Washington (CNN) -- Preparing the U.S. military to fight two major conventional wars is "out of date" and does not reflect the numerous challenges U.S. military forces could face in the future, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday.
Gates made that pronouncement as he revealed the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, the military's strategic outlook. He said the military needs to start planning for multiple operations such as major disasters in the United States and various scuffles around the planet.
"We now recognize that America's ability to deal with threats for years to come will depend importantly on our success in the current conflicts," Gates said, pointing out this is the first time the anti-insurgent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been included in a Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) as long-term planning priorities.
He said the previous idea of planning for two conventional wars was "too confining and did not represent the real world that ... our military forces are going to face in the future."
The quadrennial review is a congressionally mandated document in which the Pentagon looks at future threats and the requirements to mitigate them. That the 2010 review was announced the same day as the 2011 Department of Defense budget was not an accident. The review is a major driving force behind how the Pentagon plans its budget.
The 2011 budget request "builds on the reforms begun in last year's budget, changes that were broadened and deepened by the analysis and conclusions contained in the QDR," Gates said.
A common theme between the fiscal year 2011 budget and the 2010 review is reform, something Gates has been pushing since his arrival in late 2006.
He announced the cancellation of a number of projects, saving billions of dollars, as well as the restructuring of the long-delayed next generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.
However, the Defense Department budget is up $44 billion over last year, totaling $708.3 billion, including funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the additions are an increase in the number of unmanned aerial vehicles -- something also called for in the defense review -- and putting a priority on adding new helicopters to the fleet.
Gates said the review calls for "a 75 percent increase over the next couple of years in the number of combat air patrols by the most advanced UAVs [and] increasing the availability of helicopters by procuring more aircraft."
Both aircraft platforms are key tools in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Gates said they will total about $9 billion.
While special operations forces continue to be a priority, as they were in the 2006 review, the 2010 outlook places emphasis on adding more troops and improving the support for the elite troops.
That support will include new AC-130 gunship aircraft to protect the troops during combat missions as well as an additional 2,800 combat and support personnel who would improve intelligence and communications for the special operations forces in coming years, according to Gates.
Looking elsewhere in the world, the Pentagon still is keeping close watch on China.
"The lack of transparency and the nature of China's military development and decision-making processes raise legitimate questions about its future conduct and intentions within Asia and beyond," the review says.
The 2006 review was heavily focused on the threat of a large-scale conventional war with China and that country's saber rattling over Taiwan. The 2010 version still stresses such threats from China, but also looks at the need to defend against a growing threat of cyberattacks -- without directly tying China to past cyberattacks, according to Pentagon officials.
In another area, intelligence shows that terrorists have plotted to get their hands on biological, chemical or nuclear material to attempt attacks, and the Pentagon expects weapons of mass destruction to be a continued threat in the future. In response, Gates said, the military "will expand capabilities to counter WMD threats, strengthen interdiction operations, refocus intelligence requirements, enhance and grow international partnerships and thwart proliferation."
The report recommends that the Pentagon develop a joint task force headquarters to oversee these operations.
One of the biggest costs for the Pentagon since 2001 has been in health care as the military handles the thousands of mentally and physically wounded troops each year from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on top of taking care of day-to-day health care needs for troops and their families.
The health care budget rose from $19 billion in 2001 to $50.7 billion in the latest proposal. The Pentagon will spend some $8.8 billion in the coming budget alone for expanding assistance counseling, child care and education to support military families, and another $2 billion for wounded warrior initiatives, with a special focus on the signature ailments of current conflicts, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, Gates said.
The report also touched on how the military can respond to environmental concerns, and how the environment will affect what the military is called to do.
Future conflicts can be handled in an environmentally responsible way, it says, by using more solar power and biofuels, and increasing overall energy independence. It also points out that the Department of Defense "provides environmental stewardship" at hundreds of bases around the country.
Bigger challenges for the Pentagon will be environmental catastrophes and future conflicts fought around and over reduced resources, the review says.
