No matter how much leverage you hold over a country, it is rare that you can get it to act against its core self-interest. The United States has struggled with this dilemma for decades in regards to its relations with Israel and South Korea. Self-interest based on the facts of geography is what makes America's relations with these two close allies particularly fractious. Israel has long refused to scale back settlements in the occupied territories, frustrating U.S. efforts at peacemaking, even as American soldiers die in Iraq and Afghanistan. Conversely, South Korea has, in certain periods, extended an olive branch to the North Korean communists, frustrating U.S. efforts to erect a strong, united front against the Pyongyang regime. Now the U.S. faces the same problem with another of its ostensible allies, Pakistan.

The U.S. demands that Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), its spy agency, sever relations with the Taliban. Based on Pakistan's own geography, this makes no sense from a Pakistani point of view. First of all, maintaining lines of communications and back channels with the enemy is what intelligence agencies do. What kind of a spy service would ISI be if it had no contacts with one of the key players that will help determine its neighbor's future?

Much more at The Atlantic.

The Battlefield Can Be an Unforgiving Teacher - Janet Maslin, New York Times

The Unforgiving Minute is former United States Army Capt. Craig M. Mullaney's brisk, candid memoir about his education as a soldier. He learned different lessons in different places. As a cadet at West Point he learned to be dutiful, punctilious and unerringly accurate, even about the military method of folding underwear. At Ranger School he learned how to navigate difficult physical terrain and endure grueling tests of mettle. At Oxford, as a Rhodes scholar, he had a teacher who advised: "Read and think. Simultaneously if possible." At home he thought he had learned how to make his father proud — until that father walked out and never came back.

As a reader he learned from writers as diverse as T. E. Lawrence, Rudyard Kipling (from whose poem "If" this book takes its title), Jane Austen and Thucydides. As a traveler he vacationed with buddies, partied heartily and learned that the world is very large. And as an American he was in New Zealand on Sept. 11, 2001, when someone asked if he had seen the news and said, "I'm so sorry." At that point every lesson absorbed by this soldier in training suddenly took on different meaning...

More at The New York Times.

... He proposed many initiatives that make sense. These include spending an extra $2 billion on intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities including 50 new Predator-class unmanned aerial vehicles; $500 million more for helicopter operations; and $500 million for training and equipping foreign militaries to fight our mutual enemies. Other valuable increases include more Special Operations Forces, more cyberwarfare specialists, and more Littoral Combat Ships that are especially useful for operations such as hunting pirates and terrorists.

I am also amenable to some of the cuts he proposed. I have never been convinced of the need to buy both the F-22 and F-35, so I think Gates made a perfectly defensible decision to stop buying more F-22s while increasing and speeding up the acquisition of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. I am also concerned that future Navy ships are ruinously expensive and too vulnerable to low-cost missiles...

Gates described his decision to halt and restructure the Army's Future Combat System as the hardest call he had to make (he said he didn't reach a final decision until this weekend), but I believe it was the right call. The conceit behind the FCS program -- that a single line of lightly armored vehicles could meet all the needs of the army in the future -- was always questionable...

More at Commentary.

Obama and Gates Gut the Military - Thomas Donnelly and Gary Schmitt, Wall Street Journal

... Mr. Gates justifies these cuts as a matter of "hard choices" and "budget discipline," saying that "[E]very defense dollar spent to over-insure against a remote or diminishing risk . . . is a dollar not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in." But this calculus is true only because the Obama administration has chosen to cut defense, while increasing domestic entitlements and debt so dramatically.

The budget cuts Mr. Gates is recommending are not a temporary measure to get us over a fiscal bump in the road. Rather, they are the opening bid in what, if the Obama administration has its way, will be a future U.S. military that is smaller and packs less wallop. But what is true for the wars we're in -- that numbers matter -- is also true for the wars that we aren't yet in, or that we simply wish to deter.

More at The Wall Street Journal.

... A key tenet of post-9/11 strategic thought is that extremist religious terrorism is avoidable. Societies with infrastructural resources such as electricity, clean water, public education, and some modicum of medical care do not generally incubate extremist groups in their midst. Naval forces that have basic abilities to police the sea lines of communication while also seizing port call opportunities to build the basic communal building blocks of productive life ought to be an important component of the future Navy.

