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QDR
Every four years the Department of Defense is forced to undergo a painful exercise in self-flagellation and self-deception known as the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). Mandated by Congress in 1997, the QDR is a study by the Department of Defense that purports to define U.S. strategic objectives
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Date:
1/23/2013
For more than two years, the Department of Defense and the armed forces of the United States have been undergoing what the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, termed a process of finding balance. Secretary Gates announced his new approach to defense planning in an article in Foreign Affairs in
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Date:
5/7/2010
The key assumption behind the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is that the United States will have sufficient time and warning with which to win the wars it is in now and then “pivot” to address future high-end or more complex threats. In the meantime, the military will also be participating in
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Date:
2/9/2010
One of the innovations in the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) much lauded in the media is the abandonment of the so-called two major regional conflicts or wars standard. This was the central metric by which the force structure was sized and the dominant challenge by which the adequacy of that
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Date:
2/3/2010
An important feature of the future security environment according to the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) will be something called “hybrid warfare.” This is the idea that states will use a variety of traditional and asymmetric tactics, techniques, and procedures including the use of surrogates
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Date:
2/2/2010
The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is supposed to take a twenty year view of the threats to U.S. security and the requirements for U.S military forces. One of this QDR’s assumptions is that the United States can afford to take risk in the area of conventional forces in favor of investments
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Date:
2/1/2010
One of the oddities of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review is its treatment of the private sector. The document has an entire chapter devoted to changing the way the Department of Defense (DoD) does business. This chapter contains some important initiatives particularly with respect to the idea
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Date:
1/29/2010
In general, Quadrennial Defense Reviews (QDRs) are like State of the Union addresses: long on vision and short on practical steps to be taken. Having reviewed a draft of the 2010 QDR I can say that it is the best of the lot. It makes a serious effort to connect strategy to missions and concepts
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Date:
1/28/2010
Details of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review have begun to circulate, and it looks pretty much like my colleague Dan Goure predicted: a warmed-over version of the Bush defense posture. That isn't all bad, because by the end of its tenure the Bush Administration had come to grasp the emerging
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Date:
1/28/2010
The Department of Defense is about to release the unclassified version of its 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) which will provide high-level guidance to the department for the remainder of the Obama Administration’s first term. As such, one might have expected the QDR to radically redirect
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Date:
1/27/2010
Although the most recent version of the Quadrennial Defense Review is classified "secret," an unclassified overview of the fiscal 2011 defense budget circulating in Washington reveals the basic outlines of the QDR. It lists the major themes of the QDR thusly:
-- U.S. security in a complex
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Date:
1/22/2010
Tom Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute has written a long rebuttal to my Monday issue brief, which argued that the Quadrennial Defense Review can never be what conservatives want it to be -- a 20 year strategic plan insulated from political and budgetary pressures. I suppose I had this
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Date:
1/13/2010