It calls climate change an "accelerant of instability" and suggests the military in planning for future operations will have to take into account climate factors such as rising sea levels and reduced ice in the Arctic, in addition to what climate change could bring in terms of the spread of disease, mass migration and a scarcity of resources.
NASA budget for 2011 eliminates funds for manned lunar missionsNo one will be following in Buzz Aldrin's footsteps under the new budget, which effectively ends plans for lunar flight by 2020. (Nasa Via Associated Press)
By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 1, 2010
NASA's grand plan to return to the moon, built on President George W. Bush's vision of an ambitious new chapter in space exploration, is about to vanish with hardly a whimper. With the release Monday of President Obama's budget request, NASA will finally get the new administration's marching orders, and there won't be anything in there about flying to the moon.
The budget numbers will show that the administration effectively plans to kill the Constellation program that called for a return to the moon by 2020. The budget, expected to increase slightly over the current $18.7 billion, is also a death knell for the Ares 1 rocket, NASA's planned successor to the space shuttle. The agency has spent billions developing the rocket, which is still years from its first scheduled crew flight.
It remains to be seen whether Congress will accede to Obama's change in direction. Industry insiders expect a brutal fight in Congress. The early reaction to media reports about the budget request has been filled with howls of protest from lawmakers in districts that would be most affected by a sharp change in strategy.
Obama's budget, according to a background briefing by an administration official on Sunday, will call for spending $6 billion over five years to develop a commercial spacecraft that could taxi astronauts into low Earth orbit. Going commercial with a human crew would represent a dramatic change in the way NASA does business. Instead of NASA owning the spacecraft and overseeing every nut and bolt of its design and construction, a private company would design and build the spacecraft with NASA looking over its shoulder.
Former NASA administrator Michael Griffin, who championed the Constellation program, views the Obama budget as disastrous for human space flight.
"It means that essentially the U.S. has decided that they're not going to be a significant player in human space flight for the foreseeable future. The path that they're on with this budget is a path that can't work," Griffin said, anticipating the Monday announcement.
He said that, although he pushed for seed money for commercial cargo flights to space, he doesn't believe that the commercial firms, such as SpaceX and Dulles-based Orbital Sciences, are ready to take over the risky and difficult job of ferrying human beings to orbit.
"One day it will be like commercial airline travel, just not yet," Griffin said. "It's like 1920. Lindbergh hasn't flown the Atlantic, and they're trying to sell 747s to Pan Am."
John Gedmark, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, said the critics underestimate the maturity of the commercial sector.
"The Defense Department began using commercial rockets a long time ago to launch priceless national security satellites, that our troops' lives depend on. If the Pentagon can trust private industry with this responsibility, we think NASA can, too," Gedmark said.
White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said Sunday, "The president is committed to a robust 21st-century space program, and his budget will reflect that dedication to NASA. NASA is vital not only to spaceflight, but also for critical scientific and technological advancements. The expertise at NASA is essential to developing innovative new opportunities, industries and jobs. The president's budget will take steps in that direction."
The administration estimates the new funding for the commercial program would create up to 1,700 jobs, which could help offset the expected loss of 7,000 jobs in Florida when the space shuttle is retired next year.
Although the Obama budget would give NASA a boost of more than $1 billion a year, it's not nearly as much as the $3 billion a year that a president-appointed panel said last year would be necessary for NASA to pursue a worthwhile human space flight program. The panel, headed by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine, was harshly critical of NASA's strategy, saying that Constellation didn't have nearly the funds to meet its stated goal of a 2020 moon landing, particularly if the space station were to be kept operational.
The panel favored a new strategy for NASA in which returning to the moon would be just one possible element of a broader capacity to launch astronauts beyond low Earth orbit. No human beings have ventured farther than such an orbit since the last Apollo moon landing in 1972.
The public announcement of NASA's new direction will culminate more than a year of closed-door strategizing. That should end Monday with a series of press conferences, interviews and the messages contained in the budget itself.