The next step on the Navy's path to a new future should be the creation of "Influence Squadrons" composed of an amphibious mother ship (an LPD-17 or a cheaper commercial ship with similar capabilities), a destroyer to provide air, surface, and subsurface defensive capabilties, a Littoral Combat Ship to extend a squadron's reach into the green-water environment and provide some mine warfare capabilities, a Joint High Speed Vessel to increase lift, a Coastal Patrol ship to operate close in, and an M80 Stiletto to provide speed and versatility.

The Influence Squadron should also heavily employ unmanned technologies to further expand the squadron's reach. Unmanned air, surface, and subsurface platforms could be deployed and monitored by the various vessels, extending American awareness, if not American presence.

These forces, operating every day around the world, would represent the preponderance of visible U.S. naval power. Their understated capabilities would epitomize America's peaceful, non-aggressive intent, and would carry out the new maritime strategy's stated purpose of providing positive influence forward. However, the Influence Squadron, carrying credible firepower across a broad area of operations, could also serve to either dissuade or destroy pirate networks that might seek to prey upon increasingly vulnerable commercial sea lines of communication...

Much more at Proceedings.

And more at Information Dissemination - Influence Squadrons - The Next Evolution

... The "Influence Squadron" should sound very familiar to readers here, because it is essentially the strategic concept forwarded on this blog of what I have previously called Littoral Strike Groups. Essentially, it is a call for an organizational framework of ships to operate IN the littorals instead of conducting operations in the littoral from over the horizon. I particularly like the idea because it leverages coastal patrol vessels (PCs) and small fast boats (M-80s), supported by a combination of a Marine Company (LPD-17), credible firepower (DDG-51), unmanned systems (LCS), and NECC capabilities (JHSV) with credible littoral centric capabilities. I don't really care about the debate regarding the specific platforms, it doesn't matter and is parochial to the discussion, the specific platform should be derived from requirements planning anyway. What is important is the layered blue-green-brown water approach which I believe is strategically solid as a driving requirement for a littoral organizational squadron, and a tactical necessity for any legitimate littoral influence.

My only point would be this. On the coastal patrol vessels and the small, fast boats the payload is manpower, not missiles. Armed with guns, built for endurance and to be sustainable, capable of having crews rotated at sea while equipment can be repaired at sea; this type of sustained organizational task group can establish regional maritime domain awareness by distributing sensors, leverage helicopters and armed UAVs to engage in combat when the task is required, and be the physical presence to uncover opposition forces operating with stealth in the complex human terrain of the littorals. In this type of organization, the Littoral Combat Ships can be C2 nodes for multiple coastal patrol vessels and small, fast boats operating as ink spots on regional seas.

This type of organizational task group becomes the perfect match for all of our desired cooperative partnerships. We know the LPD and JHSV are the desired platforms for our Global Partnership Stations. We have seen the good results with both of those platforms. We also know our littoral forces need the sensors and capabilities the LCS delivers, and we need the warfighter capabilities of our AEGIS ships to protect our organized task forces, so both of those platforms make sense. What we also need though are the low end, small platforms that can work with partners at the level they are comfortable with, the PC and small, fast boat level...

Much more at Information Dissemination - Note: also see the comment section below the blog entry.

Also see Theodore Roosevelt's Naval Diplomacy: The U.S. Navy and the Birth of the American Century by Henry Hendrix.

Theodore Roosevelt's Naval Diplomacy examines President Roosevelt's use of U.S. naval seapower to advance his diplomatic efforts to facilitate the emergence of the United States as a great power at the dawn of the twentieth century. Based on extensive research, the author introduces a wealth of new material to document the development of Roosevelt's philosophy with regard to naval power and his implementation of this strategy. The book relates Roosevelt's use of the Navy and Marine Corps to advance American interests during the historically controversial Venezuelan Crisis (1902 03), Panama's independence movement (1903), the Morocco-Perciaris Incident (1904), and the choice of a navy yard as the site for the negotiations that ended the Russo-Japanese War. The voyage of the Great White Fleet and Roosevelt's initiatives to technologically transform the American Navy are also covered. In the end, the book details how Roosevelt's actions combined to thrust the United States forward onto the world s stage as a major player and cemented his place in American history as a great president despite the fact that he did not serve during a time of war or major domestic disturbance.This history provides new information that finally puts to rest the controversy of whether Roosevelt did or did not issue an ultimatum to the German and British governments in December 1902, bringing the United States to the brink of war with two of the world s great powers. It also reveals a secret war plan developed during Panama s independence movement that envisioned the U.S. Marine Corps invading Colombia to defend the sovereignty of the new Panamanian republic. Theodore Roosevelt s Naval Diplomacy brings new understanding to how the U.S. Navy was used to usher in the American century.

