VALERIE INSINNA
WASHINGTON — After months of delays, the unclassified version of the National Defense Strategy hit the streets on Thursday, pledging a renewed focus on China and including not much in the way of surprises.
Now, experts say, is time to answer the big question: Can the Defense Department actually execute it?
“Bottom line, regarding the strategy writ large, I’d say it’s fundamentally sound and logically supported. The department did a good job of thinking through what problem it needs the military to focus on, and has a sensible, coherent approach to getting after it,” said Jim Mitre, who served as executive director of the 2018 NDS.
“The issue is, can the department execute this strategy and really do it in time?” Mitre, currently the director of the international security and defense policy program at the RAND Corporation, told Breaking Defense. “Can it modernize its forces, establish greater resilience to adversary attack, develop a more tech savvy workforce, et cetera, with alacrity? … In particular can it do so on a timeline that’s sufficient to deter war with China, not just in some far-off future, but in the next few years?”
Stacie Pettyjohn, director of defense programs at the Center for a New American Security, agreed that the strategy lays out a “sound vision,” but will require the Biden administration to make difficult choices to allocate resources to prioritize threats — in particular, managing the immediate threat posed by Russia without “derailing efforts” to compete against China.
The need to deter China is the single biggest theme of the NDS, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said yesterday during a briefing on the new strategy. China is “the only competitor out there with both the intent to reshape the international order and increasingly, the power to do so,” he said. In contrast, Russia represents an “acute threat” that poses an immediate threat to US interests, as seen in its invasion of Ukraine, the NDS states.
“Immediate needs have a tendency of overwhelming future threats, and the Pentagon has repeatedly deferred making changes to its force structure and posture necessary to bolster deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region,” Pettyjohn said in a written statement.
On the technology side, the NDS lists command, control and communications systems, long-range strike, and space as key investment priorities, said Seamus Daniels, the defense budget analysis fellow for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
However, “I think the strategy lacks a discussion of sort of the main trade offs when we’re talking about force structure versus modernization versus readiness,” he said. “Are they going to try and free up funds by limiting the day-to-day deployments? Or is that going to come in the form of force structure cuts?”
One missed opportunity, Mitre said, was that the strategy did not focus enough on how the department plans to overcome the well-established barriers that keep it from moving as quickly as it needs to accomplish its goals.
For example, the strategy notes a need for the Pentagon to forge closer ties with academia and industry — particularly with companies outside its typical roster of defense firms. It states that the department will be a “fast follower” on technologies like artificial intelligence, autonomy and microelectronics, where commercial firms are driving innovation. The NDS also vows to increase collaboration with the commercial space industry, a space it believes it can leverage “[industry’s] technological advancements and entrepreneurial spirit to enable new capabilities.”
But all those ideas have been well agreed upon for years, with a serious push for commercial technology starting with former Defense Secretary Ash Carter in 2015. While it’s positive that the NDS signals the Pentagon’s desire to work more closely with the private sector, Mitre noted that the strategy falls short in that it does not spell out why that has historically been difficult, and how the department will overcome those impediments this time.
“We know that that’s been a challenge, there’s been some important progress there. But the department’s still grappling with the ‘valley of death.’ And the strategy doesn’t have a clear solution to how the department should address the valley of death problem,” he said, using a phrase that describes the funding gap between the research and development phase and a program of record, where technologies often wither and die.
During a Thursday background briefing on the NDS, a journalist asked how the strategy would lead to faster technology adoption. A senior defense official acknowledged that “this is a refrain you have no doubt been subjected to before,” but said they had greater hope of success after seeing how the Pentagon mobilized to provide weaponry for Ukraine, including existing systems that have been used in new ways on the battlefield.
“So it does tell me … that this can be more more feasible going forward, because we’ve had this experience,” the official said.
The fiscal 2024 budget could shed further light on how serious the Pentagon is about funding its strategic priorities, as well as the tradeoffs it is willing to make, Daniels said. One key indicator to look at is the size of the FY24 budget request next spring, specifically whether the department is able to keep defense spending from dropping below the rate of inflation.
“The still a significant and expensive strategy, similar to 2018,” he said. “It will still require a significant level of investment, at least keeping pace, if not above inflation.”
Daniels added he would be interested in seeing how the Pentagon “balance[s] the procurement platforms for the fight today versus [long-term] modernization investments.”
Mitre added that the responsibility for implementing the defense strategy doesn’t fall squarely on the Defense Department’s shoulders. Congress must also allow the Pentagon to take calculated risks in order to fund its strategic priorities.
“There are too many programs that are sacred cows. Too many times people claim that any reduction in US forces anywhere is assuming unacceptable risk,” he said. “As people critique what the department is trying to do, what happens is that the trade space gets narrower, and as its trade space narrows, its progress slows down.”
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