The military in fiscal 2009 had its most successful recruiting year in the four decades of the all-volunteer force, Clifford L. Stanley told the Senate Armed Services Committee’s personnel subcommittee. To continue that trend, “the department must provide a compensation package comparable and competitive to the private sector,” he said. “At the same time, we must balance the demands of the all-volunteer force in the context of growing equipment and operations costs.”

The department continues its commitment to troops by including a 1.4 percent military pay increase – an amount that equals earnings increases in the private sector as measured by the Employment Cost Index -- in its fiscal 2010 budget request, Stanley said. Since 2002, military pay has risen 42 percent, and the housing allowance has grown 83 percent, while private-sector wages and salaries rose only 32 percent, he said.

“While there is little question that those increases were necessary in the past, rising personnel costs could dramatically affect the readiness of the department,” Stanley told the senators. He added that discretionary spending such as special pay and bonuses offers the best ability to attract and keep the right quantity and quality of people with specific skill sets the military needs.

Though the services maintain an “exceptionally high level” of readiness, Stanley said, multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have increased the stress on servicemembers and their families.

The Defense Department has a number of initiatives to address the stress on the force, including increasing time at home between deployments, Stanley said. The department capped deployment time to one year with a year at home – with a goal for two years -- for active duty servicemembers and strives to give reserve component members three years at home between deployments, he said.

Also, the department holds the care of wounded warriors as its highest priority behind winning the wars, Stanley said, echoing remarks by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. Initiatives under way to allow a smoother transition into veteran status and to increase cooperation and record-sharing between the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs will help, he said.

Stanley noted, however, that the department’s popular new program to help military spouses with employment, the “My Career Advancement Account,” was halted Feb. 16, the day he was sworn into office. “Due to an unforeseen, unprecedented -- but welcome – demand in enrollments that overwhelmed the infrastructure, we nearly reached the budget threshold,” he explained, adding that the pause of the program is considered temporary.

“While it was necessary to pause the program immediately, we failed to communicate properly the reasons for the pause,” Stanley said. “Over the past few weeks, [the Defense Department] has worked tirelessly on mapping out solutions for both the short and long term that honors our commitment to our military spouses while accounting for fiscal realities.

“Our proposals are in the final stage of approval and we hope to restart the program very soon,” he added. “We know we must make a concerted effort to restore our credibility and confidence with our military spouses, service-members and the American public.”

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In a written statement, International Security Assistance Force officials released unclassified portions of Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s new guidance “to ensure a broader awareness of [its] intent and scope.”

“We are in a war of perceptions,” the new guidance says. “Our forces operate far from home with selfless courage, admirable intentions, and impressive precision and effects. But ultimately, how the Afghan people judge our conduct and perceive our intentions will be decisive factors in their decision to support their nation’s struggle against the insurgency. We must remember that their protection, their respect, and their support are the critical objectives for everything we do. And that reality must govern how we operate.”

The guidance notes that operations conducted at night are “an essential component of our campaign, delivering often decisive effects in disrupting and defeating some of the most dangerous insurgent groups” and reduce the potential for civilian casualties.

“That said,” the guidance continues, “in the Afghan culture, a man’s home is more than just his residence. It represents his family, and protecting it is closely intertwined with his honor. He has been conditioned to respond aggressively in defense of his home and his guests whenever he perceives his home or honor is threatened. In a similar situation, most of us would do the same.”

That reaction is compounded when forces invade a home at night, particularly when women are present, the guidance points out. “Instinctive responses to defend his home and family are sometimes interpreted as insurgent acts, with tragic result,” it says. “Even when there is no damage or injuries, Afghans can feel deeply violated and dishonored, making winning their support that much more difficult.”

In the new guidance, McChrystal says that despite their effectiveness and value, night raids have a steep cost in perceptions. “The myths, distortions and propaganda arising out of night raids often have little to do with the reality -- few Afghans have been directly affected by night raids, but nearly every Afghan I talk to mentions them as the single greatest irritant,” McChrystal says in the new directive. “Night raids must be conducted with even greater care, additional constraints, and standardization throughout Afghanistan.”