Cdr. Henry J. Hendrix, USN, is a career naval officer currently assigned to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. In his twenty years of active service he has made six operational deployments and earned advanced degrees from the Naval Postgraduate School and Harvard University, as well as a PhD from King s College, London. A Naval Historical Center Samuel Eliot Morison Scholar and the 2006 recipient of the Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Literary Achievement, he is the author of numerous articles in professional journals. He lives in northern Virginia.

Of all the hard choices Defense Secretary Robert Gates had to make in his radical overhaul of the Pentagon's arsenal, the toughest, he tells Danger Room, was the decision to gut Future Combat Systems, the Army's $200 billion effort to design a fleet of next-generation tanks and troop carriers...

Gates: I Expect the Services to Get On Board With My Reforms - Spencer Ackerman at Washington Independent

Pentagon chief Bob Gates and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. James Cartwright, held a conference call to talk about their defense budget reforms. I asked whether and how they had secured consensus from the service chiefs for reductions or cancellations of programs that some of them had seriously desired...

Interview with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates

By Judy Woodruff

7 April 2009

Bolded Emphasis by SWJ

JUDY WOODRUFF: Secretary Robert Gates, thank you very much for talking with us.

SECRETARY ROBERT GATES: My pleasure.

MS. WOODRUFF: As we sit here at the Pentagon in Washington, President Obama is right now in Iraq talking to the troops, meeting with Iraqi leaders. What is his message to the Iraqis?

SEC. GATES: I think, first of all, his message to our troops is one of appreciation and gratitude for their dedication and their service. I think his message to the Iraqis is, almost certainly, keep on doing what you're doing; keep on resolving problems politically; keep on working at reconciliation; get ready for your elections. We are going to keep our side of the bargain in terms of the agreement, in terms of draw-downs of troops and you have to step up to your responsibilities now, too.

MS. WOODRUFF: You've obviously been in Iraq many a time. What would you hope the president would take away from this visit?

SEC. GATES: Well, I hope that he will be successful in encouraging the Iraqi leadership to continue working together. And I hope that he will -- in fact, I am confident that he will come home impressed by the caliber of our men and women in uniform out there.

MS. WOODRUFF: The violence has been escalating recently. In fact, there was a car bomb today, I guess, in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad. The U.S.'s pledge to get most of the troops out -- 19 months, most of them will be out by next year. But if this violence were to step up considerably, is there a contingency plan?

SEC. GATES: I think the president always has the authority to, as commander-in-chief, to change his plans. But I think the view of our commanders is that, while there are some of these spectacular attacks, overall, the level of violence continues to be quite low compared with, particularly, 2007 and the first part of 2008, in fact, at levels not seen since 2003.

I think what we're seeing is al Qaeda trying sort of as a last gasp to try and reverse the progress that's been made through these attacks. But these car-bomb attacks generally are the signature kind of thing that al Qaeda in Iraq does.

MS. WOODRUFF: Are they reversing the progress?

SEC. GATES: I don't think so, no. And, in fact, I think it's been quite impressive how people, how resilient people have been in Baghdad, in Iraq in general.

MS. WOODRUFF: President Obama has used part of this overseas trip not only to emphasize he's different from his predecessor, but to reach out to the Muslim world, especially with that speech in Turkey. As somebody who's observed U.S. national security up close for three decades, do you think this is something that's going to pay dividends?

SEC. GATES: I think it will. I think that -- I gave a speech last year in which I made the comment that, how can it be that the nation that discovered public relations is being out-communicated by a guy in a cave? The reality is, I think we probably have not done as well as we should have in terms of reaching out to Muslims and making clear that what we're concerned about are violent extremists. This isn't the war against Islam. And I think the president is communicating that message.

I think the challenge for the rest of the government is to figure out how we do that on a more comprehensive and continuing basis.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is that process underway?

