Green Berets with 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne), approach an island on a combat rubber raiding craft during a full mission profile training exercise at Ukibaru Island, Okinawa, Japan, on Nov. 23, 2021. (US Army)

WASHINGTON: The new National Defense Strategy planned for release early this year will probably only contain incremental, evolutionary changes that build on the 2018 version, former defense officials said.

The true bellwether of its success, they said, will be whether there’s a detailed implementation plan laying out exactly what the Biden administration will do to enact the strategy — including how it plans to get Capitol Hill onboard.

“There needs to be actual goals with implementation guidance for how to really bring this vision of the NDS to life, with all the specifics,” said Ellen Lord, who was the Pentagon’s top acquisition official during the Trump administration.

“Quite often there are ethereal words about a vision of where to go, which is very important,” she said during a Jan. 5 Atlantic Council event. “But I think that needs to be reduced to what are we going to do? When are we going to do it and who’s going to do it?”

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During the Atlantic Council event, Lord — joined by James Cartwright, a former Marine Corps general who was vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and David Petraeus, a retired Army four star who led US Central Command and who later became the Central Intelligence Agency director during the Obama administration — discussed their expectations for the new strategy.

The new strategy, the former officials agreed, is likely to build off the 2018 strategy, which named China as the department’s biggest pacing threat.

“I’m not as concerned about the NDS itself being incremental,” Petraeus said. “In my mind, the question is, what happens on Capitol Hill when it comes to procurement? I mean, this is really the central issue.”

While few specifics have been spelled out, Pentagon leaders have spoken about the importance of a concept called “integrated deterrence” when building the new strategy.

“The idea of integrated deterrence means that you are integrating across your domains,” Mara Karlin, a department official who is currently performing the duties of deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, said at a CNAS event in December. “So as I’m looking at a challenge, how does cyber play into it? How does space play into it? … How do you integrate across domains? How do you integrate across the whole of government?”

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On Wednesday, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters that he could not provide a specific release date until the White House finishes the broader National Security Strategy.

“We are hard at work on the new National Defense Strategy, and obviously as we work though that it is being closely coordinated with the National Security Council staff, understanding that they are also working on a new National Security Strategy,” he said. “We’re staying nested and in tight coordination with them as we proceed.”

Beyond An Incremental Update, What The Strategy Could Reveal

Lord, Petraeus and Cartwright said they will be looking to see whether the department has laid out specific objectives that could help shape future budgets and ensure the US military doesn’t remain trapped doing business as usual.

What the strategy says about the importance of artificial intelligence, autonomy and space will be especially revealing, said Cartwright.

The department should capitalize on developments in the commercial space industry — particularly designs for more highly maneuverable vehicles, he said. And while legacy systems will continue to be important, the services should consider divesting platforms that cannot be modified to incorporate some level of autonomy.

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While Cartwright did not specifically reference the department’s Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept, he said that space and AI could enable the military to make decisions and close kill chains more rapidly.

“We’ve got to be ready to go where the problem actually is, in an operationally relevant timeline,” he said. “We can’t get there a week later with general purpose forces. It’s just not going to work anymore.”

Petraeus noted the strategy should lay out the reasoning behind why the US military should divest certain legacy systems, keep others, and where money should be invested in leap-ahead technologies. However, he noted, the new strategy will not be fully implemented unless Congress is onboard — making it critical that the department devise a plan to capture lawmakers’ support.

“How much can Congress really get behind this? Or are they going to stymie the effort to invest in future versus legacy systems?”

The three former senior officials also agreed that the strategy needs to include allies and partner nations, but that the discussion needs to be more substantive than simply highlighting opportunities for cooperation.

“We can love them, we can hug them, we can put them on priority lists … but where’s the beef?” said Cartwright. “If we don’t start sharing unprocessed sensor data with all of our allies and friends … we’re not going to be successful.”

Another longstanding problem still in need of additional work is the issue of arms exports, Lord said. Current regulations still make it too difficult for allies and partners to buy US defense technology, and the strategy should address how to make weapon systems more easily exportable.

“Until we have some clear objectives that are measurable in terms of making technology releasable and then being able to export — without getting too tied up in [arms regulations] — to our closest allies and partners, I don’t think we’re moving forward correctly,” she said.