DOD strategy embraces uncertainty

DOD Quadrennial Defense Review report

The Defense Department will shift its focus to a "capabilities-based" approach, focusing more on how an adversary might fight and less on who the adversary might be and where a war might occur, a report on DOD's Quadrennial Defense Review says.

The QDR is a congressionally mandated, comprehensive review of military strategy and force structure and provides the military with a plan for the next 20 years.

The document makes clear that the Sept. 11 attacks on New York City's World Trade Center and on the Pentagon represent a new type of war—one that is less predictable. Yet the document, while largely written before the terrorist attacks, suggests those incidents reinforce the changes that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been proposing.

"Even before the attack of September 11, 2001, the senior leaders of the Defense Department set out to establish a new strategy for America's defense that would embrace uncertainty and contend with surprise, a strategy that is premised on the idea that to be effective abroad, America must be safe at home," the 71-page report says.

While it is not possible to know precisely who may attack, one can anticipate the capabilities that an adversary might have, the report says.

Technology and information assurance are a cornerstone of this new approach, the document says. And assuring information systems in the face of attack and conducting effective operations is one of the QDR's operational goals.

It will be important for the Defense Department to hone its capabilities —including information resources—to prevail over current challenges and dissuade future threats, the report says.

"It will also require exploiting U.S. advantages in superior technological innovation; its unmatched space and intelligence capabilities; its sophisticated military training; and its ability to integrate highly distributed military forces in synergistic combinations for highly complex joint military operations," the QDR report says.

The document reinforces the need for DOD transformation. "Continuing 'business as usual' within the department is not a viable option," the report says.