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New Realities, New Priorities
by Lawrence J. Korb, Peter Juul, Laura Conley, Major Myles B. Caggins III and Sean Duggan; Center for American Progress
The next administration will have to contend with two wars, a military readiness crisis, recruitment and retention problems, mounting equipment shortages, and an out-of-control defense acquisition process.
In a little over one month, a new administration will have the opportunity to manage a significant realignment of U.S. defense and national security priorities. To be sure, this process will not occur in a vacuum. Today's security imperatives and budgetary realities will require the next administration to make hard decisions and difficult trade-offs on competing visions of the military and its role in implementing national security strategy. These trade-offs will have wide-ranging consequences for the size and structure of the force, and what procurement and modernization options are feasible in order to advance overall U.S. national security interests.
Pentagon planners have already begun to warn the incoming administration about the choices it will have to make. A Pentagon advisory group recently notified the president-elect's office that the Department of Defense, "cannot reset the current force, modernize and transform in all portfolios at the same time. Choices must be made across capabilities and within systems to deliver capability at known prices within a specific period of time."