Under the new rules, commanders must first explore all other feasible options before conducting night raids on compounds and homes. Afghans must be in the lead wherever possible, and whenever possible, the operations must be coordinated with Afghan government officials, Afghan security forces and local elders.

“When properly executed, night raids remain a viable and advantageous option. But if we do not conduct ourselves appropriately during night raids, we cede credibility to insurgents who can exploit our insensitivities in a persuasion campaign,” the guidance says. “It would be a tragic irony if operations we conduct to protect the population by ridding villages of insurgents are distorted to convince Afghans that we are unfeeling intruders.”

Other requirements include:

• Afghan security forces must be included in all night raids, and must be in the operations planning process at the earliest possible time;
• Afghan government representatives must be notified before any night operation begins;
• Afghan security forces should be the first force seen and the first voices heard by the occupants of any compound entered;
• All searches will be led and accomplished primarily by Afghan forces and conducted with regard for the dignity of occupants, including searches of females by females; and,
• Property seized or damaged must be recorded, and detailed receipts with a point of contact must be provided to local elders or other leaders within the compound, and instructions on how to claim compensation must be provided if damage occurs.

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The $708 billion request “reflects the administration’s commitment to modest, steady, and sustainable growth in defense spending,” William J. Lynn III told the House and Senate budget committees in prepared testimony. “Even as the president imposes a spending freeze on domestic agencies, he has made a strategic choice to continue funding modest growth in the military and in other national security agencies.”

The request includes $549 billion in discretionary budget authority for baseline defense programs, an increase of more than $18 billion over the current year. Lynn, accompanied by Robert Hale, Pentagon comptroller, said the increase is necessary to increase pay and benefits to match inflation and fund programs such as health-care expenses, which are growing beyond the rate of inflation.

“Because the total cost of sustaining the force is growing faster than inflation, [the Defense Department] needs real growth simply to maintain present force levels,” Lynn said. “Sustaining our current size and capabilities is essential to prosecute current wars, meet U.S. commitments worldwide, and conduct unanticipated operations, including relief efforts for natural disasters.

“We cannot afford to make cuts in the size of our force or our operations while we are at war,” he added.

The budget reaffirms the commitment to the all-volunteer force, Lynn said, with $138.5 billion for military pay and allowances that includes a 1.4 percent pay raise; $2.2 billion for programs to support wounded warriors; $50.7 billion for medical coverage for 9.5 million beneficiaries; $8.1 billion for family support programs; and $18.7 billion for military construction and family housing.

Lynn noted health care as an area of large growth, but one in which the department also has found savings in the budget. “Health care is one area in particular where the introduction of efficiencies may yield cost savings,” he said. “If present trends continue, we can expect health care to consume 10 percent of [the department’s] budget by 2015.”

The request continues the “rebalancing” of the defense posture for the current wars while preparing for future conflicts by providing more rotary-wing aircraft; hiring 1,500 new helicopter pilots; and increased funding for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support, electronic warfare platforms and special operations.

The budget includes $189 billion for conventional and strategic modernization, including $10.7 billion for continued development of the F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter and procurement of 42 of the aircraft; $25.1 billion for procurement of new ships, equipment and research and development; $9.9 billion for missile defense; and $3.2 billion to restructure the Army’s Future Combat Systems program.

“These advanced weapons and capabilities are essential to keep us ahead of our adversaries,” Lynn said. “We need weapons systems that give U.S. forces an overwhelming advantage in combat, which will both save lives and shorten conflicts.”

Another priority, the deputy secretary said, is reforming the acquisition process. The base budget request will allow the department to bolster its acquisitions work force for the eventual hiring of 20,000 workers to replace contractors. The “in-sourcing” ultimately will reduce costs and operational risks and ensure that every defense dollar is spent wisely, he added.

