Aerospace World

Expect More Force Cuts, Warns NSC Official

US armed services-still reeling from earlier cuts in force structure-now face additional reductions. The reasons: Windfalls from budget reforms have not materialized, and unexpected, high-cost personnel requirements have.

So says Robert G. Bell, a presidential assistant and the senior director for defense policy and arms control at the National Security Council.

Noted specifically as vulnerable items in a new squeeze: The Navy’s 12 aircraft carriers; 100,000-strong troop deployments in Europe and Asia; and forces needed to cover the second conflict in the nation’s two-Major Theater War strategy.

In its 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review, DoD said it would harvest savings from reforms and divert the funds to vital needs, financing an otherwise underfunded program. Bell, however, laid that idea to rest in a November speech in Cambridge, Mass.

He blamed Congress, saying it had not, as asked, closed bases, stopped diverting money to unwanted and unneeded projects, or properly funded contingencies. Failure to execute the reforms drained money for readiness and modernization, Bell said.

Also, DoD confronts unanticipated costs. The services, worried about recruiting and retention, want to close a military-civilian pay gap and provide more lucrative retired pay. Bell said doing this could cost $30 billion over six years.

All told, these problems have blown a $86 billion hole in the program, said Bell, raising the question: How to fix it

The White House official said the Administration would go after force structure “if at the end of the day we cannot assume that we’re not going to have much more success … on the Hill … and a topline increase is not available.”

DoD has decided to cut readiness of “lower priority forces,” and more readiness cuts would be “a sure prescription for a … crisis,” said Bell. Yet he said “stretching out” modernization would have a grave impact on future capabilities.

“My sense is that … your only choice is to come back to force structure: Downsize the force to save dollars that you can’t otherwise capture,” Bell said, “It means revisiting 100,000 troops in Asia and Europe, … revisiting carrier levels, … revisiting the second [MTW] requirement.”

Skeptics noted that, even at the time, the QDR’s savings projection was considered fantasy, and virtually no one took it seriously. Moreover, some asked, why doesn’t the White House simply propose a bigger DoD budget

Bell left the impression that defense was just another claimant for federal money. Defense, he said, must be considered “alongside other national issues.” He declared, for example, “the President has a very clear priority for fixing the Social Security system and for doing that first.”

The Battle of Arlington Ridge

Arlington, Va., Nov. 25–In the waning hours of the 105th Congress, Rep. Gerald B.H. Solomon (R-N.Y.) and others mounted a legislative power play, ultimately unsuccessful, to stop the construction of an Air Force Memorial on Arlington Ridge, overlooking the Potomac River.

Solomon-a former Marine and until recently, chairman of the House Rules Committee-holds that the Air Force Memorial would encroach on the “hallowed ground” of the Iwo Jima Memorial, which occupies eight of the 25 acres on Arlington Ridge.

His proposal would have moved the Air Force Memorial off Arlington Ridge and given it tentative claim on a hill south of Arlington Cemetery, with a sweeping view of the Pentagon and the nation’s capital. At present, however, the US Navy Annex is located there, and federal plans for use of this land are uncertain. Other members of Congress have also taken an interest in the idea of moving the Air Force Memorial there. Among them is Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman-designate of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

There were unofficial suggestions that it might be possible for the Navy Annex buildings to “come down” in the reasonably near future, but other sources said the Department of Defense might require use of the buildings for another 10 years. A related proposal would extend Arlington Cemetery south-perhaps wrapping it around the proposed new site for the Air Force Memorial-but that is not for certain either.

In a parallel move to delay the Air Force Memorial, Solomon introduced a bill that would have required the project to conduct an Environmental Impact Statement, rather than an Environmental Assessment, which is about 90 percent complete.

Solomon’s tactic was to submit his site-switch proposal as a late addition to the 1999 Omnibus Spending Bill. Congress does not consider such measures individually. The Appropriations Committee chairmen decide administratively which of the dozens of add-ons to keep in the House-Senate conference bill, which then goes to Congress for a yes or no vote. The tactic failed when Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, did not include Solomon’s gambit in the final bill. The Environmental Impact Statement also fell out.

