Rapid Fire 2012-01-06 | Defense Strategic Guidance: Wait Till February

Jan 06, 2012 10:00 UTC by Defense Industry Daily staff
  • In line with pre-announcements made by his administration in past months, President Obama said yesterday he was directing the Pentagon to lower ground troop levels in favor of increasing special forces, cybersecurity and UAVs, alongside a shift in resources from Europe into Asia (video at the bottom of this entry). Even the New York Times notes that calls for a leaner, more technical military that stays away from messy, protracted land wars is not new, but reality may object. DoD released Defense Strategic Guidance [PDF] and had a follow-up roundtable with Carter and Flournoy. The backdrop is clearly the coming presidential election.
  • Specifics on program impact will have to wait until the president submits his FY13 budget next month. On the DoD topline budget, Obama said: “[S]ince 9/11, our defense budget grew at an extraordinary pace. Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this: It will still grow [...] In fact, the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration.” If sequestration is fully enacted, this may still turn out to be true, but probably only in nominal terms (of course future inflation rates, and actual budgets, remain a conjecture).
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  • One new tidbit: expressed support for a new stealth bomber.

  • A couple reactions boiled down to soundbites: “budget-driven defense strategy“, “diagnosis without prescription“, “we cannot pick our enemies“, “less of the same“, “the devil lies in the details.”

  • DID’s quick take comes as questions. First, a premise: a defining issue for the US and its allies in the “developed world” is the fiscal sustainability of a technical superiority that comes at a massive cost premium, while that technical edge is threatened by relatively cheap disruption if not interdiction – think USS Cole bombing or MRAP vs. IED relative costs. If that premise is accurate, how is a “do a little less, for a little less, but optimized” guidance addressing the core cost/benefit and cost asymmetry challenges? To make a business analogy, for after all this has a lot to do with industry and funding, if your new competitor floods the market with an offering that provides 70% of the value at 10% of the cost, can you as the incumbent settle for marginal optimization as your strategy? Is linear thinking viable against disruptive economic forces shaped by deep demographic trends?

  • British Defence Minister Philip Hammond who met Leon Panetta later in the day wanted to be briefed on the future of the F-35.

  • The US Air Force issued a temporary stop-work order for the recently-awarded Light Air Support contract but is “confident in the merits of its contract award decision and anticipates that the litigation [initiated by Hawker Beechcraft] will be quickly resolved.”

  • The British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee released a report on piracy off Somalia’s coast.

  • Finland authorized shipping of the Patriot missiles it had blocked last month after it became clear they’re indeed a legitimate export from Germany to South Korea.

    • Categories: Africa - Other, Budgets, Daily Rapid Fire, Fighters & Attack, Policy - Doctrine

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