The job facing the next U.S. defense secretary just became a little more daunting.
In addition to overseeing operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya, the successor to Defense Secretary Robert Gates will likely walk into the job at the end of the summer just as the Pentagon wraps up a "fundamental" review of its missions and capabilities to help identify $400 billion in savings in security spending over the next 10 years.
If the Defense Department wants the review to influence its 2013 budget submission, it will have to complete it this summer, defense analysts say. This means the next secretary will have to implement a plan in which he or she had little input.
The Pentagon maintains that a schedule for the review has not yet been established.
"It is going to take some time for it to be done thoughtfully and properly," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters after President Obama's April 13 speech on his deficit reduction plan.
In an April 18 email, Morrell said, "We haven't yet determined who is going to head up this effort and what its mandate will be, let alone how long it will take."
And Gates said during an April 21 press briefing that he has had only one meeting to discuss how to structure the review.
The administration has said that while the review will have no effect on the 2012 budget, it should be completed in time for the 2013 budget submission.
Defense experts said that if the White House truly wants to shape spending choices for 2013, the review needs to be completed before August, when the budget is already largely built by the services.
"If this is really going to influence the FY 13 budget, then they're going to need to finish the review by June or July," said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow for defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Under this schedule, the review's conclusion would coincide with Gates' departure, which many believe is only a few months away.
"It's a little hard to understand why an outgoing defense secretary would be doing a strategic review for the next several years at this point in his tenure," the Lexington Institute's Loren Thompson said.
It looks as if the new defense secretary will not only pick up the strategic review right away, but will also take over the job just as DoD analyzes the services' multiyear spending plans and crafts its guidance.
"The new defense secretary is going to have a steep learning curve," and that probably means Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn will end up doing a lot of the heavy lifting, Harrison said. "He would ideally provide a lot of the continuity between Gates and whoever follows him."
To meet Obama's call to cut $400 billion in security spending over 10 years, Gates has said the country will have to accept risk in certain mission areas and capabilities.
Yet the White House and analysts note that the reduction in planned spending means only keeping the defense budget roughly flat in real terms.
Still, there are large parts of the defense budget that are growing much faster than inflation.
During his April 21 press briefing, Gates named two: military health care and fuel costs.
With or without the $400 billion in cuts, these costs will begin to crowd out the Pentagon's investment accounts, which in turn will force the Pentagon to make tougher choices, Harrison said.
QDR As Guide To help make these choices, DoD will turn to the last Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), released inFebruary 2010, as the jumping-off point for the new review, Gates said April 21.
"It will start, probably, with the QDR and in the terms of the scenarios, and then try to translate that into what are the programmatic implications as you begin to reduce the mission sets," Gates said.
When the QDR was published, it was criticized for not prioritizing future missions and capabilities and making none of the difficult trades the Pentagon is now being asked to consider.
But the Pentagon will have to rely on this previously established baseline, especially if it wants to turn the review around quickly, Thompson said.
Even so, it's not an encouraging sign that the QDR might be used as the framework for the new review, Harrison said. "They may be better off just starting with a clean sheet of paper because what they fundamentally need to get out of this is different than what the QDR produced," Harrison said.
This time around, the Pentagon needs to lay out all of the roles and missions it currently is responsible for or has some role in; prioritize that list; and then start trimming from the bottom, he said.
Gates is overseeing the early stages of the review, but he is also signaling that his departure is near.
Asked if he was worried that the Libyan war would be a stalemate when he left office and if NATO should be doing more, Gates said, "Well, the worry will be my successor's."
In addition to overseeing operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya, the successor to Defense Secretary Robert Gates will likely walk into the job at the end of the summer just as the Pentagon wraps up a "fundamental" review of its missions and capabilities to help identify $400 billion in savings in security spending over the next 10 years.
If the Defense Department wants the review to influence its 2013 budget submission, it will have to complete it this summer, defense analysts say. This means the next secretary will have to implement a plan in which he or she had little input.
The Pentagon maintains that a schedule for the review has not yet been established.
"It is going to take some time for it to be done thoughtfully and properly," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters after President Obama's April 13 speech on his deficit reduction plan.
In an April 18 email, Morrell said, "We haven't yet determined who is going to head up this effort and what its mandate will be, let alone how long it will take."
And Gates said during an April 21 press briefing that he has had only one meeting to discuss how to structure the review.
The administration has said that while the review will have no effect on the 2012 budget, it should be completed in time for the 2013 budget submission.
Defense experts said that if the White House truly wants to shape spending choices for 2013, the review needs to be completed before August, when the budget is already largely built by the services.
"If this is really going to influence the FY 13 budget, then they're going to need to finish the review by June or July," said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow for defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Under this schedule, the review's conclusion would coincide with Gates' departure, which many believe is only a few months away.
"It's a little hard to understand why an outgoing defense secretary would be doing a strategic review for the next several years at this point in his tenure," the Lexington Institute's Loren Thompson said.
It looks as if the new defense secretary will not only pick up the strategic review right away, but will also take over the job just as DoD analyzes the services' multiyear spending plans and crafts its guidance.
"The new defense secretary is going to have a steep learning curve," and that probably means Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn will end up doing a lot of the heavy lifting, Harrison said. "He would ideally provide a lot of the continuity between Gates and whoever follows him."
To meet Obama's call to cut $400 billion in security spending over 10 years, Gates has said the country will have to accept risk in certain mission areas and capabilities.
Yet the White House and analysts note that the reduction in planned spending means only keeping the defense budget roughly flat in real terms.
Still, there are large parts of the defense budget that are growing much faster than inflation.
During his April 21 press briefing, Gates named two: military health care and fuel costs.
With or without the $400 billion in cuts, these costs will begin to crowd out the Pentagon's investment accounts, which in turn will force the Pentagon to make tougher choices, Harrison said.
QDR As Guide To help make these choices, DoD will turn to the last Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), released inFebruary 2010, as the jumping-off point for the new review, Gates said April 21.
"It will start, probably, with the QDR and in the terms of the scenarios, and then try to translate that into what are the programmatic implications as you begin to reduce the mission sets," Gates said.
When the QDR was published, it was criticized for not prioritizing future missions and capabilities and making none of the difficult trades the Pentagon is now being asked to consider.
But the Pentagon will have to rely on this previously established baseline, especially if it wants to turn the review around quickly, Thompson said.
Even so, it's not an encouraging sign that the QDR might be used as the framework for the new review, Harrison said. "They may be better off just starting with a clean sheet of paper because what they fundamentally need to get out of this is different than what the QDR produced," Harrison said.
This time around, the Pentagon needs to lay out all of the roles and missions it currently is responsible for or has some role in; prioritize that list; and then start trimming from the bottom, he said.
Gates is overseeing the early stages of the review, but he is also signaling that his departure is near.
Asked if he was worried that the Libyan war would be a stalemate when he left office and if NATO should be doing more, Gates said, "Well, the worry will be my successor's."