The ax must fall on programs the department doesn’t need or that are costing more than expected, Lynn said. “An important component of acquisition reform is having the discipline to curtail or end unneeded and troubled programs,” he told the legislators. The budget request calls for cutting seven major systems: the Next Generation Cruiser, the Navy Intelligence Aircraft, the Third Generation Infrared Surveillance System, the Net Enabled Command and Control System, the Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System, more C-17 Globemaster III transport jets and an alternate engine for the joint strike fighter.

Besides the base budget, the request includes $159.3 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That includes $89.4 billion for operations, $12 billion for force protection, $3.3 billion to counter roadside bombs, $13.6 billion to grow and train Afghan and Iraqi security forces, $2 billion for coalition support, $1.3 billion for the Commanders’ Emergency Response Program and $21.3 billion for the reconstruction and resetting of equipment.

“Building the capacity for partner nations to support U.S. counterterrorism operations has emerged as a crucial national security priority,” Lynn said.

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Those reforms, spelled out broadly by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, include sweeping changes to a 61-year-old institution suffering from deep problems in how it perceives and responds to threats in an era when its scope has widened beyond traditional Cold War boundaries.

Providing further clarity on the timeline of those expectations, Alexander Vershbow, assistant secretary of defense for international strategic affairs, said today he hopes proposed NATO changes would be ready ahead of a NATO meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, slated for November.

"We are hoping that allies will have the chance to approve a package of reforms that will help us meet the vision and the ambitions set out in the Strategic Concept," Vershbow told reporters at the Foreign Press Center here.

The remarks this week came as the alliance undergoes a self-assessment that will culminate in the Strategic Concept, a once-per-decade process of redefining and articulating the alliance's purpose and capabilities in light of the often mercurial security environment that frames the organization.

While Gates said the new concept would not attempt to "reinvent the wheel," he acknowledged dramatic changes in the security landscape since similar self-analyses in decades past. Threats such as transnational terrorism emanating from failed states, for instance, were mostly theoretical concerns when the collective security group outlined it in the 1999 concept paper.

In light of the altered security climate, senior defense officials have put under the microscope what has been characterized as shortfalls in NATO's level of commitment to its mission in Afghanistan and responsible budgeting.

Speaking to NATO representatives at the National Defense University here about the culture of pacifism that emerged in Europe following World War II, Gates said "the continent has gone too far in the other direction."

"The demilitarization of Europe -- where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it -- has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st," he said.

Expressing similar concerns, Vershbow said he hopes NATO members use the forthcoming meeting in Lisbon to recalibrate the alliance's solidarity.

"We hope it will be an opportunity to recommit to one another's defense, to better understand the variety of new challenges the alliance is facing, and to prepare ourselves to face these challenges that lie ahead," he said. "We want this to be a vehicle to help our publics, our parliaments, especially the rising new generations, to better understand what NATO means, what it's for, [and] what it can do in the 21st century."

In his remarks this week, Gates praised the beefed-up troop commitment that member nations have pledged in Afghanistan, where non-U.S. troops will increase from roughly 30,000 last summer to 50,000. He urged NATO to muster the same commitment and willingness in its approach to a much-needed overhaul of its current institutional practices.

"All of this should be a wake-up call that NATO needs serious, far-reaching, and immediate reforms to address a crisis that has been years in the making," he said. "And unless the Strategic Concept spurs operational and institutional changes like those I just mentioned, it will not be worth the paper it is printed on."

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Meanwhile, the process will serve as a model for the Defense Department’s acquisition reform effort, Lynn said, eliminating requirements added after the contract award that drive up costs and delay delivery.

Lynn joined Air Force Secretary Michael B. Donley and Ashton Carter, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, in unveiling details of the solicitation for a new KC-X aerial tanker. The new tanker will replace the Air Force’s aging KC-135 Stratotanker fleet that refuels other aircraft in flight to extend their reach and warfighting capability.

