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Among the Key Trends for the Department of Defense:

• The order of release of National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, and National Military Strategy reports shows a lack of orderly, top-down strategy development, and this irregular timing may be further complicating an already complicated QDR process.
• Force-planning constructs were adapted over the successive QDRs to better address an increasingly complex portfolio of threats and challenges that required forces and capability development. However, only the 2010 QDR addressed the steady-state requirements of planned or potential smaller-scale contingency operations, while none of the QDRs addressed the potentially large ground force requirements for operations to eliminate weapons of mass destruction.
• The "Analytic Agenda," developed between the 2006 and 2010 QDRs, resulted in an agreed-upon set of defense planning scenarios, models, and data that helped to ensure that the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, and the services had a common analytical picture during the conduct of a QDR. Use of this process fell off until the recent reinvigoration of Support for Strategic Analysis.

Among the Key Trends for the Army:

• Critiques of the Total Army Analysis process suggest that the techniques and tools for assessing the requirements for other-than-conventional ground force missions and the generating force are underdeveloped. The credibility of Army analyses of other missions is accordingly not yet as high as it is for conventional missions.
• End-strength and active-reserve mix issues were largely unexamined in the QDRs from 2001 to 2014. Our historical review suggests a recurring tendency toward a peacetime requirement for 480,000 or more active Army personnel, yet the Army has recently considered an active end strength of 440,000–450,000, or possibly even 420,000.