Panetta to roll out strategy review, report says

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta this week will unveil a soup-to-nuts strategy review that will help the Pentagon enact hundreds of billions in budget cuts and guide its strategic planning for years to come, says a report.

The New York Times's all-star duo of Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker reported in Tuesday’s issue that the so-called “comprehensive review” will be unveiled this week. The Hill first reported in late November that Pentagon officials would give lawmakers and the press a sneak peek at the military’s 2013 budget plan.

As The Hill reported then, the tactic is one plucked from former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s playbook: Control the political backlash over the spending cuts it contains.

“The early briefing was a tactic used infamously in 2009 by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates to minimize the fallout from a budget that terminated or made significant changes to around 50 weapons programs,” The Hill wrote in the November piece.

The Times report states the strategy review will state that the U.S. military will be unable to fight two major wars at once, and instead will lay out a strategy under which the American military can fight one major conflict while also being able to “ ‘spoil’ a second adversary’s ambitions in another part of the world while conducting a number of other smaller operations, like providing disaster relief or enforcing a no-flight zone.”

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