To view slide used in this briefing click here; http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2006/d20060203qdrslides.pdf
BRYAN WHITMAN (Pentagon spokesman): Well, welcome. And thank you for your interest in today's briefing.
The release of the Quadrennial Defense Review marks the end of an important assessment for the department, yet it is just a point along the continuum of change that reflects this department's ongoing transformation efforts that have gathered significant momentum since 2001. There are significant shifts that are going on within the department as we ensure that we have the kinds of capabilities this nation needs to counter potential threats in the future.
It's a good document. It's been released around noontime on the Web. It's a product that has taken a tremendous amount of effort throughout the entire department. It's been very inclusive -- the military departments, the combatant commands. I encourage you to read it. It's only 92 pages long.
This briefing today is not the budget briefing, although there are aspects of it that set azimuths and some implications for the '07 and future years' defense plan. We will be talking today about the Quadrennial Defense Review, and we'll be talking about the budget on Monday afternoon at 2 p.m.
So with that, it's my privilege to introduce to you two individuals that have been instrumental in guiding and facilitating this process and will highlight for you today some of the major aspects of this review. Mr. Ryan Henry is the Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy; and he is joined today by Vice Admiral Evan Chanik, who is the director, Force Structure, Resources and Assessment, for the Joint Staff.
They do have a presentation that they would like to make, and I'd ask you to hold your questions until they're completed, and then they would be happy to address your questions.
And with that, I will get out of here and turn it over to you, gentlemen. Thank you.
MR. HENRY: Good afternoon. I'm going to start off by talking about some of the strategic implications of the QDR, Quadrennial Defense Review -- we'll use the term QDR from now on -- and then Marty will talk about some of the capabilities that we've built up, and I'll come back and talk about some of the institutional aspects of it.
This QDR is the third QDR following the bottom-up review in 1993 that the department has conducted. It's something that's mandated by Congress.
But this QDR was unique in many ways. First of all, it is -- as Bryan said, is being delivered coincident with the delivery of the budget on Monday to the Congress.
Second is that this was driven by senior leaders, it was managed by senior leaders, and it was authored by senior leaders. And when I speak of senior leaders, I'm talking about the head of the department, the Secretary and the Deputy; the head of the Joint Staff, the Chairman and the Vice; the Service Chiefs, the Service Secretaries, the Service Vice Chiefs; and probably most important, the combatant commanders themselves.
And finally, this is unique because it was conducted during a time of war. And as the president mentioned on Tuesday night, this is a long war.
Similarly, the Congress asked us to take a long look at the development of a strategy and then a resourcing plan to meet that strategy which can be executed within acceptable risk. And that look we're asked to take is a 20-year look.
The QDR report itself came up with two imperatives at the very highest level. One is that we need to start to change and reorient the capabilities of the joint force so that they can meet a new set of challenges which we find ourselves faced with at the beginning of the 21st century.
The second imperative is that the enterprise itself needs to change. We need to move from an Industrial Age organization to an Information Age organization, and we need to be able to do more things horizontally.
As Bryan also mentioned, this is not a new beginning, and it's not a culmination of transformation. Rather it is a snapshot in time along a continuum of transformation, and one that's been reinforced by operational experience.
And that operational experience comes from a number of lessons learned. Principal among those lessons learned is the uncertainty and the unpredictability of the time in which we live, in a post-9/11 world. More than September 10th -- in that in September 10th 2001, I can tell you now that U.S. forces, in all probability, will be engaged somewhere in the world in the next decade where they're not currently engaged. But I can't tell you with no resolution at all where that might be, when that might be or how that might be, and that's indicative of the uncertainty that we face.
The lessons which we've learned operationally group into four general areas.
One of prolonged irregular conflict, and we find ourselves learning those in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The other one is the pursuit of the larger global war on terrorism. And the key there is -- is that we are fighting an enemy that's not a nation, but we're fighting it within nations with which we're not at war at.
Then, on the humanitarian front, which is going to be key in winning the support of those who will eventually defeat the terrorist networks which we are faced against today, and that is the moderate Muslim community and the difference that we can make there in a humanitarian nature.
And finally, the operations that we have done in support the civil authorities here within the homeland.
We've internalized these lessons, we've applied them to the challenges which we face and lie ahead, and we've taken four key insights from them.