The highly detailed request for proposals released today -- which includes 372 mandatory requirements and incorporates 230 mostly technical changes in response to comments on a draft document issued in September – stays true to three guiding principles, Lynn told reporters.

“This is going to be an objective completion. It is going to be fair, it is going to be open,” he said, recognizing the high stakes in the determination in terms of jobs as well as revenues and “buffeting” from both primary competitors, Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp.

“We are resisting that buffeting, and we are going to play this straight down the middle,” Lynn said.

The Defense Department has rejected going for a low-bid contract in favor of a “best-value competition” that considers other factors as well, the warfighting contribution and lifecycle costs among them.

“Price is very important,” Lynn emphasized, but will be weighed along with other variables during the selection process. “The reason you can be sure this is not a price shootout is it is actually possible to have a higher price and to win this competition,” he said.

Lynn expressed hope that the tanker selection process will serve as a flagship for the department’s broad acquisition reform agenda.

It’s highly detailed – with 10 times the mandatory requirements that were in the last bid proposal that was withdrawn almost immediately after being issued. Laying out all the requirements up front rather than tacking them on midstream, Lynn said, will guard against cost overruns and program delays.

The Air Force’s solid understanding of its requirements, along with the maturity of the technology involved and the contractors’ well-established industrial bases set the stage for what Lynn called another major acquisition reform initiative: fixed-price contracts.

“We can’t do fixed-price development in every case,” Lynn said, but he called the tanker solicitation the perfect opportunity do so.

Incorporating technical changes in response to 350 comments on the draft request for proposals, the final solicitation maintains the focus on providing critical military capability, Lynn said.

“Where we haven’t changed things is in the basic requirements of the airplane,” he said. “The warfighter has set out what they need. We think the 372 requirements that we’ve laid out will bring the Air Force the plane it needs to bring to the war fight on Day One.”

Ultimately, “this is about what the Air Mobility Command needs to meet the warfighting needs of the nation,” Lynn said. “We think that the structure in this RFP is going to get us that, and we’re going to proceed in that direction.”

The contractors vying for the contract, worth an estimated $35 billion, will have 75 days to submit their bids. The Defense Department will evaluate the proposals for 120 days, then the Air Force will award a contract in the mid-September timeframe, Lynn said.

He expressed hope for a “robust competition” that delivers “the best value for the taxpayer and the best airplane for the warfighter.”

Donley echoed that sentiment, expressing hope that both Boeing and Northrop Grumman will bid on what he called “a very strong RFP.”

“We believe that both offerors are in a position to win this competition,” Donely said. “We think both offerors can meet the mandatory requirements that we have laid out. And we hope and expect to have a good competition.”

Regardless of which contractor wins the contract, Carter said, the “clarity and precision” used in the solicitation will leave no one wondering how the decision was made.

“The source selection strategy is crystal clear,” he said. “Everybody will know, when a winner is picked, exactly why they won. And up front, both offerors know exactly what they need to do to win.”

Officials are hopeful this will eliminate the challenges and acrimony that have plagued the aerial tanker process to date.

The Air Force initially awarded the contract to build up to 179 new KC-45A tankers over the next decade to a consortium of Northrop Grumman and European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co., the parent company of Airbus.

The award drew a protest from rival Boeing. General Accounting Office auditors upheld the protest, identifying irregularities in the awarding of the contract.

The Air Force reopened the bidding process for the tanker contract in July 2008, but Gates announced two months later that he had decided to cancel it for fear it could not be awarded before he planned to leave his post along with the Bush administration.

“It has now become clear that the solicitation and award process cannot be accomplished by January [2009],” he said in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. “Thus, I believe that rather than handing the next administration an incomplete and possibly contested process, we should cleanly defer this procurement to the next team.”

Still serving as defense secretary as part of the Obama administration, Gates is leading the team that will oversee the new tanker acquisition.

