U.S. Military Strategy Review to Focus on WMD Threat

The U.S. Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review is expected to emphasize unconventional threats from terrorism and weapon of mass destruction, the Associated Press reported Friday (see GSN, Jan. 27).

Completed after every presidential election, the strategy document affects budgets, weapons purchases and military doctrine, according to AP.

The upcoming review is expected to stress the need for unconventional warfare and technologies, such as special operations forces and unmanned systems, said Loren Thompson, a military expert at the Lexington Institute.

“They are putting together a military posture that is very heavily oriented in the direction of unconventional threats, like terrorists and plutonium merchants, and strongly oriented away from the types of conventional dangers that drove the Cold War defense posture,” he said.

Ryan Henry, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, detailed the emerging threats last month. These dangers include catastrophic attacks by terrorists or nations using weapons of mass destruction, as well as biological warfare (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, March 11).

Back to top
About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines © Copyright 2008 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.