The first one I mentioned, unpredictability, uncertainty.
The next is building partnership capabilities, the fact that we have to enable others. We can't always do it ourselves, and many times an indirect approach rather than the U.S. or our forces doing it will be the best approach.
The value of early anticipatory measures, so that we can do things that will prevent problems from becoming crises, and crises from becoming conflicts.
And then unity of effort. The need to work collaboratively not just within the department, but within the U.S. government and, more importantly, among our alliances and with our coalition partners.
Speaking of the strategy, the strategy remains the same as it did in QDR '01, and that is, is that we will assure our allies that we are a dependable and robust partner in defending our interests and defending alliance interests.
Second is that we will dissuade any potential adversary that might have hostile interests to show them that a military approach will not be viable for them.
Next is that we will deter any who might coerce ourselves or our partners.
And then finally, if called upon, we will defeat any adversary at a time and a place and a manner of our choosing.
But we need to adjust how we apply that strategy beyond the traditional set of challenges which we have prepared for and equipped for for the last century, because we -- in this century we have a different set of challenges. We have irregular challenges, we have catastrophic challenges -- challenges of catastrophic consequences, and those that are disruptive in nature. And as we look at that, what we need to do is we need to provide our commander in chief more options with which to deal with those challenges in the coming years, and we need to provide our joint warfighters, our military combatant commanders in the field, we need to provide them more capabilities. And when we speak of capabilities, we mean their ability to generate effects of an operational nature within the battlespace in which they're operating on.
Within the QDR we looked to the future and saw that there were focus areas where we needed to build more options and more capabilities, and those were: the ability to defeat terrorist networks, to be able to defend the homeland in depth, to be able to prevent the acquisition or use of weapons of mass destruction, and then to shape the choices of regions and countries who find themselves at strategic crossroads. So in doing that, we have a chart here that kind of maps those together.
In the past, we have a capability set that's very robust and very strong in the traditional area, and we've developed that over the last century. But as we look to the future and we have to address problems, such as defeating terrorist networks, we are going to have to build capabilities that respond to the irregular challenges. As we face problems that deal with preventing acquisition of weapons of mass destruction or in defending the homeland in depth, we're going to have to build capabilities that respond to catastrophic challenges. And as we look at the challenge of being able to influence countries who are at strategic crossroads, then we are going to have to build capabilities that meet the disruptive nature. So that lays down the strategic foundation and the operationalizing the strategy, which we have done in the QDR.
I'll turn it over to Marty now to talk about the results that we have in the area of building those capabilities.
ADM. CHANIK: Thank you, Ryan.
These four focus areas that Ryan has brought up -- the defeating terrorist networks, defending the homeland, countering weapons of mass destruction, and shaping choices of countries at the crossroads -- were the filters or the focus, if you will, that we looked through to decide on what capabilities that the department needs to concentrate on to be able to work in these particular dimensions.
These, as Ryan mentioned at the very beginning, were discussed at the very highest levels of the department and went through extensive discussions, debates, on what these capabilities might be and should be.
As this slide shows, we looked first at where we are, the current state; we looked at where we want to be, the end state; and we looked at potential paths by which we can get to that. With regard to defeating terrorist networks, it was very obvious to us that the value in sharing ideas, culture and technology with regional partners would lead to rendering these networks ineffective.
The capabilities to defeat terrorist networks span the spectrum of operations from the traditional methods that Ryan talked about through the reaches of irregular warfare, and include, among other capability sets, an increased role in numbers for our special operations forces, better use and collection of human intelligence, persistent surveillance, and multipurpose forces that can work closely with indigenous forces. We need to be better at finding, detecting and defeating these networks through new technologies, tactics and enhanced cultural awareness.
The next area of focus was defending the homeland in depth. We recognize that we are at risk, as are other nations, from threats to our homeland both from outside and inside our borders, be they man- made or natural disasters. The end state we want to achieve is to deter aggressors, to defeat threats at a distance, and to mitigate the consequences of attacks or disasters. Interagency cooperation is obviously paramount to success in this particular arena, as is leveraging of the previous investments and strengths that we have there.