SEC. GATES: Yes, it is.

MS. WOODRUFF: Anything you want to flesh out about it?

SEC. GATES: Well, I mean, it's basically under the auspices of the State Department. We do a fair amount in theater in Iraq and Afghanistan and our commanders have the capability to do some of the strategic communications, but, fundamentally, it's a State Department responsibility.

MS. WOODRUFF: Let's talk about the Robert Gates defense budget that you unveiled yesterday. Now, the United States is in the middle of two wars and a serious recession. Is this the right time to haul out a major, dramatic overhaul of not only defense spending, but military strategy?

SEC. GATES: Well, the reality is, this is nothing new. I've been talking about this for 18 months; it is the heart of the national defense strategy that was issued last fall in the Bush administration that I issued and it's really more about simply recognizing the enduring requirement for the capabilities to fight these irregular or hybrid conflicts than it is a major strategic shift. It's really, as I put it yesterday, fundamentally, the modernization programs of our traditional strategic and conventional weapons still account for about half of our budget. Dual-purpose capabilities that work in any war scenario count for about 40 percent.

And what I'm trying to put at the table are representatives of those who spend about 10 percent of the budget. Their work has been funded principally through supplementals over the last six or seven years. I want to get that capability into the base budgets so that it will continue and we don't forget, as we did after Vietnam, how to do what we're doing right now so successfully in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

And it's really not as much about cuts; I know that there's a lot of focus on cuts because of four or five major programs. But it's really a rebalancing: How do we sustain the capability not only to fight the wars we are in, but also, how we preserve the hedge to fight any future conflict.

MS. WOODRUFF: So, practically, when it comes to Afghanistan, how does this change what the U.S. is able to do over the next two to five years in Afghanistan?

SEC. GATES: Well, the wars themselves are still being funded principally in 2009 by a supplemental and in 2010 with an overseas contingency fund. But what we are putting into the budget, for example, $2 billion worth of the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities that are at the heart of our success in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

We're increasing our capacity for helicopters, which are in huge demand in Afghanistan. We are doing a lot to build up the special operations forces, more people, more special operations-oriented lift and mobility. So there are a number of aspects of this that are going into the base budget as long-term capabilities for the United States that obviously will pay dividends in Afghanistan as well.

MS. WOODRUFF: At the same time, the president clearly made an effort on this trip overseas to talk to our allies in Europe about giving the U.S. more help in Afghanistan. There's a lot of words of support but not much support in terms of people and materiel. How can the U.S. achieve the goals that your administration has set out for Afghanistan without that additional help?

SEC. GATES: Well, first of all, I think it's important and probably no one has been more outspoken than I have in terms of asking the Europeans to do more. The truth is the Europeans have fulfilled all the commitments they have made; it's just that the requirement goes beyond the commitments they've made. And, frankly, I was surprised, pleasantly, by the outcome in France of the NATO summit because I had not anticipated that they would provide additional combat troops, perhaps some small numbers for election security.

But not only did they commit several thousand more troops, but hundreds of police trainers; they committed to a lot of civilian experts. They committed resources to the Afghan trust fund, the NATO trust fund to sustain the Afghan military forces. So I think that they actually came through with a quite a lot compared, I guess, to my expectations based on the defense ministers' meeting in Krakow last month.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is that enough?

SEC. GATES: Well, it's never enough, but it is a significant contribution, I think.

MS. WOODRUFF: You are calling, as you said, for more money to fight the terrorists, the irregular warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq and less for so-called conventional warfare preparation, theoretically places like China and Russia. But some experts we're already hearing expressing concern about the conventional military buildup in China, considered the one nation that could eventually seriously challenge the United States. Is this a prudent time to reduce emphasis on conventional warfare?

SEC. GATES: I think what we're trying to do is not reduce emphasis on conventional warfare, but be more selective about the weapons systems that we fund to fight that kind of a fight. I'm not cutting the F-22; I'm not recommending the F-22; I'm simply recommending that the program set in 2005 was to build 183 of these aircrafts. I'm simply saying, let's finish that program and then let's focus on buying large numbers of the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35, which has 10- to 15-year newer technology, has some capabilities that the F-22 doesn't have.

