"Unplanning" for Uncertainty

This brief is a part of series prepared by the Burke Chair in Strategy on current issues in defense budgeting and strategy. The full breif can be downloaded at: http://csis.org/files/publication/100805_Unplanning_for_Uncertainty.pdf

Other briefs within this series include:

• “The Coming Challenges in Defense Planning, Programming and Budgeting,” which can be found at: http://csis.org/publication/coming-challenges-defense-planning-programming-and-budgeting
• “The Uncertain Costs of War(s),”  which can be found at: http://csis.org/publication/uncertain-cost-wars
•  “The Macroeconomics of US Defense Spending,”  Which can be found at: http://csis.org/publication/macroeconomics-us-defense-spending
  

This particular brief focuses on recent changes in and additions to the DOD’s planning priorities as laid out in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Report (QDR). Moreover, this brief analyzes how planned outlays stated in the DOD’s FY 2011 Budget Request reflects or fails to reflect these stated planning priorities.

The 2010 QDR begins its strategic analysis by identifying the major threats and challenges facing the US. Enduring threats like terrorist networks, anti-access challenges, and proliferation of WMDs all retain their strategic prominence as major threats. The 2010 QDR, however, gives increasing emphasis to threat of asymmetric or “hybrid” warfare as well as the threat posed by the increasing availability of advanced technological capabilities, like satellite imagery and cyber attacks, to non-state actors (Slide 6).

A comparison of the 2006 QDR’s “Four Priority Areas” and the 2010 QDR’s “Six Key Missions” reveals that the DOD has tried to update its planning priorities to reflect the changing threat environment. The 2006 QDR set as DOD’s planning priorities four missions: defeating terrorist networks, defending the homeland, preventing nuclear proliferation and the highly vague mission of “shaping the choices of countries at strategic crossroads” (Slide 7).

In the 2010 QDR’s “Six Key Missions,” the ambiguous fourth mission is completely dropped, while other priorities are either added or expanded to better reflect the threats identified in the QDR (Slide 7). In summary, the DOD adopts three major doctrinal changes:

    * First, in where the 2006 QDR only mention counterterrorism operations, drawing on recent experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti, the 2010 QDR also recognizes executing counterinsurgency and stability operations as primary DOD planning priorities.
    * Second, the 2010 QDR recognizes success in such operations is often heavily contingent upon the effectiveness of partner security by including building partner states’ security capacities as a primary planning priority.
    * Third and last of the significant priority changes, the 2010 QDR recognizes the growing threat of cyber information systems attacks by state and non-state actors as well as the increasing need for the DOD to improve US government information technology security.    

Despites these efforts to align its planning priorities to the changing threat environment, the DOD has only achieved mixed success in aligning its planning priorities, as laid out in the 2010 QDR, with its budgeting priorities, found in the DOD’s FY 2011 Budget Request.

The DOD’s planning and budgeting priorities are congruent at a couple points (Slide 8). Funding for  missile, aircraft and ship procurement and upgrades will see a steady increase in funding over the out years (FY 2012 – FY 2015), indicating that the DOD will continue to bolster capacity to “deter and defeat aggression in anti-access environments” as it states in the 2010 QDR (Slide 10).

Moreover, the 2010 QDR states the DOD’s plans to establish a Joint Task Force Elimination Headquarters in order to unify DOD personnel and resources devoted to stemming nuclear proliferation as well as to establish USCYBERCOM in order to unify the DOD’s efforts to bolster national security against attacks in cyberspace.

However, at several other points the DOD’s budgeting realities diverge sharply from its stated priorities (Slides 8-9). Despite recognizing the successful execution of counterinsurgency and stability operations as an integral planning priority, the budget for FY 2011 reveals that funding for Army aircraft procurement (composed of primarily rotary wing aircraft), special forces operations and intelligence capabilities will actually decrease in real terms relative to their FY 2010 funding levels (Slide 12).

Budgeting also raises serious questions about the priority given to the DOD’s mission to bolster the security capacities in partner states; funding for Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani security forces are all set to decrease in FY 2011 relative to FY 2010 (Slide 11).

Likewise, the 2010 QDR provides very limited operational analysis. In addition to defining the threat environment and strategic objectives (key missions), a coherent strategic environment requires clearly defined and actionable operations concepts to explain specifically how the DOD intends to achieve its strategic objectives.

The QDR goes into significant depth in explaining how it intends to operationalize the “key missions” of counterinsurgency operations and building partner security forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, the definition of applicable operational concepts for the other key missions are tabled for later review.

The QDR calls upon the Navy and Air Force to develop a new Air-Sea battle concept to address anti-access and area denial threats but does not hint at what that concept might be. Furthermore, the QDR states the DOD’s intent establish command headquarters to unify efforts against nuclear proliferation and against cyber warfare, but, again, but does not go so far as to suggest actionable plans for defending against these threats.

In conclusion, the 2010 QDR and FY 2011 Budget Request continues the DOD’s long-running mismatch between strategic objective and budgeting priorities. While the 2010 QDR does a markedly better job than its 2006 predecessor at defining the threat environment and the DOD’s strategic objectives, it still fails in many respects to clearly and thoroughly explain how the DOD intends to achieve these objectives.

These failures to articulates clear operational concepts obfuscate any attempt by planners to identify necessary capabilities and force structure changes as well as how to prioritize amongst competing demands for different capabilities. This situation further complicates efforts by Congress and the DOD to “optimize” the military’s force structure to achieve all six key missions in the midst of a campaign of fiscal “belt-tightening,” in which the DOD may not be able to simply spend its way out of future force structure crises.