We look to the department's existing niche capabilities as our strength in homeland defense. Our unique experiences like working with and rendering safe explosives, building and executing multiparty exercises and crisis response plans, and operational interconnecting communications are all capabilities we want to improve on to continue to position the department as a force multiplier in homeland defense. These capabilities represented here maintain and build upon those particular strengths.
Perhaps the most disconcerting challenge we face is the production and potential use of weapons of mass destruction. We know that various nations can build these weapons and that the potential for proliferation certainly exists. We also know that the combination of loosely tied networks, misguided ideology and global connectivity can create conditions where terrorists can acquire weapons and, given their stated intentions, use them.
In combatting these particular weapons, we need to build unique capabilities to counter the threat. The QDR gives the vector that you see on this slide, and that include things like enhanced intelligence and surveillance in specialized forces to locate and secure these weapons, and new lethal and non-lethal solutions for the neutralization and/or securing of them, and expanded interdiction capabilities to stop shipments of materiel and delivery systems.
The fourth focus area strikes a familiar chord in terms of those capabilities that we need, a recognition that success requires the assistance, expertise and work sharing of coalition partnerships. The objective for America and its allies, really, is to foster cooperation and enhance mutual security, but while at the same time hedging against the possibility that cooperative approaches may fail and we may have a near peer competitor.
In looking at our capability, the needs for shaping choices -- they span the spectrum of activities -- expanding security cooperation and engagement; cultural awareness; persistent surveillance; command and control; air, land and maritime dominance and global strike.
And with that is the four focus areas we looked at, and worked on the capabilities we want to continue to refine in the department. I'll turn that over to Ryan as he discusses the defense enterprise.
MR. HENRY: So -- while the fighting forces -- and we've laid out vectors and the direction that they need to go -- we also need to change the enterprise.
First is that we need to be able to achieve a unity of effort because we know that we cannot win this long war by ourselves, either as a department or as a country. But we need to be able to work collaboratively, within the government, within the department and especially with our coalition partners and within our alliances. And we also need to build a capability and the capacity of the partnerships we have. And so listed before you are a number of the steps that we have taken in the QDR to start to move in that direction.
Additionally, as we think about the enterprise, we have to think about how we manage it and how we field capabilities. We need to move from a service-centric, systems-oriented approach to one that looks at joint warfare capabilities across the portfolio, and then we build our capacity from there. We need to think about how we operate, both at the execution level, at the management level and here at headquarters at the governance level. And we need to institute horizontally integrated processes, again, to move us from an industrial age organization that's stove piped to one that's agile and horizontally integrated in an information age sort of structure.
And then within our human capital we need to build more language and cultural capability than we presently have, specifically in the areas where we are engaged in this global war on terrorism. We need to think of the total force beyond that of just an active and a Reserve component, but to enlarge that to include the civilians that we have working within the department and the government and also the contractor base that we have.
On that Reserve component we need to think of it is -- rather than as a strategic reserve, one that we can operationally use and rotate in with the current active force. We need to make access to that component more agile, so that we can employ it better. And then, we need to build off some of the capability we will be getting on the civilian personnel side and the National Security Personnel System.
A final step in operationalizing the strategy is how do we go about planning for the force. In QDR '01, we came up with a new force-planning construct, and we have refined that based on that four years of operational lessons learned in QDR '06. We will be engaged in three different sets of activities and employ the force in that manner: those of defending the homeland in-depth, those of pursuing the global war on terrorism and being engaged in prolonged irregular campaigns, and then finally, having the capacity to execute a conventional campaign. We will do those activities in both a steady state ongoing manner, and from time to time we'll be required to surge our capability there. When we've surged and prolonged the irregular, then we'll be able to take on activity sets such as we are currently doing in Afghanistan and Iraq and around the world.
On the conventional end, we will be ready to defeat an enemy at a time, place and manner of our choosing. We will be able to do those major campaigns and continue to have an ability to do two major campaigns nearly simultaneously. But rather than as in the '01 force- planning construct, both of those being conventional campaigns, one of those may in fact be a prolonged irregular campaign. While we are doing we will selectively be able to enhance our deterrence anywhere of our choosing around the globe, but that deterrence will not be a one-size-fits-all of massive retaliation that we've built up over the last 50 years. It'll also be augmented by an ability to deter rogue powers and also terrorists and their networks.