Some of Solomon’s aides and colleagues took their dissatisfaction to the Washington Times newspaper (“Air Force Memorial Left Grounded After Lone Senator’s Veto”), which depicted Stevens as having killed a “compromise” and said that his action “means the dispute [between the Marines and the Air Force] may never be settled.”

The Air Force Memorial project, begun in 1992, has carefully followed all of the rules prescribed by Congress. The site is two acres, 500 feet down a hill and screened from the Iwo Jima Memorial by a stand of mature trees. The commandant of the Marine Corps was informed of the plans in 1994 and did not state any objections. Opposition did not arise until 1997 when a neighborhood group became concerned about an increase of automobile traffic and visitors to the area. Within a few months, Marine veterans and the Marine Corps had joined in the opposition.

Last July, a federal judge dismissed “with prejudice” a lawsuit by Solomon and his colleagues to stop the Air Force Memorial. In a summary judgment, the court ruled that there was “no genuine issue for trial.” Solomon introduced a number of bills in Congress to block the project, but none of them was successful.

The newspaper account of the omnibus bill maneuver reported, erroneously, that “backers” of the site switch included “a reluctant Air Force [Memorial] Foundation.” Retired USAF Maj. Gen. Charles D. Link, president of the Air Force Memorial Foundation, said that he had provided Solomon and Warner language that would have moderated the legislation, making the switch an option rather than a directive. The foundation had in no way “backed” the legislation. Its actions were an attempt to modify the effects of the bill, should enactment of it become inevitable.

Solomon, who did not seek re-election to Congress last year, has said he will remain in the Washington metropolitan area and will no doubt continue in his efforts to move the Air Force off Arlington Ridge.

Link said that the site on the south side of Arlington Cemetery had not been available when locations for the memorial were originally considered. While it is a potentially attractive site, it does not appear to be available in an attractive configuration within a reasonable time frame. The foundation remains well pleased with the presently approved location on Arlington Ridge.

A New Service for the Space Mission

Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, warned Nov. 18 that if the Air Force does not “truly step up to the space power mission,” Congress may create a new military service for space.

Smith recognized that “the Air Force has played the dominant role in military space matters for decades” and that “a significant portion of its budget has gone toward developing and operating the nation’s military space systems.”

However, he made his opinion clear that the Department of Defense and the Air Force are shortchanging space power and that “America’s future security and prosperity depend on our constant supremacy in space.”

“The Air Force’s space budget is dedicated almost entirely to the maintenance and improvement of information systems, as a means of increasing the effectiveness of existing forces here on Earth,” he said. “If we limit our approach to space to just information superiority, we will not have fully utilized space power.”

He chided the Air Force for not moving out on such initiatives as a military spaceplane. “Does the Air Force really want to stand idle while NASA develops a follow-on to the space shuttle that may contribute only marginally to meeting the requirements of military space power?” he asked.

He also recalled the Air Force’s “New World Vistas” report in 1995, which cited the coming need “to project power from space directly to the Earth’s surface or to airborne targets with kinetic or directed energy weapons.”

Reviewing the way the Air Force is organized, trained, and equipped, Smith does “not see the Air Force building the material, cultural, and organizational foundations of a service dedicated to space power. Indeed, in some respects, we are moving backward. Three years ago the Air Force published Global Engagement, which spoke of a transition ‘from an air force to an air and space force on an evolutionary path to a space and air force,’ ” but last year “the Air Force uniformed leadership replaced the vision laid out in Global Engagement with the concept of an ‘aerospace force.’ “

Smith said the Air Force has reached a fork in the road. “The Air Force must truly step up to the space power mission or cede it to another organization.” Embracing space power, he said, “will mean shedding big chunks of today’s Air Force to pay for tomorrow’s and it will be very painful. … But if such a change proves impossible, then we in Congress will have no choice but to consider another alternative.”

