国际英语新闻：Pentagon strategizes for unknown

WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- In the post 9/11 world, the U.S. military is girding for a 21st century enemy.

That shift away from conventional warfare -- two large, state-backed forces clashing on an open battlefield -- has been ongoing since U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates took office and is reflected in the new Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), a key Pentagon strategic document published every four years, which was released Monday.

But for the Pentagon, the challenge is not so much preparing for tomorrow's wars as it is preparing for the unknown, experts say.

Indeed, the new QDR strategizes for the types of wars at hand -- fighting insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan -- but there is no guarantee that these will resemble tomorrow's conflicts. Moreover, changes will take years to implement, even as the military is unsure about what threats lay ahead, experts say.

The document steers away from the long-held notion that the armed forces should be prepared for two full scale conventional wars at the same time, and says U.S. forces must prepare for "asymmetrical warfare" -- unconventional wars often fought against non-state actors, such as Al Qaeda.

"America's current and future adversaries will make innovative use of readily available emerging and commercial technologies and employ asymmetric tactics to disrupt the superiority of U.S. military power," the QDR said.

It pushes for more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, using unmanned aerial vehicles and other such platforms, which are viewed as crucial to the warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There is an emphasis on preventing Al Qaeda from regaining a foothold in Afghanistan and on assisting foreign militaries in a bid to take some of the pressure off U.S. forces in the global fight against militancy.

But analysts said it would take at least a decade until the military could actually begin to reshape itself and, by that time, the United States might be fighting new enemies with new capabilities.

Indeed, the attacks of 9/11 caught the United States by surprise, as it was coming off a decade of few threats after the end of the Cold War.

"It takes a decade to design a weapons platform, but in the post Cold War era, it is hard to see that far ahead," said Nate Hughes, military analyst at global intelligence company Stratfor. "So you are not sure what platforms you will have to use even while you are designing them."

For now, the military is shifting funds away from platforms such as the F22 - a fighter plane used for conventional warfare -- which has been underway since Gates took office.

The military would put money toward next generation bombers and equipment with broader utility, such as helicopters, which could be used for missions as diverse as aerial assaults on terrorist strongholds and delivering food to earthquake victims in Haiti, Hughes said.

NOT SO FAST, CRITICS SAY

But critics said de-emphasizing the long-held requirement of being prepared to fight two major wars at the same time was unwise.

"In terms of strategic vision, (QDR) is a weak paper and doesn't identify all the risks," said James Carafano, fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

He also charged that the document was driven by budgets rather than threats.

"What they don't talk about is all the risks they are assuming because they are underfunding defense," he said.

Carafano said the Pentagon was building a strategy around what was available instead of what was needed.

"It's a total budget-driven strategy," he said, "Gates is living within the budget he is given and he's making it seem like they are accounting for all the risks we face in the future but it simply doesn't."

"They are matching the available dollars with what they think is important," he said.

"That is like, if you are a surgeon and you don't have all the surgical tools you need to operate with, so you use what you have very efficiently but then the patient dies because you don't have enough tools and skills and equipment to save the patient," Carafano said.