As we think about stress on the force and one of the things that we learned in the Quadrennial Defense Review is the principal stressor on the force is not high-intensity combat operations, but it's supporting the rotational base for the prolonged irregular campaign. As we understand what causes stress on the force, we understand that there's a certain elasticity. And those are based upon variables not only how many campaigns are you involved in, what the duration of the campaign is, the frequency, the intensity, but also a set of policy choices one makes as far as mobilization, rotational base, the degree which you're going to leverage allied and indigenous participation, among others.
So with that, that basically gives you an encapsulation of what we did in the QDR and what the results are and what the -- what's in the report that's posted on the Web.
As we deliver the report to Congress, which -- some copies have gone up today, and the rest will go up on Monday, when we get them from the printers -- within the last six or seven page(s) of that is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who's required by Congress to do an independent military risk assessment of the strategy and the ability to meet that strategy, based on the resource planning.
Additionally, simultaneously, the president's budget will arrive on the Hill on Monday.
But we are going to continue on the QDR. First of all, it is focused on not this year's budget, but it's focused on building our Defense program, which we are beginning now, and those are focused on the years of '08 through '13.
Additionally, the deputy secretary of Defense and the vice chairman will lead a group composed of the five undersecretaries and four service vice chiefs that will oversee the implementation of the QDR. There are over -- close to 150 specific items in the report to be executed. And they will handle the management and to make sure that those are executed, with a goal of completing execution of all those prior to the end of the administration.
The QDR also selected eight different areas that we thought needed further work. And those are areas that are cross-cutting in nature across the department. And so we've put together what we call execution road maps, where we will continue on the work of the QDR and use some of the same mechanisms that at the senior level to be able to oversee those.
And with that, then, we begin the outreach portion of the QDR, because, as we said at the beginning, this is not a beginning and it's not an end; it's snapshot in time along a broader continuum. But we think that it's appropriate now -- despite the fact that we've been inclusive and brought in different departments and different countries and consulted outside groups in doing this QDR, we think it needs to enter into a larger public debate about where the country is and how do we pursue this long war.
And so with that, we'll be happy to take your questions.
Q Sir, you mentioned tailoring deterrence to -- instead of having a "one size fits all" for different types of threats. How would that apply in the case of terrorist networks that you mentioned, in a way that's different than what you're doing today?
MR. HENRY: Well, first of all, when people think of classic deterrence theory, which talks about -- there's a issue of you try to impose cost that doesn't make it worth the gains you're trying to get, or you try to deny benefits.
Our deterrence theory has basically to date been -- is I will impose a cost on you so great that it won't be worth what you're trying to get.
But when we're going against terrorists who appear to not value life, which is the ultimate cost, many people have come back and said you cannot deter terrorists. We happen to think that terrorism and their networks are much more complex than that. There are things you can work on the cost imposition and the benefit denial aspects of it. There are different places you can intersect there -- what we refer to as their value chain, or basically how do they put their operations together. And so those are areas that we're going to start to develop capabilities in. So it's a much broader look at the problem.
Q Do you have any specifics that you can point to, things that you can do that you're not doing now to deter attacks by terrorists?
MR. HENRY: Well, yes. I mean, you can raise the cost to them. You go out and attack their infrastructure, their capabilities -- and many of them are on the run right now. If you look at the leadership that they had in 2001 versus the leadership they have now, that three- quarters of it's gone. There's a number of steps that you can take. You can also do things to make their access to targets harder, their access to resources, their ability to recruit. So there's a number of steps that we can take. And we're still in the process of developing exactly how we operationalize that, though.
Q There's one statement in here that says the department will expand psychological operations and civil affairs by 3,700 personnel. Can you expand on that a little bit? What sort of activities will they be in?
MR. HENRY: Sure.
Go ahead.
ADM. CHANIK: Primarily that's with the Special Operations Forces, and there's an increase exactly of that number. But the intent is, is we've learned in our operations to date, and since 2001, that those particular forces, we needed more of them. So as we looked at the force structure and we looked at the different capabilities that existed in the force, there was an area we said we need more personnel in those particular areas of skills that they had, and consequently decided we need to increase more of those.
Q But for what sorts of activities?