One choice might be to follow the model of US Special Operations Command, vested by Congress with some control over development, acquisition, promotions, and assignments, in its mission area.

“Ultimately–if the Air Force cannot or will not embrace space power and if the SOCOM model does not translate–we in Congress will have to establish an entirely new service,” Smith said.

“Creating a new military service to exploit a new medium is not without precedent,” he added. “Indeed, if any of our services should understand this point of transition, it should be the Army Air Corps. … I mean the Air Force.”

Smith also recognized tacitly that while the demand for support from space has grown, the Air Force has been left to fund nearly all military space programs without financial contributions from the other services or an increase in its share of the defense budget.

“A separate service would allow space power to compete for funding within the entire defense budget, lessening the somewhat unfair pressure on the Air Force to make [the] most of the trade-offs and protecting space power from being raided by more popular and well-established programs,” Smith said.

“Space dominance is simply too important to allow any bureaucracy, military department, service mafia, or parochial concern to stand in the way,” he declared.

The “Burden” of US Defense

“Currently, the United States spends barely more than 3 percent of its Gross Domestic Product on defense. There is no way that the United States can sustain over time the forces that the Clinton Administration states to be essential-or the foreign policy that those forces support-on 3 percent of the GDP. That is not a matter of analysis; it is simple arithmetic. To continue to fulfill our present commitments and to re-equip the approved force levels for the more challenging years of the next century would require roughly 4 percent of the GDP. That should not appear as a surprising figure for a nation that aspires to be the sole universal power. Even before Pearl Harbor, in Fiscal Year 1941, the United States spent 4.1 percent of its GDP on defense.”

The Procurement Shortfall

“The United States now spends just over $40 billion a year on procurement. Yet depreciation on our military equipment (at replacement cost) runs to over $100 billion per year. Moreover, there is the additional cost of building an appropriate inventory of sophisticated munitions and, in the longer run, the need to maintain, and ultimately update and replace, hardware-related facilities for development and testing.”

“Contamination” of Warriors

“There is a fundamental disparity between ‘operations other than war’-notably peacekeeping-and the qualities and readiness essential for warfighting. In peacekeeping operations, one must hesitate before using force, one should not be quick on the trigger. In combat a belated response means casualties or an overrun position. Officers who show the restraint and sensitivity desirable in peacekeeping operations-and thereby gain promotions-may be the very ones who lack the capacity for command in combat. Troops who have been trained for restraint in peacekeeping operations are likely to be unready for warfighting. Therein lies the potential for trouble, and yet, given our dual responsibilities, there is no way wholly to avoid such trouble. All that one can do is to be aware of the dilemma-and never to forget that peacekeeping and warfighting are in some sense in conflict. Since the ultimate mission and the ultimate test for the armed forces is warfighting, we must strive to reduce the penalties imposed on our warfighting capacity by peacekeeping. Ideally we should keep the forces designated for these distinct missions separated and thereby minimize the contamination of our forces’ warfighting readiness by peacekeeping operations. Still, as the force structure shrinks, such separation becomes increasingly difficult.”

Pre-eminence of Airpower

“The lessons drawn from the [1991] Gulf War have not been absorbed into military strategy and doctrine. I find it curious, if not ironical, that the United States, which developed and then exploited these new military technologies in the Gulf War, has failed fully to grasp one of the principal lessons from that war. I refer to the immense success of the air offensive prior to and during the 100-hour ground war. The six weeks of coordinated air attacks prior to the launching of the counteroffensive on the ground significantly reduced the combat power of Iraq’s forces-and continued to do so during the four days of the ground war. Nonetheless, to date the US military establishment has yet to absorb the lessons of the immense success of the air war into either doctrine or war plans. The potential of the air campaign in most if not all military campaigns is central to adjustments of strategy. Airpower is not just ancillary to the ground counteroffensive. When we have air superiority, it too can systematically destroy enemy ground forces. And it can do so at a far lower cost in American blood. And that may be essential for retaining public support for America’s expanded international role.”

