Senior Defense Department leaders are pondering a new way of strengthening the role of combatant commanders in the Pentagon's deliberations over capabilities and budgets, according to a previously unreported DOD planning document signed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates this spring. Gates signed the second iteration of DOD's "adaptive planning" roadmap on March 5. The first was published in 2005. The document lays out a strategy for replacing the military's Cold War-era planning regimen of separate contingency and crisis plans with...
