How to maintain the military's relevance during the cyber age

After nearly a decade of asymmetric warfare in its many forms, both the US and UK defence administrations separately find themselves in the midst of periodic reviews of the aims and objects of their armed forces, with a view to determining the optimum form in which to regenerate those forces to fulfil present and future tasks.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) is engaged in its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) with a rolling 20-year planning horizon. As IDR was going to press, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) was drafting a Defence Green Paper for publication in February to be used as a basis for the discussions that are to ensue as part of its forthcoming Strategic Defence Review (SDR).

The latter, which will supplant the 1998 SDR and a supplementary 'New Chapter' added in 2002 in the aftermath of 9/11, is slated to be released in the second half of 2010 under the auspices of the next British government (of whatever political hue). It will be principally focused on requirements post-2014, following as it does an interim 'New Strategy for Defence' promulgated in September 2009. This was focused on the period up to 2014, confirming that with the end of UK operations in Iraq, support to operations in Afghanistan is now the "main effort for Defence". Other than for Afghanistan, it laid down that resource allocation "should be concentrated on providing those forces most likely to be needed for small-scale [ie battlegroup or smaller] overseas contingency operations over this period".

As with just about every other aspect of defence, there are opposing views on how often such reviews should best be conducted. The US QDR, the fourth such to have been conducted since it was instituted in 1996, is in the eyes of some too rigidly tied to the domestic political cycle and too little to evolutions in the defence environment, while the irregular cycle of the UK SDR is seen by others as too infrequent and consequently excessively disruptive whenever it does happen.

The notion of force regeneration is itself open to a number of interpretations, ranging from simply 'resetting' existing vehicle fleets suffering the ravages of continual operations, to the processes involved in sustaining an enduring force commitment, or recasting armed forces to better face future contingencies.