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QDR: questions and (some) answers

Since before the Navy Department submitted its budget for fiscal 2011, top decision-makers have been promising that answers to big questions would come in the report on the Pentagon’s major internal assessment, the Quadrennial Defense Review.

Many of those questions were initially raised by the Navy’s own senior decision-makers, as when Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead and then-Navy Secretary Donald Winter warned Senate lawmakers in March 2008 of a “strike fighter gap” — a hole in the Navy’s fleet caused by F/A-18 Hornets wearing out before new F-35C Lightning II jets could replace them.

In the years since, as advocates for Hornet-maker Boeing and Lightning II-maker Lockheed Martin have dueled over how, when or whether the Navy should buy more fighters, Roughead and other officials have said all would be made clear by the QDR, released Feb. 1.

Not so. The report contained no information on the fighter gap; it didn’t even include that phrase. Some issues, though, were resolved.

To find out which questions were resolved, read this week’s issue of Navy Times on newsstands Monday. To read it online, login here or subscribe now.