Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is tasking the Pentagon with reexamining the U.S. military’s strategic assumptions in a more fiscally austere budget environment, the Pentagon announced on Monday.
“This Strategic Choices and Management Review will define the major decisions that must be made in the decade ahead to preserve and adapt our defense strategy, our force and our institutions under a range of future budgetary scenarios,” Pentagon spokesman George Little told reporters. “The results of this review will frame the secretary’s guidance for the fiscal 2015 budget and will ultimately be the foundation for the Quadrennial Defense Review due to Congress in February 2014.”
The review will be lead by Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The results are due by May, 31.
“I don’t yet know whether, or if, or how much our defense strategy will change, but I predict it will” Dempsey said Monday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“We’ll need to re-look at our assumptions and we’ll need to adjust our ambitions to match our abilities,” Dempsey said. “That means doing less, but not doing less-well.”
