As Pentagon leaders prepare for two major reviews this year, some officials are beginning to wonder where Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's strategic choices and management review (SCMR) will end and where the Quadrennial Defense Review might begin -- and whether the two efforts could become one/.../
Mark Gunzinger, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said he expects the transition between the SCMR and the QDR to be seamless. "I suspect that it will roll right into the QDR," he said. "I doubt very much that it will be two reviews; it will be one." Gunzinger contributed to a number of QDRs and strategic reviews during his tenure at DOD.
Gunzinger noted the reference to the Obama administration's 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance in Hagel's creation of the strategic choices review. Because of that, "I doubt it will be a bottom-up, fresh-start process," Gunzinger said, adding that any changes to the defense strategy resulting from the SCMR or the QDR likely would amount to "necessary course corrections."