Washington, D.C.—The House Armed Services Committee today heard testimony from the leaders of a panel tasked by Congress to provide an independent assessment of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). Ranking Member Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) released the following prepared statement for the hearing:
“Welcome to our witnesses, co-chairs Perry and Hadley, and thank you for being here this morning. While I know that the Independent Panel has only recently begun its work in earnest, I understand that the Panel is familiar enough with the document and underlying analysis to make initial findings. We look forward to your testimony today and thank you for agreeing to serve as Panel co-chairs.
“Let me also take a moment to thank the other Panel members in attendance today. In particular, I’d like to thank my appointees to the Panel, Ambassador Edelman and Senator Talent, for agreeing to sit on the Panel and for being here today.
“This committee understands the strategic significance of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). After all, this is the third committee event addressing the 2010 QDR in three months. Yet, it seems to me this QDR failed to deliver on arguably the 3 most important functions of a QDR. First, this QDR appears to be a budget constrained rather than a budget neutral analysis into the capabilities the Department needs for the future. Second, this QDR failed to outline a defense program that looks out 20 years, as required by the statute. Third, the QDR report recommends that the United States essentially maintain our present force structure for the future years defense plan (FYDP) and does not recommend a force structure beyond the FYDP.
“In our March 29th letter to today’s witnesses Chairman Skelton and I asked the Panel co-chairs to address these three concerns in today’s hearing. Your prepared statement addressed these issues in part, and I hope that we can discuss your perspective in detail over the course of the hearing.
“This QDR did not emerge out of a vacuum. For some time now Secretary Gates has been pushing for balance in the Defense Department in an effort to focus the Pentagon on prevailing in the conflicts of today. In the Secretary’s introduction to the 2010 QDR he writes that his efforts to re-balance the Department in 2010 ‘continued in the FY 2011 budget and [were] institutionalized in this QDR and out-year budget plan.’
“While the balance initiative may have been appropriate for the 2010 or 2011 defense budget, efforts to make balance a fixture in the QDR is short-sighted and puts the Department on the wrong path for the next 20 years. Choosing to win in Iraq and Afghanistan should not mean our country must also choose to assume additional risk in the national defense challenges of today and tomorrow.
“In my view the QDR understates the requirements to deter and defeat challenges from state actors and it overestimates the capabilities of the force the Department would build. This QDR does an excellent job of delineating the threat posed by those with anti-access capabilities—notably China—but does little to address the risk resulting from the gaps in funding, capability and force structure.
“As a result, we find a QDR that basically reinforce the status quo despite serious threats to our current capability. Thus, this QDR provides a force structure that is built for the wars we’re in today, when the purpose of the review is exactly the opposite—to prepare for the likely conflicts of tomorrow. I encourage the Panel to ask: what’s new here? If this is really a vision for the ‘defense program for the next 20 years’, as the statute requires, then why does the QDR lay out a force structure for the next five years—not to mention one that looks a lot like today’s force? The QDR is supposed to shape the Department for 2029—not describe the Pentagon in 2009.
“I suspect part of the problem is that the 2010 QDR lacked strategic guidance. This report was delivered before the Administration issued its National Security Strategy, and had to rely on a 2 year old National Defense Strategy from the previous Administration.
“In addition to the fundamental problems with the QDR that I’ve just outlined, I have specific concerns around one of the QDR’s key mission areas: ‘deter and defeat aggression in anti-access environments.’ In my view, this is the mission area which should have driven the growth in size and capability of our air and naval forces. Yet, we cannot evaluate whether the QDR has the right force structure for this critical mission area, because it offers no clear force planning construct and abandons the two war strategy.
“One of the best examples of inadequate force structure is in the area of missile defense where there is no indication that the Navy has increased the requirement or funding for large surface combatants to support its increasing role in the Ballistic Missile Defense mission. The QDR maintains the requirement for large surface combatants at approximately 88. This requirement was established in 2006, at which time there was no BMD mission for these vessels. We have since received testimony that perhaps dozens more surface combatants could be required to perform this mission on top of the ships’ other existing missions. How does the Department plan to meet the President’s new European missile defense plan or the other regional missile defense needs called for in the Ballistic Missile Defense Review? My fear is that the Department plans to harvest these assets from an already under-resourced Navy.
“Equally disconcerting is that almost all of the initiatives in the QDR depend on legacy systems. Instead of committing to building next generation platforms to deal with the present and evolving threats and capability gaps, we are told on page 33 of the report that: the Secretary of Defense has a follow-on study to determine which capabilities will best support U.S. power projection operations ‘over the next two to three decades.’ This study, the report continues, will then inform DoD’s 2012 Program Objective Memorandum. Likewise, on page 32 we’re told that the concept for defeating adversaries ‘across all operational domains’ in anti-access environments is still under development by the Air Force and Navy. Isn’t this the essence of what the QDR should have developed today?
“The QDR raises many more questions ranging from strengthening the industrial base to how we balance risk. I hope we can cover these issues in this hearing and future sessions.
“I look forward to the QDR’s Independent Panel reviewing the assumptions underlying the QDR’s decisions and providing the Congress with an alternative view on how the Department should posture itself for the next 20 years.”
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