The F-22 is a great airplane, all you have to do is ask the pilots who fly it, but -- and it will remain in the inventory, but there is no military requirement for more than 183 of them, 187 with those that are in the supplemental. So we're doing that, we're building additional ships, we're doing more in the way of theater and tactical ballistic-missile defense. We're converting more ships to have ballistic-missile defense that would help against China. So I think there's kind of a misunderstanding of exactly what it is we're trying to do here. We're trying to be more selective about systems that actually work and that can be delivered in a reasonable period of time than some of these exotic systems.

MS. WOODRUFF: But by ending production in -- down the road, of the F-22 Raptor, I'm already reading that shutting it down is going to mean the loss of tens of thousands of jobs. Was that something that weighed on you as you made that decision?

SEC. GATES: Well, we can't be oblivious to the impact that these decisions have on people, but the information that's available to us shows that the direct employment of the F-22 will go from about 32,000 in -- I'm sorry, from about 24,000 this year to about 11,000 in 2011. But Joint Strike Fighter will go from 38,000 people working this year to 82,000 people that work on that plane in direct support in 2011. So there are puts and takes. I think we've done a good job of taking care of the industrial base in the shipyards and the workers there in the decisions on the shipbuilding.

So we're not oblivious to the employment aspects, but to be perfectly honest, there isn't a single defense program anywhere, procurement program, that doesn't have an impact in somebody's hometown and somebody's state. And so if you're going to bring any discipline to the Defense Department budget, if you're going to try and make any selectivity, have any selectivity in terms of what you fund and don't fund, it will have an impact somewhere.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, speaking of that, so many defense secretaries before you have tried to cut this or that or change this or that weapon system. Congress has essentially patted them on the head and said, fine, and then gone off and done exactly what they wanted to do. We were already hearing resistance from the Congress; what makes you think it's going to be different this time?

SEC. GATES: Well, for one thing, there's a big push in Congress for acquisition and procurement reform in the Department of Defense, and so I think we'll keep that upfront and say, you know, it's all well and good to talk about acquisition reform, but that means tough decisions have to be made. Like when programs are out of control, when they're six years late, when they're twice the cost that they were originally forecast, something has to be done. Something has to give. My hope is that because of the economic circumstances at home, because of the magnitude of the decisions that we're making and recommending, that in fact, the Congress will put aside parochial interest and do what's in the best interest of the country as a whole.

MS. WOODRUFF: Quick question on missile defense. You are not cutting the entire thing, but there are significant cuts. Already, though, we're hearing senators both sides of the aisle, members of Congress saying this is going to hurt national security, hurt homeland security. What do you say to them?

SEC. GATES: We have two threats: theater and tactical ballistic missiles and ballistic missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles from rogue states like North Korea. We are significantly increasing the missile defense capabilities to deal with the theater and tactical threat, from Iran or Hezbollah or others like that, in a number of different ways -- a lot of money being added to the budget.

We are not cutting the number of interceptors in Alaska, we are going to fund -- robustly fund research and development to keep enhancing their capabilities, we are keeping alive the airborne-laser program, we are just not buying a second research platform. We're going to make do with one 747 to do this research. The procurement program was completely out of control, with 27 47s and so on and so forth. So I think we are doing a lot, we do very well with terminal defense, with THAD and the theater missile. We do very well at midcourse with the ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California.

Now, we're continuing to do research work on the boost phase, where they're just coming off the pad, and we have several programs, some of them classified, that are aimed at taking care of that. So I think we have really strongly supported missile defense, and I think that what we have taken out of the budget, frankly, were some experimental capabilities that were really not intended for the rogue-state missile threat but rather, a much larger threat. So I'm trying to conform our program to our policy. Our policy is to have a missile defense and it was -- as it was in the Bush administration, our policy is to have a missile defense against rogue states, such as Iran and North Korea. That's what our program does.

MS. WOODRUFF: Two other quick things: So when it comes to Bob Gates versus the Congress on this, how do you stack each one up?

SEC. GATES: Well, first of all, I don't think it's me versus the Congress. I think there's going to be a lot of debate in Congress on these issues, and I think that there are a lot of people up there who are going to look very seriously and analytically at this, and my hope is that -- and I will work with them. These things are always have to be worked out jointly, between the administration and the Congress, at the end of the day, and I'll work with them. But I think that we clearly need to move in a new direction. My guess is there's more support for doing that and for the kind of discipline I'm talking about than would appear from some of the press statements.