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With the prospect of grand scale nation-building projects like Afghanistan and Iraq unlikely in the near future, Gates said, the U.S. should narrow its focus to smaller projects geared towards training indigenous troops and foreign security sectors to maintain their own national defense concerns.

“I believe our ability to help other countries better provide for their own security will be a key and enduring test of America's global leadership in the 21st century, and a critical part of protecting our own security,” he said during an event sponsored by the foreign policy think-tank the Nixon Center, which bestowed on Gates its Distinguished Service Award.

The remarks amplified Gates’ familiar refrain that the U.S. should seek to identify developing problems abroad and assist foreign governments through nonmilitary means, a tack that represents a departure from what the secretary has referred to as a “creeping militarization” in American foreign policy.

Gates, who has received praise for his role as an outspoken advocate of non-military functions like diplomacy and development, underscored his awareness that interagency partnership can tend towards lopsidedness, with the Defense Department’s massive top-line budget and resources sometimes dwarfing those of other government agencies.

“As a career CIA officer who watched the military's role in intelligence grow ever larger, I am keenly aware that the defense department -- by its sheer size -- is not only the 800-pound gorilla of our government,” he said, “but one with a sometimes very active pituitary gland.”

In a gesture of interagency equity, the secretary last year sent a policy proposal to the State Department that would pool a portion of the two departments’ funding and require both Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to authorize projects for foreign capacity building, stabilization and conflict prevention. Unlike Cold War-era structures and processes, Gates said, his proposal would “incentivize collaboration” between agencies.

While Gates seemed to have no particular fealty to the specific capacity-building policy he sent to Clinton in 2009, he highlighted a series of principles that he said should guide a reshaping of the interagency approach. Funding to grow indigenous security forces overseas and other similar projects aimed at global hotspots should be outside of conventional budgetary channels, he said.

“For predictable, ongoing requirements this is appropriate and manageable,” he said. “But as recent history suggests, it is not well suited to the emerging and unforeseen threats -- or opportunities -- coming most often from failed and fragile states.”

Charting American capacity building projects since before the outbreak of WWII, Gates cited the milestone U.S. lend-lease policy that shipped some $31 billion worth of U.S. supplies -- in 1940s dollars -- to Great Britain over the course of the war, and pointed to Cold War assistance sent to Western Europe and elsewhere.

he U.S. military now recognizes the value of building local security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, he said, which represents a significant transformation since the U.S.-led wars began there.

“Efforts to train the Afghan and later the Iraqi security forces were not an institutional priority within the military services -- where such assignments were not considered career enhancing for ambitious young officers -- and relied heavily on contractors and reservists,” he said “More recently, the advisory missions in both the Afghan and Iraq campaigns have received the attention they deserve in leadership, resources and personnel.”

The secretary said the U.S. would be unlikely in the near-term to carry out missions on the scope of the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he said the department concluded recently that it would probably face similar but smaller threat scenarios.

“We are unlikely to repeat a mission on the scale of Iraq or Afghanistan anytime soon -- that is, forced regime change followed by nation-building under fire…but we are still likely to face scenarios calling on a similar tool-kit of capabilities, albeit on a smaller scale,” he said.

Gates referred to threats emanating from fractured or failing states, which he called “the ideological and security challenge of our time.” He added: “It is the primary institutional challenge as well.”

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Going a step further, Gates said the shortfall, with a vast majority of alliance members failing to meet budget goals, is symptomatic of a larger flaw: deep problems in how NATO perceives and responds to threats in an era when its scope has widened beyond traditional Cold War boundaries.

“The problem is not just underfunding of NATO,” Gates said at the National Defense University here. “Since the end of the Cold War, NATO and national defense budgets have fallen consistently, even with unprecedented operations outside NATO's territory over the past five years.”

Gates’ remarks to NATO representatives come as the alliance undergoes a self-assessment that will culminate in the Strategic Concept, a once-per-decade process of redefining and articulating the alliance’s purpose and capabilities in light of the often mercurial security environment that frames the 28-member organization.

