Summary: In its bottom-up review of the nation's defense needs, the Defense Department (DOD) concluded that it is prudent to maintain the capability to fight and win two nearly simultaneous major regional wars, and it determined the forces, capability improvements, and funding necessary to do so. Because the bottom-up review is the basis for the Pentagon's planning, programming, and budgeting for the foreseeable future, GAO examined key DOD assumptions underlying the two-conflict strategy. GAO raises questions about the redeployment of forces from other operations to major regional conflicts, availability of strategic mobility assets and Army support forces, deployability of Army National Guard enhanced brigades, and planned enhancements to strategic lift and firepower. In addition, military commanders believe that DOD's concept for responding to two nearly simultaneous conflicts may not be the best approach. For example, their estimates of key characteristics of how two nearly simultaneous wars might arise and how forces should be deployed differ significantly from DOD's estimates, including the timing between the two conflicts and the timing of force deployments.