ADM. CHANIK: Activities -- working, quite frankly, when we talk about partnering with other nations, I mean certainly we see a great use in Iraq currently and in Afghanistan. But in other nations throughout the world that we can partner with we see opportunity for those particular skill sets.
MR. HENRY: I'd just add something to that. As you're probably aware, during the course of the QDR, the issue of security, stability, transition and reconstruction operations was spun out. And the deputy signed a directive putting those sort of operations on an equal footing with major combat operations, which is before we'd always said major combat operations, everything else was a lesser included subset.
But now we're saying that we have two co-equal type of activities that we do operationally. On the security, stability, transition, reconstruction -- which use the short-hand of SSTR for -- those sort of operations tend to be non-kinetic in nature, and so you need these broader skill sets of civil affairs and psychological operations, which many people have an image that it's some sort of mind games. Actually, a large part of psychological operations is being able to communicate better with the people that you're working with -- the indigenous residents and that -- and that's really what most of the focus.
So it allows us to be able to do that different sort of operation much more effectively.
Q Only the active duty -- psychological operations?
MR. HENRY: (Off mike) -- both. Both.
Q Admiral, you talk about strategy here and broad-based rhetoric, and I know a lot of the weapons systems will be included in the budget, but from a QDR, what are your planning long-war point of view, or can you give us a snapshot of the weapons systems? You're enlarging special ops, you're enhancing it. How? What kind of weapons are you keeping or are you going to buy? What new weapons? What are you dumping? Can you give us a synopsis, please?
ADM. CHANIK: As you say, a large part of this discussion is Monday when we bring out the budget itself. But as you look at some of the capability sets that we talked about in there, and we looked across the range of military operations, we use that force-planning construct recognizing that it is impossible to predict what's going to happen 10 or 20 years from now, that we need to maintain capabilities across those four security challenges.
One of the things that came out loud and clear to us was persistent ISR, the capabilities that achieve that, the fact that we needed more Special Operations Forces, the fact that we need to be able to work on the maritime environment more closer into the shoreline areas. All of those insights affect how we look at the forces of the future and what we program for them.
MR. HENRY: Let me just take that, if I can, to a higher level. We have had a force historically which was focused on this major combat operation, and we put over here we're going to be able to special operations too. And there was a large gap in between them, and what this QDR does is it maintains that high-end, high-intensity capability. Well, with general-purpose forces it spreads out their capabilities to reach down into the special operation area. And with the Special Operating Forces, we're making investments and pointing them in the direction to enhance their ability to do their high-end mission.
On the more conventional side, we want to be able to reach out deeper, reach out faster, and reach out with more impact on a strike capability.
Q How? And with what?
MR. HENRY: And -- well -- and we'll get to those when the budget comes up and the specific numbers come up.
But finally, another area that's really quite important is the important of intelligence and surveillance and reconnaissance, and so an investment, as Marty was pointing out, to be able to do that in a much more robust sort of way, because we have to be able to transition from tracking forces in the field to be able to track and identify individuals.
And that's a very large challenge.
Q A very large, but expensive challenge, too. You're going to be drilled continually about how can you afford this plan when you didn't make any major cuts to the F-22 and some of the larger, more conventional capability programs, and persistent surveillance, space programs that you're having a lot of cost and schedule problems with already. Can you walk through a little bit of the financial logic here? Does this plan portend a major shift of dollars or increase in the '08 through '13 plan, or do you feel you can live within the current plan although making adjustments with it?
MR. HENRY: Yeah. And I know that people want to understand it from a programmatic point of view, and after the budget comes up, we can try to walk you through that. But I think when you look at that, you miss something that's more important, and that's the cultural point of view and something that's happened during this QDR by engaging the senior leaders very, very intensively over a long period of time and have them together look at what the problem set is.
And a sense of collaboration started about during the summer that allowed us to be able to get the resources to build these new capabilities without going in, as you say, doing the major program kills. And the reason we could do it is, rather than headquarters saying, "You've got a bill, and I'm going to take this big program and that big program because those are the only ones I can see," the services came through and said, "I understand where we're going, I understand where we need to go, here's the capabilities I want to grow, and here is the offsets that I can provide to be able to reach those capabilities and fund other items." And as you see when the specifics come up, that very creatively the services went out and found some of those areas, and found some short-term versus long-term --
Q This is basically almost zero-summed. There were puts and takes that did not require major increases of dollars over the next four or five years?