MS. WOODRUFF: And finally, we started out talking about President Obama. You are the only holdover in the cabinet from the Bush administration. You've worked -- is this now your eighth president?

SEC. GATES: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: You've worked for -- I think people are really curious to know, what is working for this president like compared to the -- all of his predecessors you've gotten to know?

SEC. GATES: Well, I try to not compare the ones that I'm working for currently with ones I've worked for in the past. Someday I'll --

MS. WOODRUFF: Well then just, what's it like --

SEC. GATES: Someday maybe I'll do that.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well then, as a standalone, what's it like working for President Obama?

SEC. GATES: I've been very impressed at how well the national-security team has come together. He's very thoughtful, he's very analytical and I find him —to listen. And he said he would listen to the commanders, with respect to both Iraq and Afghanistan, he has. So it's a pleasure working for him.

MS. WOODRUFF: And as a Republican working for a Democratic president?

SEC. GATES: Well, you know, I've tried always to do this job and the jobs that I've had in government, at CIA and elsewhere, in a completely nonpartisan way. I continue to do that and I don't find it awkward.

MS. WOODRUFF: Secretary Robert Gates, we thank you very much for talking with us.

SEC. GATES: My pleasure.

(END)

Defense Secretary Proposes Sweeping Defense Budget Changes - Greg Jaffe and Shailagh Murray, Washington Post

Defense Secretary Robert Gates outlined sweeping changes to the defense budget Monday that would shift hundreds of billions of dollars in Pentagon spending away from elaborate weapons toward programs more likely to benefit troops in today's wars.

The proposal by Gates amounts to a radical change in the way the Pentagon buys weapons. For decades, the US has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons programs striving for revolutionary leaps, but often were delivered years late and billions of dollars over budget. In proposing his 2010 budget, which will likely face stiff resistance from Congress, Gates emphasized that he wanted to change the "priorities of America's defense establishment."

The effort to pare back weapons programs that Gates derided as "truly in the exquisite category" reflects a growing recognition in the Pentagon that the days of soaring defense budgets are over. And it highlights Gates' long-stated desire to increase spending on surveillance systems and other relatively low-tech weapons that are best suited for guerrilla or irregular war, which has traditionally been an industry backwater. "I'm just trying to get the irregular guys to have a seat at the table and to institutionalize some of the needs they have," he said.

More at The Washington Post.

Gates Budget Plan Reshapes Pentagon's Priorities - Elisabeth Bumiller and Christopher Drew, New York Times

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Monday announced a broad reshaping of the Pentagon budget, with deep cuts in many traditional weapons systems but billions of dollars for new technology to fight the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The decisions represent the first sweeping overhaul of American military strategy under the Obama administration, which wants to spend more money on counterterrorism and less on preparations for conventional warfare against large nations like China and Russia.

Mr. Gates announced cuts in missile defense programs, in the Army's expensive Future Combat Systems and in Navy shipbuilding operations.

But he proposed, as he has before, spending an extra $11 billion to finish enlarging the Army and the Marine Corps and to halt reductions in the Air Force and the Navy. He also announced an extra $2 billion for intelligence and surveillance equipment, including more spending on special forcers units and 50 new Predator and Reaper drones, the unmanned vehicles that are currently used in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq for strikes against militants.

More at The New York Times.

Pentagon Pushes Weapon Cuts - Yochi Dreazen, Wall Street Journal

Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday unveiled a sweeping overhaul of weapons priorities to reorient the US military toward winning such unconventional conflicts as the war in Afghanistan rather than fighting China, Russia or other major powers.

With thousands of jobs at stake, political battles over the proposal are likely to be intense. The defense secretary is seeking a wide range of cuts, affecting pet programs at almost every major US contractor, as well as several high-profile contracts with European companies.

Mr. Gates's proposed baseline 2010 Defense Department budget of $534 billion is up 4% from last year. But it signals a major departure from business as usual at the Pentagon, with a heavy emphasis on overhauling a procurement process that he and congressional leaders have decried as being too heavily influenced by powerful contractors.

More at The Wall Street Journal.

