afghanistan could throw a wrench in the Pentagon’s postwar plans for the country, once U.S. troops leave in 2014. The president’s promise, made during Tuesday’s nationally televised speech from Afghanistan, is an integral piece of a postwar agreement between Washington and Kabul.

Jefferson Morley. Salon.com, 5 April 2012.
http://defensealt.org/Hmesu7

Excerpt:

… the Reapers are now launched from two locations and carry out five sorties per day. The Air Force anticipates that activity will double in 2013 to four locations and 14 sorties a day. By 2015, the scope of the Reaper program is expected to double again to nine locations carrying out 46 sorties a day. By 2016, the plan is that Reapers will be launched from 11 locations carrying out 66 sorties per day.

Craig Whitlock. Washington Post, 26 March 2012.
http://defensealt.org/HzVeNJ

Excerpt:

The United States and Australia are planning a major expansion of military ties, including possible drone flights from a coral atoll in the Indian Ocean and increased U.S. naval access to Australian ports, as the Pentagon looks to shift its forces closer to Southeast Asia…

Elisabeth Bumiller and Allison Kopicki. New York Times, 26 March 2012.
http://defensealt.org/HyL9li

Excerpt:

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll…found that more than two-thirds of those polled — 69 percent — thought that the United States should not be at war in Afghanistan. Just four months ago, 53 percent said that Americans should no longer be fighting in the conflict.

Mark Mazzetti and Thom Shanker. New York Times, 19 March 2012.
http://defensealt.org/GJt7O3

Excerpt:

A classified war simulation held this month to assess the repercussions of an Israeli attack on Iran forecasts that the strike would lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead, according to American officials.

Information Dissemination, 15 March 2012. The projected FY13 ship inactivation schedule for inactivating U.S. Naval vessels. http://defensealt.org/GKezMl

Craig Whitlock. Washington Post, 15 February 2012.
http://defensealt.org/x07ZPf

Excerpt:

As the Obama administration reorients its military strategy toward Asia and the vital maritime trade routes in the Pacific, the bulk of the responsibility will fall on the Navy, which was largely sidelined during the land wars of the last decade.

But the Navy will have to perform its mission in Asia with fewer ships in coming years than it had anticipated. Under President Obama’s proposed defense budget, the Navy will retire nine ships early and cut or delay the purchases of 16 others over the next five years.

Editor’s Comment:
While I suspect that it is likely that “the Navy will have to perform its mission in Asia with fewer ships in coming years” due to continuing budget pressure on ship building, the Chief of Naval Operations presently insists that the Navy will have at least as many combat ships as it has now (286) and will continue to grow toward its goal of having well over 300 ships. In any case, the new strategic guidance suggests the Pacific Fleet will have priority for assignment of ships. It seems more likely that the Atlantic Fleet will take the hit.

Matthew Rosenberg. New York Times, 20 January 2012.
http://pulse.me/s/5a33j

Excerpt:

American and other coalition forces here are being killed in increasing numbers by the very Afghan soldiers they fight alongside and train, in attacks motivated by deep-seated animosity between the supposedly allied forces, according to American and Afghan officers and a classified coalition report.

Editor’s Comment:

Seems like very strong evidence that U.S. forces have overstayed their welcome!

Andrew Taylor. AP, 20 January 2012.
http://defensealt.org/HbwoVl

Excerpt:

The White House plan, likely to reprise new taxes and fee proposals that are nonstarters with Capitol Hill Republicans, would turn off the entire nine-year, $1.2 trillion across-the-board spending cuts, referred to as a “sequester.”

“We have a sequester coming less than a year from now unless Congress acts,” said a senior administration official. “We’re going to ask Congress to do now what we think Congress should have done in December, which is enact more than $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction, turn off the sequester and maintain the (spending caps).”

Abubakar Siddique. Radio Free Europe, 25 October 2011.
http://defensealt.org/HqijGZ

Excerpt:

Experience has shown us that foreign forces cannot bring peace to Afghanistan. We will have peace when we remove the causes of conflict among [Afghan] people,” [protest organizer] Mozhdah said. “One of the key reasons for fighting here is that we don’t trust each other. We need to sit and talk to each other to gain each others trust.

Dan de Luc. Agence France-Presse, 19 October 2011.
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?c=SEA&s=TOP&i=8003142

Excerpt:

“Asia will be clearly a priority and we will adjust our operations accordingly,” Admiral Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, told reporters in a teleconference.

The Navy now constantly maintains an aircraft carrier – either the Kitty Hawk or the George Washington – in the Pacific, compared to 10 years ago when a carrier was available only 70 percent of the time, he said.

Andrew Tilghman. Defense News, 12 October 2011.
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?c=LAN&s=TOP&i=7935114

Excerpt:

Panetta said the Army should expect reserve-component troops to be a vital part of the future force.

“As we draw down from these wars, we need to keep the Guard and the Reserve operational and gaining experience. This is the best investment we’ve made over the past 10 years,” he said. “We need to continue to be able to maintain that as a valuable asset because the reserve force has a special role to play as a force that gives the nation strategic depth in the event of crisis, access to unique civilian skill sets that can be useful in modern conflicts and as the Army’s bridge to a broader civilian population.”

Charles Knight. Project on Defense Alternatives Note, 12 May 2011.