MR. HENRY: Of the key priorities that we looked at and we keyed up for '07 -- and I want to emphasize that what we've done in '07 is just the leading-edge investment on the vector we want to go on. It's going for the five years after that which will make the major adjustments. But in those leading-edge investments, we tiered our investments, and we put a number of first-priority investments. And we were able to fund and get each one -- every one of those into the '07 budget without impacting other major programs.
Q Last year the Pentagon said that they needed 77 Army and National Guard Combat Brigades, and now they dropped that to 70 with the QDR. Can you talk about the rationale behind that? And will some of these capabilities be assumed by the increase in special ops?
MR. HENRY: We're both anxious to do this because we've heard this one a number of times.
ADM. CHANIK: Right. I'll start first. I think, again, the issue here is how do we get a more operational Army, if you will, more forces that are ready to deploy and be utilized. The Army has done some tremendous work, and I think we all should congratulate what they're doing both in the field and what they're doing with their reorganization efforts now, because in those reorganization efforts they are going to become somewhat lighter, have more capability in the sense of the ability to deploy and get more forces ready to go forward, if required, than before. That's through the total Army in the sense of both the Reserve, the Guard and the active forces itself.
Some of the Army forces are going to go to the Special Operations Forces too, as we look at an increase in Special Operations Forces.
Q How many -- (off mike) --
ADM. CHANIK: I think --
MR. HENRY: We can give you those specific numbers on Monday.
But I think the question actually misses a much, much broader point, and that's something fundamental to the QDR: It is not about numbers. Numbers is an easy shorthand, but numbers doesn't tell you can get the job done. I've emphasized throughout this capabilities, being to generate operational effects on the battle space -- that's what it's about. It's about capabilities, it's not about numbers.
The Army, prior to going into the QDR, made some projections on what they think would be needed. During this study we used an analysis engine built by the joint staff, we've used it, built it up over the last four years, called the Operation Availability Study -- but it's basically a large simulation analysis technique -- that we didn't have in QDR '01. And we spent the whole QDR looking at this force-planning construct, looking at what we planned on doing, and trying to understand what would be sufficient to be able to meet all those different activities.
We've expanded the size and the breadth of the activities we plan on being able to do in the future. But based on the capabilities that these brigade combat teams are going to be able to deliver, we're going to be able to meet that with the 70 brigades. And an assumption going into the QDR was -- is that the force size, the end strength, is probably about right.
We've got presidential call-up authority, so we can expand it as much as want. The thing we know is wrong is the capability mix. We've got the wrong sort of capabilities in the wrong places, and some capabilities we're missing.
We looked to the future, tried to understand as best we could what we would need to be able to do out there versus those four challenge sets, and then talked about how we would redistribute those capabilities. And then, once we understood that and the problem set that we were going to sign up for, then we were able to back into what the size needed to be. And that's what you've seen and what the Army's done.
Q What effect does the seven fewer brigades have on rotations, though? Won't these folks be busier?
MR. HENRY: Will they be busier? I mean, you're going to be able to put 18 to 20 out there on a continuous basis. That is an awful lot of capability, especially as we modularize these brigades. The ones that were currently used are not modularized brigades. The number of trigger-pullers in the front lines increases significantly. There's much more capability out there, as we've seen in the Stryker brigades that we've had in northern Iraq. They can do much more than a standard brigade can.
Q Could I stop you on the numbers question? I know you don't like to focus on it, but Congress does focus on numbers. And when -- if your concept paper, which this basically is, goes forward, when would there be a major shift of resources to bring it to life? Would it be like three years hence or five years hence, or --
MR. HENRY: As we stated, the budget that goes up on Monday, which you'll see the specifics on then, makes a leading edge investment. And that budget is in --
Q Not just around the edges. I mean, when you're going to get a rough --
MR. HENRY: And again, we're starting now, and for the next 10 months, we'll be building what we call the Defense program, which looks out -- and it's a funding distribution over five years, from '08 through '13. And that's where you'll see those changes start to take place.
Q What year will the big shift start of resources?