While the defense secretary said the new concept would not attempt to “reinvent the wheel,” he acknowledged dramatic changes in the security landscape since similar self-analyses were conducted in decades past. Threats such as transnational terrorism emanating from failed states, for instance, were mostly theoretical concerns when the collective security group outlined it in the 1999 concept paper.

In addition to financial considerations, Gates focused his comments on Article 5 -- the NATO charter’s backbone that stipulates an attack against one member is an attack against all. Al-Qaida terrorists launched the 9/11 attacks against the United States after training in Afghanistan as hosts of the Taliban-led government that ruled there at that time.

“It was the attacks of Sept. 11 and the Afghanistan campaign that turned what had been theoretical analysis into reality,” Gates said. “Few would have imagined that the first invocation of Article 5 in the alliance's history would follow an attack on the United States homeland by a nonstate entity based in a nation far beyond NATO's traditional borders -- a desperately poor country scorned and ignored by the international community.”

But nearly a decade after the Taliban were toppled from power in Afghanistan, Gates expressed concerns about NATO member nations’ level of commitment, suggesting that the political and cultural climates in Europe have caused the credibility of Article 5 to be called into question -- an aspect of NATO’s identity that the new concept should go further to restore, he added.

“I believe we have reached an inflection point, where much of the continent has gone too far in the other direction,” Gates said of contemporary Europe’s view of its security needs.. “The demilitarization of Europe -- where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it -- has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st.”

Gates praised the beefed-up troop commitment that member nations have pledged in Afghanistan, where non-U.S. troops will increase from roughly 30,000 last summer to 50,000. He urged NATO to muster the same commitment and willingness in its approach to a much-needed overhaul of its current institutional practices.

“All of this should be a wake-up call that NATO needs serious, far-reaching, and immediate reforms to address a crisis that has been years in the making,” he said. “And unless the Strategic Concept spurs operational and institutional changes like those I just mentioned, it will not be worth the paper it is printed on.”

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Biden outlined the Obama Administration’s nonproliferation and nuclear security plans at the National Defense University here to an audience that included National Security Advisor retired Gen. Jim Jones and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

Biden noted that the Quadrennial Defense Review and the Ballistic Missile Defense Review, which Gates released two weeks ago, call for further strengthening of the military’s preeminent conventional forces with capabilities such as an adaptive missile defense shield and conventional warheads that have worldwide reach.

“With these modern capabilities, even with deep nuclear reductions, we will remain undeniably strong and in a position to defend our interests against all our enemies,” he said.

Until then, Biden said, “We have to do everything in our power to maintain our arsenal and make sure it’s reliable. At the vanguard of this effort, alongside our military, are our nuclear weapons laboratories.”

President Barack Obama has proposed $7 billion over five years to reverse years of declining budgets for maintenance of the nation’s nuclear stockpile and related facilities, which are becoming a national security threat, Biden said.

The administration is reviewing its nuclear posture and has come to “broad and deep consensus” on strengthening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that soon will be sent to Congress, Biden said. The “basic bargain” of the treaty is that nuclear powers will pursue disarmament and non-nuclear states will not acquire such weapons while gaining access to civilian nuclear technology, he said.

Now 42 years after its initial signing, “the consensus is fraying” among world leaders to sign on, Biden said.

“It’s time,” he said, “for us to reinforce this consensus and to strengthen the treaty for the future.”

At the same time, Biden said, the administration is increasing sanctions against nations like North Korea and Iran for attempting to procure nuclear weapons. The administration also is calling for a ban on the production of fissile material that can be used to produce nuclear weapons, which the vice president said, “won’t be done easily.”

A third piece of the administration’s nonproliferation agenda is a comprehensive ban on nuclear weapons testing, which Biden said “is designed to keep emerging states from perfecting arsenals and preventing others from getting there.”