Gates Proposal Reveals His Alienation From Procurement System - R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post

After reading a newspaper article's report that a particular armored vehicle had dramatically cut fatality rates in Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and other senior defense officials traveled 80 miles northeast to Aberdeen Proving Ground in spring 2007 to see for themselves how the V-shaped hull of the costly Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle deflected the worst blast effects of buried explosives.

Within weeks, and after some pointed demands for the MRAPs from Capitol Hill, Gates decided to make accelerated production of the vehicles his top priority, using a special task force that circumvented the department's normal purchasing methods -- and the initial opposition of the Army and the Marine Corps. The results were not perfect -- an inspector general's report said later that in its rush, the department overspent by tens of millions of dollars -- but they were effective: Thousands of additional MRAPs flooded into Iraq and fatality rates dropped precipitously.

Aides say that the experience was like a baptism for Gates into the wei...of the Pentagon's weapons-procurement system, which experts have long assailed for buying the wrong arms and paying far too much.

More at The Washington Post.

Gates Axes Some Costly Weapons, Emphasizes 'Irregular' Warfare - Gordon Lubold, Christian Science Monitor

In a dramatic departure from tradition, Defense Secretary Robert Gates unveiled a Pentagon budget Monday that aims to help the US fight a hybrid form of warfare -- one in which an insurgent with an AK-47 rifle is backed by a sophisticated ballistic missile.

Defense spending traditionally reflects conventional threats, posed by countries such as China or perhaps Iran. But Secretary Gates's $534 billion budget recommends billions of dollars for the counterinsurgency needs of unconventional conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan, while making broad and controversial cuts to weapons programs such as the F-22 stealth fighter that Gates sees as part of an outdated, cold-war mind-set.

"I'm not trying to have irregular capabilities take the place of conventional capabilities," Gates said Monday. "I just want the irregular guys to have a seat at the table."

This "reform budget," he said, is an opportunity "to critically and ruthlessly separate appetites from real requirements -- those things that are desirable in a perfect world from those things that are truly needed in light of the threats America faces and the missions we are likely to undertake in the years ahead."

More at The Christian Science Monitor and:

Department of Defense Budget Press Briefing - Transcript

Gates Proposes Major Changes - Wall Street Journal

Gates Unveils Broad Changes - Los Angeles Times

Gates Lays Out Budget Recommendations - AFPS

Defense Chief Proposes Weapons Cuts - Washington Times

Pentagon Budget Kills F-22, Pumps Up Special Ops - CS Monitor

Contracting Boom Could Fizzle Out - Washington Post

Defense Budget 'Overhaul' Meets Resistance - Washington Times

Defense Chief Proposes Weapons Cuts - Associated Press

Secretary Gates' US Defense Recommendations - Reuters

Pentagon Unveils Large Cuts to Defence Budget - The Times

Gates Plans Radical Weapons Budget Cut - The Australian

Gates Proposes Ending Lockheed F-22, Expediting F-35 - Bloomberg

Gates Unveils US Defence Budget - BBC News

Gates Announces Major Pentagon Priority Shifts - CNN

Pentagon Chief Rips Heart Out of Army's 'Future' - Danger Room

Live Blog of Gates' 2010 Budget Blast - DoD Buzz

The Prominent Dominant - Attackerman

Robert Gates Reshapes DoD Budget Plans - Captain's Journal

Today, I am announcing the key decisions I will recommend to the president with respect to the fiscal year 2010 defense budget. The president agreed to this unorthodox approach -- announcing the department's request before the White House submits a budget to the Congress -- because of the scope and significance of the changes. In addition, the president and I believe that the American people deserve to learn of these recommendations fully and in context, as the proposed changes are interconnected and cannot be properly communicated or understood in isolation from one another. Collectively, they represent a budget crafted to reshape the priorities of America's defense establishment. If approved, these recommendations will profoundly reform how this department does business.

In many ways, my recommendations represent the cumulative outcome of a lifetime spent in the national security arena and, above all, questions asked, experience gained, and lessons learned from over two years of leading this department -- and, in particular, from our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. I reached the final decisions after many hours of consultations with the military and civilian leadership of the department. I have also consulted closely with the president. But, I received no direction or guidance from outside this department on individual program decisions. The chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are in complete accord with these recommendations. The chairman is traveling abroad but he has provided a statement that we will distribute at the end of the briefing...

Department of Defense Budget Press Briefing