MR. HENRY: The big shift started in '01. This is a continuum of transformation.
Yes, ma'am?
Q Could you elaborate a little bit about the part related to China? What's the central point, the main message that the QDR would like to deliver regarding China?
MR. HENRY: Well, we think that China is a regional power. It's a growing regional power. We think it'll be more important, more significant in the future. We want to partner with them to manage their successful rise. We think that some of the attributes of that is one of transparency, of -- one of acquiring military capability, but one sufficient for its regional needs, one that will be a constructive partner in the community of nations. And we want to work with them to be able to do that.
We also want to be able to -- have a capability to be able to dissuade from any coercive action or things that would not be helpful that they might do.
Q Just to follow up on that -- could you just talk about what specific steps and weapons programs mentioned in the QDR anticipate a potential threat from China?
MR. HENRY: Again, we -- this is not threat-based. We've moved away from threat-based. We're talking about capabilities-based. We tried to lay out to you the four challenges we see out there. And we develop capabilities based upon those future challenges, and Marty went through and listed to you -- and you have in your sheet there the ones that are looking at countries at strategic crossroads.
China would be among a number of countries at strategic crossroads. We also include the report of Russia being one and also India, a country that we're interested in developing a strategic partnership with.
Q But you mentioned that this QDR is different than '01 in that -- if I'm understanding right -- the force is no longer capable of fighting two conventional campaigns simultaneously?
MR. HENRY: No, that's a misreading, or I misspoke. Very clearly -- very clearly, we can handle the two conventional campaigns. We had this thing called the 1-4-2-1. The two there was two nearly simultaneous conventional campaigns in which we talked about being a level of effort, and put a label on that of calling it swift defeat. We maintain that capability. But that doesn't represent the world we find ourselves in. We could also find ourselves in something called a prolonged irregular campaign, of which Iraq and Afghanistan is an example of. And we want to have the ability to use either the two conventional or one conventional and one prolonged irregular. And we still maintain the capability of increasing the intensity or the scope of that to what we referred to in '01 as a win decisive level of effort, something that might involve a regime change, and we will maintain the capability to be able to do that, either on the conventional side or on the prolonged irregular.
But we clearly -- I want to be very clear about this -- we maintain the ability to handle two conventional campaigns nearly simultaneously.
Q You've already briefed this on Capitol Hill to many members. What do you see as becoming areas of debate? And what are you guys going to do to sell your vision to people who may not see it your way from the very beginning?
MR. HENRY: Well, that's -- that depends on how it goes. Unfortunately, it could go partisan, and in an impending political season, people could look for a political advantage of it. The way we would like to see is, is discuss what the country's investment in -- is in winning this long war, what its commitment is to be able to do it and what we as a nation want to go forward for. We think that would be the healthy debate. It might get into partisan issues. It might get into local political issues as far as how much money is coming to my district. We'd hope that it would be the former.
Q Have you seen any immediate areas of disagreement where you have your work cut out for you?
MR. HENRY: I think that it'd probably be better to talk to the folks on Capitol Hill on the areas that they're interested in. And we see this as a holistic document and one that's tied together, and -- rather than go into specific -- you know, talking about specific areas that may be of interest of individual members.
Q Mr. Secretary, when you said you want to work with China so that China builds a military power sufficient for its regional needs -- I believe was the approximate phrase you used -- does that mean that a goal of the department is to prevent China from becoming a global military power or being able to project its military power farther outside of its own region?
MR. HENRY: We think China should have a military capability sufficient to meet its genuine security needs. Now, how that is translated has a lot to do with what sort of country and how China is going to be contributing to world stability.
Q Already the private sector defense analysts are under-whelmed by the QDR. I think they were expecting big program cuts or big program shifts. And if you look at this -- we want to defeat terrorism, of course; want to protect the country conventionally, of course; want to be able to respond to homeland security. What's the -- you're very excited about this. What is the kernel of this that you think is an important or revolutionary change in the way that the Pentagon is grappling with this new world?
ADM. CHANIK: I'm not sure "revolutionary" is the right term. It might be better described as "evolutionary." When we look at this -- and Mr. Henry talked about this in the beginning -- this is a continuum. One of the things that the services and department has done very well over the years is assess itself and determine the change that needed to be to be agile and capable to meet whatever threats that might be there.
