National Defense Panel (NDP)

Independent congressional body formed in 1996 to conduct a major review of U.S. military security policy and structure. The nine-member National Defense Panel (NDP) was chaired by Philip Odeen, chief executive officer of the private information technology firm BDM International.

In 1997, the NDP released its final report, titled “Transforming Defense—National Security in the Twenty-First Century.” The NDP recommended that the “United States must take a broad transformation of its military and national security structures, operational concepts and equipment, and the Defense Department's key business processes” and accelerate changes already under way. Four years before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, the report identified the threats posed by terrorist groups and rogue states. It warned of their potential acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, and called for improved homeland defense.

The authors of the report also advised spending between $5 and $10 billion to ward off these threats while continuing to reduce the U.S. nuclear stockpile. In his introductory letter to Secretary of Defense William Cohen, NDP Chairman Odeen stated that “We are convinced that the challenges of the 21st century will be quantitatively and qualitatively different from those of the Cold War and require fundamental change to our national security institutions, military strategy, and defense posture by 2020.” He wrote that the NDP report expanded on the latest Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which was also conducted in 1997, but looked farther into the future and offered a more developed transformation strategy. Mandated only to produce the report, the NDP disbanded after its release.