Word is that two principals in the production of 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review will be charged with producing the “fundamental” defense review President Obama ordered in his April 13th speech on the deficit. They are Kathleen Hicks, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Planning, who was the lead 2010 QDR author and David Ochmanek, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Development, who headed the “analysis and integration cell” which pulled together all the analytical aspects of the last QDR.

Update

Defense News reports (23 May 2011) that “The missions and capabilities review will be led by Christine Fox, director of cost assessment and program evaluations [and formerly the President of the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA)]; Michele Flournoy, defense undersecretary for policy [and the Pentagon official in charge of the 2010 QDR]; and Adm. Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

Editor’s Comment:

Putting the same people who did the 2010 review in charge of producing the new review raises an obvious question of whether we should expect anything much “new” or “fundamental” from this review. QDRs in the past have certainly failed to be “fundamental” in any meaningful sense of the word.

One suspects that the foregone sub-text of what Ms. Hicks writes into the new review will be, “We got this pretty much right when we did it last year. Now, of course, if you are willing to take greater security risks you can cut some pieces out of the force posture, but that is a political decision…”

If the new review makes such a smug presentation it will serve the President and the nation poorly. The 2010 QDR did not make any real effort to set clear priorities among the many military requirements it listed, failing one of the principles of strategy development which is to set a practical path within resource constraints. A new fundamental review must present a variety of low-risk options that can be achieved at various resource investment levels. Its authors should not be allowed to simply push the matter of security risk into the political domain.

President Obama would be smart to solicit ideas from a wide variety of sources, reaching far beyond the Pentagon’s strategy, policy and force planning staff. If a fundamental review is needed, it is wise to hear and consider diverse voices.

Sebastian Sprenger writing in Inside Defense on 21 April 2011 reports that the QDR Red Team headed by Gen. James Mattis (USMC) and Andrew Marshall, director of the Office of Net Assessment, raised concerns in 2009 about the fiscal restraint effects of the deep recession on military plans to be represented in the QDR.

The Red Team report was not made public. When the QDR was published in early 2010 it did not include a presentation of the effects of fiscal constraints.

Last week, a little more than a year later, President Obama asked Secretary Gates to find $400 billion in additional security budget cuts over a twelve year period and called for a new review of military roles and missions.

The effect of this development will be an update of the 2010 QDR which will likely now heed the concerns of the 2009 Red Team concerning fiscal constraints.

On Wednesday April 13th 2001, President Obama announced an initiative to roll back planned security spending by $400 billion over the next 12 years. The nature of these “savings” is not yet clear. Nor is it clear how much will be subtracted from the Pentagon’s spending plans.

Nonetheless, Secretary Gates and the Chiefs are not pleased and have begun to make noise about risks to security. Apparently, they were not briefed on the proposal until Tuesday.

Part of the initiative is to begin a “fundamental review of America’s missions, capabilities, and our role in a changing world.” What and how much is subtracted from the Pentagon will depend on this review. Notably, the United States just completed a Quadrennial Defense Review last year. What the President proposes is some sort of “second look.” The President, Secretary Gates, and the service chiefs will be the prime movers of this process. How deep their “second look” will go is unclear. And it seems battle lines are already being drawn.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell said the review would likely affect the 2013 budget. It will not be ready by June, when congressional debate of the 2012 budget commences.

How open will the review process be? We don’t yet know. But the experience of recent defense reviews is not encouraging. Still we should welcome this first step and strive to open up the process. The need for a rethinking our defense strategy and posture was emphasized in the 2010 report of the Sustainable Defense Task Force:

[I]n order to ensure significant savings, we must change how we produce military power and the ways in which we put it to use. Significant savings may depend on our willingness to:

Rethink our national security commitments and goals to ensure they focus clearly on what concerns us the most;

Reset our national security strategy so that it reflects a cost-effective balance among the security instruments at our disposal and uses those instruments in cost-effective ways; and

Reform our system of producing defense assets so it.

News links on President Obama’s proposed rollback in planned security spending, his call for a strategic review, and the Pentagon’s reaction:

DOD: Finding More Savings In Defense Budget Means Nixing Missions. Christopher J. Castelli. Inside Defense, 13 April 2011.

Obama Calls for Sweeping Review of U.S. Military Strategy. Sandra Erwin. National Defense, 13 April 2011.

Pentagon warns on big defense cuts. Missy Ryan and Jim Wolf. Reuters, 13 April 2011.

Defence chief warns against planned cuts. Daniel Dombey and James Politi. Financial Times, 14 April 2011.

Events frequently overtake long-term Pentagon planning. Megan Scully. Government Executive, 14 April 2011.

Greg Grant. DoD Buzz, 09 April 2010.
http://www.dodbuzz.com/2010/04/09/army-budget-share-will-grow/

Excerpt:

In DOD’s funding forecasts, future costs to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are vastly understated as are personnel and healthcare costs. “Reset” costs for Army and Marine equipment returning from Iraq are also vastly understated, as all are new aircraft programs, e.g. F-35, tanker. The shipbuilding plan is also underfunded. Cost overruns in the F-35 and satellites continue due to immature technologies, the analysis says, and risks shifts to existing platforms.

The biggest future growth areas will be in networked communications and overhead surveillance, followed by repair, maintenance and training. The future requirements process will be driven more by combatant commanders than service bureaucracy, more joint and fewer overall contracts and programs. There will be further monopolization of large platform primes, e.g. one tank builder, one aircraft tanker builder and one shipbuilder.