So I think the right metric is not to look at program cuts and look for revolutionary change. I think the right metric is the fact that this is every -- we do this all year long every year; we work our next budget and we look at evolutionary change as we see things come into focus as to how we want to adjust to that, making sure that we have a range of capabilities to address a very uncertain future.
MR. HENRY: Let me take -- if I can add to that, because it comes down to where are the big cuts to be able to make the big changes. People think you can't make a big change unless you make a big cut. And this basically comes to tell me who the winners and losers were, and I can tell you how you're changing your vector, because I have to have a loser and a winner to be able to change what the differentiation is.
And I think that only happens when people have different views of what the future is and what we need to be able to do. And so what came out of this QDR is, by the hundreds of hours that a number -- a large number of four-stars and Senate-confirmed individuals sat at the table, is they came up with a common vision of where we need to go and what we need to do. And if you ask the people who are involved in the process, not the ones who were hearing it third and fourth hand, but the ones who were involved in the process, no one thinks that there's a loser. Everybody thinks that we're changing as an organization and they're changing their specific component to be able to meet that goal.
Now, I understand that that might sound a little altruistic, but a process went on during this QDR that the leadership came to a common vision of what we need to do to pursue the long war, and with victory on that, to be able to have a more secure world globally and here at home.
STAFF: We have time for about one more, so let's have somebody else have a chance to ask.
Q I have two questions, actually. Under the unity of effort, you talk about asking for flexibility authorities to support, train and equip security forces of new partner states. And second, you talked about developing a National Security Planning Guidance and a National Homeland Security Plan. In the first case, I'm wondering what kinds of flexible authorities are you seeking.
MR. HENRY: Currently we have authorities in Iraq and Afghanistan to be able to help train indigenous forces, and that's part of what we're doing in building up the capabilities of those countries to be able to provide for their own security. Those authorities, though, don't exist outside those two countries. And so in working with the State Department and the Congress, we want to be able to come up with authorities so we're able to do a better job with the unity effort concept across the U.S. government of being able to develop capabilities in other countries.
We have the Global Peace Operation initiative, where we're building capabilities in Africa. The capability of ECOWAS made a big difference on when we went into Liberia; we were able to put in a company there in for a number of weeks and then pull out because there was a regional force that could go in and provide that security. And that's what we're speaking of there.
Q And the second one, who's going to be doing the National Security Planning Guidance and the Homeland Security Plan?
MR. HENRY: Well, the National Security Planning Guidance is something that -- we have a Defense Planning Guidance, or now we call it a Strategic Planning Guidance, here in the department, which puts out a strategic direction and talks about the capabilities that we need to develop.
It actually takes the -- something like the QDR and turns it into a programmatic direction.
So what we're suggesting is, is that across the U.S. government having something like that to, again, to generate this unity effort would be something worth considering. If that were to be done, then that leadership would come from the White House and the National Security Council.
STAFF: Let Dale really have the last one, how’s that?
Q The average officer or enlisted member who looks at this, I suspect, is going to say the message is you want us to continue to do or be able to do everything that we're doing now, and you want us to do -- be able to do all these other things that need to be done in this changing world. And that -- and those folks are going to look at and say, "Gee, we're working pretty hard right now." How are we going to reconcile that? Can you help them understand?
MR. HENRY: Sure. We're going -- I mean, we continue -- we haven't -- Marty, you're the military guy. I'll let you do it rather than having to jump in.
ADM. CHANIK: All right. No, I think the average military guy out there understands that we live in a changing world and that as this world changes, we need to change with it. And so consequently, our skill sets are constantly evolving to meet the requirements that we have out there.
One of the things we stress across the military is education. We stress the training side of the house, and we recognize that we need to change as circumstances change.
And you see it today in -- across all the services, as we have entered into the current state, since 2001, in this irregular war, that the service schools, be they Army in Kansas or whatever, are applying those lessons learned and changing the skill sets that are required to be successful.
So I think for those of us in the military, we understand change, we recognize it, and we recognize the fact that we need to change to continuously improve ourselves and improve the capabilities that we possess, to give you the best value for your dollar.
MR. HENRY: Thank you very much.
Q Thanks.
ADM. CHANIK: Thank you.
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