Nonproliferation policies are as important today as they were during the Cold War, Biden said. “It’s very easy to recognize the threat posed by nuclear terrorism,” he said. “But we must not underestimate how proliferation to a state could be destabilizing in an entire region – regions critical to us, to our security – and may very well prompt the neighbors in that region to feel that they have to garner nuclear weapons themselves.”

Speaking of the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, Biden said, “We’re absolutely confident that all reasonable concerns raised about the treaty…, concerns about verification and reliability of our own arsenal, have now been addressed.”

Obama is to host a national security conference in April to discuss eliminating nuclear waste material in four years, Biden said. Obama also is slated to host a nonproliferation treaty review conference in May.

“As both the only nation to have ever used a nuclear weapon, and as a strong proponent of nonproliferation, the United States has long embodied a stark but inevitable contradiction,” Biden said. “The horror of nuclear conflict may make its occurrence unlikely, but the very existence of nuclear weapons leaves the human race ever at the brink of self-destruction, particularly if the weapons fall into the wrong hands.”

Speaking to the government and military leaders in the room, Biden said, “The awesome force at our disposal must always be balanced by the weight of our shared responsibility. Every day, many of you help bear that burden with professionalism, courage and grace. Together, we will lead this world toward a world of less reliance – ultimately, no reliance – on nuclear weapons.”

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“The United States will now do whatever we can within the limits of U.S. law, and as soon as we can, to provide as many surplus MRAPs as possible to allies, especially to those operating in high-risk areas,” Gates said at a news conference here after meeting with the defense ministers of 44 International Security Assistance Force partner nations.

Gates promised to sell, loan or donate surplus U.S. bomb-detecting equipment, including the MRAPs, along with route-clearing robots and ground-penetrating radars.

Gates credited the MRAP vehicles with already saving “thousands of lives” in Afghanistan.

The MRAPs that are likely to make their way to allied forces are those that are coming from Iraq. Gates said the drawdown there has given U.S. forces a surplus of the vehicles. Law dictates that the needs of U.S. troops must be met first before any such equipment can be sold or loaned to other countries.

The MRAPs in Iraq are the older versions more suited for on-road travel, as opposed to the newer all-terrain vehicles known as M-ATVs now being fielded in Afghanistan. Still, Gates said, they are better protection against the killer bombs than what the allies are using now.

A U.S. official speaking after the announcement said some countries have expressed interest in buying the newer M-ATVs, and that sales of those vehicles will be expedited when possible.

The United States currently has loaned about 50 MRAPs to Polish forces fighting in Afghanistan. They are the only other country’s forces to use the vehicles.

About 8,500 MRAPs are in Iraq, and more than 4,100 are in Afghanistan. About 2,200 more are in Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain. The United States has fielded about 800 M-ATVs in Afghanistan.

Gates traveled here yesterday to meet with NATO and ISAF partners partly to lobby for more trainers and mentors needed to bolster the efforts in Afghanistan. NATO has committed to sending about 9,000 extra troops.

Nearly all of the 40,000 combat troops requested by Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of the International Security Assistance Force and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, have been committed, but about 4,000 more trainers and mentors are needed.

Another meeting is planned for the end of this month in which commitments will have to be made. The two-day conference here is the start of the efforts to persuade the partners -- many of whom already had planned to reduce the number of their forces in Afghanistan -- to deliver more troops.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said today that Gates’ promise of more counter-IED support will help to bolster that commitment from ISAF partners. In fact, Rasmussen said, NATO has outlined its priorities, with fighting the IED threat at the top of the list.

Gates called on NATO to provide more trainers, saying they are “needed immediately,” and that “this is a critical moment in Afghanistan.”

The secretary said that the newly implemented U.S. strategy, alongside fresh NATO and ISAF resources, will pave the way for success in Afghanistan.

“I believe the pieces are being put in place to make real and measurable progress,” Gates said. “I’m confident that we can achieve our objectives, but only if the coalition can muster the resolve for this difficult and dangerous mission.”

