The Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is a statutorily mandated strategic review process conducted by the Department of Defense (DOD) every four years. The review process generates an unclassified report, whose contents are also specified in law. The most recent QDR process, conducted in late 2013, is expected to generate a QDR report that will be delivered to Congress at about the same time as the President's Fiscal Year 2015 budget request. The review process took place against the backdrop of ongoing evolution in the broader strategic environment, marked fiscal constraints, and recent adjustments in DOD's strategic direction heralded in its 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance (DSG) and its 2013 Strategic Choices and Management Review (SCMR) process. In theory, a QDR process, its decisions, and its accompanying report might accomplish a number of things: Reassessing and refining DOD's strategic direction, including the ends, ways, and means required to meet DOD's mandate to "protect and defend" the nation; Ensuring, through a highly participatory process, that DOD's strategic vision is shared and uniformly understood across the Department; Building, through broad participation, a shared understanding within DOD of the most appropriate internal division of labor—for example, across Military Services, the Active and Reserve Components, and the Special Operations and conventional communities—for executing defense strategy; Generating sufficient internal guidance to inform force planning, force employment, and resourcing decisions; Synchronizing DOD strategic guidance vertically, with national-level strategic guidance such as the national security strategy, and horizontally with the strategies of other U.S. Government agencies; Facilitating Congressional oversight by clarifying and articulating the strategic thinking that underpins DOD requests for resources and authorities; Informing the American people—the voters and taxpayers who provide the resources—about DOD's strategic vision and intent; Shaping the global security environment—including assuring Allies and partners and encouraging potential adversaries to change their calculus—by communicating DOD's strategic vision and intent; and Generating a sufficiently rigorous discussion, within DOD, within the Administration, and between the Executive and Legislative Branches, of "risk" –potential hazards resulting from deliberate choices not to plan or resource against certain concerns—including the likelihood, imminence, and severity of impact on U.S. national interests of such potential hazards. This report briefly reviews the statutory QDR mandate and characterizes the context for the 2014 QDR. Then it raises a series of issues that Congress may choose to consider in evaluating the QDR mandate, the 2014 QDR, and DOD's strategic direction more broadly. The nature of the conduct of the QDR, the contents of the QDR report, and the terms of reference for the QDR's independent oversight body, the National Defense Panel (NDP), are prescribed by Section 118 of Title 10, U.S. Code. The mandate requires that the review be conducted every four years, during the first year of every presidential administration. The review is required to take a 20-year outlook, and to be fiscally unconstrained by the concurrent President's budget request. The process is required to "delineate a national defense strategy"; to determine the force structure, modernization plans, and infrastructure required to implement that strategy; and to craft an associated budget plan. The mandate further requires that the Secretary of Defense submit a report based on that review to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in the year following the year in which the QDR is conducted, no later than the date on which the President delivers his budget request to Congress. Legislation does not specify a classification level for the report. The QDR report is required to address 16 specific points, as well as any additional items the Secretary deems appropriate. These are: The results of the review, including a comprehensive discussion of the national defense strategy of the United States, the strategic planning guidance, and the force structure best suited to implement the strategy at a low-to-moderate level of risk; The assumed or defined national security interests of the United States that inform the national defense strategy defined in the review; The threats to the assumed or defined national security interests of the United States that were examined for the purposes of the review and the scenarios developed in the examination of those threats; The assumptions used in the review, including assumptions relating to (A) the status of readiness of United States forces; (B) the cooperation of allies, mission-sharing and additional benefits to and burdens on United States forces resulting from coalition operations; (C) warning times; (D) levels of engagement in operations other than war and smaller-scale contingencies and withdrawal from such operations and contingencies; (E) the intensity, duration, and military and political end-states of conflicts and smaller-scale contingencies; and (F) the roles and responsibilities that would be discharged by contractors; The effect on the force structure and on readiness for high-intensity combat of preparations for and participation in operations other than war and smaller-scale contingencies; The manpower, sustainment, and contractor support policies required under the national defense strategy to support engagement in conflicts lasting longer than 120 days; The anticipated roles and missions of the reserve components in the national defense strategy and the strength, capabilities, and equipment necessary to assure that the reserve components can capably discharge those roles and missions; The appropriate ratio of combat forces to support forces (commonly referred to as the 'tooth-to-tail' ratio) under the national defense strategy, including, in particular, the appropriate number and size of headquarters units and Defense Agencies, and the scope of contractor support, for that purpose; The specific capabilities, including the general number and type of specific military platforms, needed to achieve the strategic and warfighting objectives identified in the review; The strategic and tactical air-lift, sea-lift, and ground transportation capabilities required to support the national defense strategy; The forward presence, pre-positioning, and other anticipatory deployments necessary under the national defense strategy for conflict deterrence and adequate military response to anticipated conflicts; The extent to which resources must be shifted among two or more theaters under the national defense strategy in the event of conflict in such theaters; The advisability of revisions to the Unified Command Plan as a result of the national defense strategy; The effect on force structure of the use by the armed forces of technologies anticipated to be available for the ensuing 20 years; The national defense mission of the Coast Guard; The homeland defense and support to civil authority missions of the active and reserve components, including the organization and capabilities required for the active and reserve components to discharge each such mission; Any other matter the Secretary considers appropriate. The QDR statutory mandate also requires that each QDR process be accompanied by the work of an independent National Defense Panel (NDP), which must be composed of ten recognized national security experts appointed, two each, by the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees. The NDP is tasked to review the terms of reference of the QDR process; to assess the assumptions, strategy, findings, and risks in the QDR report; to conduct an independent assessment of possible force structures; to compare the resource requirements of its own alternative force structures with the QDR's budget plan; and to make recommendations to Congress. The panel is required to submit its report to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees not more than three months after DOD submits to them the QDR report. The 2014 QDR has taken place against the backdrop of an increasingly complex global security environment, tightening fiscal constraints, and a recent history of U.S. policy choices designed to address both of those dynamics. In April 2011, President Obama directed DOD to identify $400 billion in "additional savings" in the defense budget, as part of a broader effort to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over twelve years. The President stressed that the cuts should be strategically-driven, based on "a fundamental review of America's missions, capabilities, and our role in a changing world." In May 2011, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stressed that the review would help "ensure that future spending decisions are focused on priorities, strategy, and risks, and are not simply a math and accounting exercise". In August 2011, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta confirmed that DOD was continuing to implement the President's April guidance by conducting a "fundamental review". It would address core strategic questions such as "What are the essential missions our military must do to protect America and our way of life? What are the risks of the strategic choices we make? What are the financial costs?" In January 2012, DOD released the Defense Strategic Guidance (DSG), which was intended to provide the foundation for DOD's priorities, activities, and budget requests for the following ten years. The DSG took into account the need for cost savings, as directed by the President in April 2011. It also addressed the need to refine DOD's strategic focus in response to changes in the global security environment and the end of the decade of warfare that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Broadly, the DSG called for: a shift in DOD's geographical priorities toward Asia and the Pacific region, while retaining emphasis on the Middle East; a shift in the balance of priority missions toward power projection and away from stabilization operations; a shift toward greater reliance on advanced capabilities including Special Operations Forces (SOF), new technologies such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and unmanned systems, and cyberspace capabilities; and corresponding changes in force structure. But by the time it was issued, the DSG was already behind the fiscal curve. In 2011, Congress had enacted, and the President had signed into law, the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011, P.L.