2014: The year of the shrinking QDR?
This year’s Quadrennial Defense Review may be smaller and less comprehensive than previous rounds of the congressionally mandated look at the Pentagon’s role in the world. Remember, the Pentagon is already in the midst of preparing a brand new Strategic Choices Management Review — ordered by new Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel — aimed at defining ...
This year's Quadrennial Defense Review may be smaller and less comprehensive than previous rounds of the congressionally mandated look at the Pentagon's role in the world.
This year’s Quadrennial Defense Review may be smaller and less comprehensive than previous rounds of the congressionally mandated look at the Pentagon’s role in the world.
Remember, the Pentagon is already in the midst of preparing a brand new Strategic Choices Management Review — ordered by new Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel — aimed at defining the Defense Department’s priorities amid fiscal uncertainty and its shift to the Pacific. That document is meant to serve as a foundation for the QDR. Because of this, the next iteration of the QDR, due to be sent to Congress in early 2014, might be slimmed down.
"If I were guessing I’ll bet the final QDR is going to be smaller perhaps than in the past," said Marine Corps’ Maj. Gen. Frank McKenzie, the service’s representative to the QDR planning process during a breakfast with reporters in Washington this morning. "I think there is a strong degree of support for a smaller process" that will build on the work of the current strategic review instead of duplicating it.
Pentagon staff will "do the Strategic Choices process over the next 60 days, frame some issues, and that will give them an opportunity" to figure out how to develop this years’ QDR, said the two-star. The Strategic Choices review is supposed
Click here to read what McKenzie told Situation Report in January about how he sees the Marines fitting into the 2014 QDR.
John Reed is a national security reporter for Foreign Policy. He comes to FP after editing Military.com’s publication Defense Tech and working as the associate editor of DoDBuzz. Between 2007 and 2010, he covered major trends in military aviation and the defense industry around the world for Defense News and Inside the Air Force. Before moving to Washington in August 2007, Reed worked in corporate sales and business development for a Swedish IT firm, The Meltwater Group in Mountain View CA, and Philadelphia, PA. Prior to that, he worked as a reporter at the Tracy Press and the Scotts Valley Press-Banner newspapers in California. His first story as a professional reporter involved chasing escaped emus around California’s central valley with Mexican cowboys armed with lassos and local police armed with shotguns. Luckily for the giant birds, the cowboys caught them first and the emus were ok. A New England native, Reed graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a dual degree in international affairs and history.
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