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Gates flew overnight to spend today and tomorrow working with U.S. allies to help in prioritizing the organization’s spending and at the same time hoping to garner a larger commitment of troops and resources for the war in Afghanistan.

Officials here said NATO is up against a “crunch time,” as many European countries face drastic defense cuts due to the global financial crisis. At the same time, the cost of the war in Afghanistan is expanding.

NATO must cut costs to spend money where it is most needed, a senior U.S. defense official said, speaking on background.

“There are lots of things that we spend money on that we shouldn’t be spending money on,” the official said. In fact, Gates has long questioned some of the organization’s spending.

This is Gates’ 11th such meeting with the alliance’s defense ministers, and “for as long as he’s been coming, he has been concerned about NATO’s priorities in terms of spending,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell.

Morrell said much of NATO’s spending is outdated and needs to be readjusted to ensure proper resources go to the wars it is now fighting.

The senior official speaking on background said U.S. officials hope to have an agreement on spending reform in place by the end of this conference. The official declined to say what NATO should spend less on, but did say the alliance needs to invest more in strategic threats, such as a missile defense system, as well as more on resourcing the fight in Afghanistan.

While here, Gates will lobby for more trainers and mentors from NATO partners to bolster the effort in Afghanistan. NATO has committed to send about 9,000 extra troops, but about 4,000 more trainers and mentors are needed, the official said.

Another meeting is planned for the end of this month in which commitments will have to be made. The two-day conference here is the start of the efforts to persuade the partners, many of whom already had planned to reduce the number of their forces in Afghanistan, to deliver more troops, the official said.

“In the end,” the official explained, “this all about providing the capacity to build the Afghan forces so that we can transition responsibility over to the Afghans and we can reduce our own investment in terms of troops, … both the United States and our allies.”

This year is critical to building that capacity, the official said. Providing more troops now means requiring fewer in the years to come, he added, noting that the drawdown is slated to begin in some form starting in the summer of 2011.

“Everyone wants to see troop numbers going down,” the official said. “Everyone understands that the only way we’re going to have our troop [numbers] go down is for Afghan capability to go up.”

For the most part, NATO officials have embraced the proposed withdrawal start date set in place by President Barack Obama. It has given the allies and Afghanistan’s leaders a clear mark on the calendar to work toward, and the proposed date gives NATO partners an incentive to deliver on troop commitments, the official said.

“I think they have been more willing to cough up security forces, because they now see a strategy that makes sense,” the official said. “It is not an open-ended commitment. It is a commitment to improve the situation on the ground, to allow the Afghans to take over responsibility, to invest heavily now so they can do less down the road.

“I call 2010 the year of maximum effort,” said U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder. “It is a year we are going to do everything we can, so down the road we have to do less. … The key here is the more we can accomplish in 2010, the more we can transition in 2011 and beyond, the more we can draw down."

Morrell said Gates’ message tomorrow to NATO defense leaders will be that now is the time to commit.

“He will implore them to act as quickly as they can to get their forces into the fight, because time is of the essence,” Morrell said.

As an incentive to provide troops for training and mentoring, Gates is expected to promise more help for the NATO partners in combating deadly improvised explosive devices. The U.S. military has grown its capacity to counter the IED threat during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it has a wealth of knowledge and specialty equipment to offer up, the official speaking on background noted.

This planned commitment to provide resources and equipment to NATO partners also has helped to bolster other countries’ plans to provide more troops, the official added.

Though the United States does not want to compromise any of its classified information, Morrell said, Gates wants to “lean forward and push the system to share whatever we can.”

“I think he is very cognizant and very sensitive to the fact that our troops are not the only ones being targeted by this dramatic increase in IED attacks,” Morrell said. “And he has made it clear … that we need to be doing all we can possibly do to share our expertise … with our friends and allies who have boots on the ground in Afghanistan.”

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