Limits (So Far) of Jointness

“Despite all our current talk of ‘jointness,’ the services have yet to formulate a sufficiently shared vision of our military future. In part, the Air Force itself has been remiss. Thanks to so many years of treating ‘strategic’ and ‘nuclear’ as synonymous, it has failed to analyze and articulate the strategic role that [tactical aircraft] can play. The Army, too, has been resistant. In part, it is correct in pointing out that the success of airpower in the Gulf is not necessarily repeatable, or repeatable to the same extent, under different conditions. To be sure, it is also in part in the service’s interest. Still, the Army has been slow to accept the enormous potential of airpower in grinding down enemy ground forces-thereby reducing Army casualties and easing the Army’s task. It remains true that airpower ‘cannot do the job alone.’ That is right-but irrelevant. In most military operations, it can do a substantial job in obtaining a quick victory with low casualties. While that is crucial to America’s international mission, some Army officers have been reluctant to accept the altered role that airpower can play.”

“Alternative Strategies”

“Congress in this new era has repeatedly sought alternative strategies from the Pentagon. Its motive may have been to achieve greater military effectiveness without providing additional resources. To be sure, the hope that we can preserve our present military preponderance without a substantial increase in defense spending is unsustainable. … There is no strategic gimmick that will permit us to maintain military dominance in the absence of superior forces.”

Need to Fund Airpower

“The effectiveness of airpower has increased so much in degree that it has almost become a difference in kind. In a sense it has finally achieved the attributes that airpower enthusiasts prematurely claimed over the years. So long as the United States retains air dominance, we can damage or destroy the enemy’s combat power at a low cost in casualties. The altered strategic role that airpower can play must, however, be understood and appreciated. It is ironic that those who comment-and regularly complain-that roughly 40 percent of the future procurement budgets would go to [tactical airpower forces] have not fully grasped the potential advantages that airpower confers. It is also true that, if we are to exploit those advantages, airpower needs to be amply funded. If airpower is to play a crucial role in American strategy, it is doubtful whether we should allow our inventories of precision guided munitions to remain as low as they are. It is a simple fact … that, in so far as inventories are constrained, and are expected to remain constrained, an alteration of military plans will be required-and of a kind that will make such plans less effective. … In a sense, the size of the inventories is, in itself, a strategic choice.”

Pentagon Unveils Possible Missile Defense Sites

On Nov. 17, the Department of Defense made public a list of locations in Alaska and North Dakota where it intends to conduct environmental impact studies, as a precursor to possible deployment of a National Missile Defense system.

The list does not mean the Pentagon has decided to deploy such a system, officials stressed. Use of some of the sites, particularly those in Alaska, would likely constitute a violation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, as it now stands.

But the announcement does give an indication of where NMD assets might be posted and could help prepare the way for a go or no go decision by US political leaders in 2000.

“The purpose of the environmental scoping is to solicit inputs from the public, interest groups, and federal, state, and local government agencies with regard to specific environmental concerns,” a DoD statement said.

Candidate locations are:

• Ground-Based Interceptor: Clear AS, Eielson AFB, Ft. Greeley, and Yukon Maneuver Area (Ft. Wainwright), Alaska; and Grand Forks AFB and Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex, N.D.
• Battle Management Command and Control: Clear AS, Eielson AFB, Ft. Greeley, and Yukon Maneuver Area, Alaska; and Cavalier AS, Grand Forks AFB, and an SRMSC site, N.D.
• In-Flight Interceptor Communication: Clear AS, Eareckson AS, Eielson AFB, Ft. Greeley, and Yukon Maneuver Area, Alaska; Grand Forks AFB, Minot AFB, Missile Alert Facility Echo (near Hampden), and an SRMSC site, N.D.; and a site in the western Aleutians.
• X-Band Radar: Eareckson AS, Alaska; and Cavalier AS and four SRMSC sites in North Dakota.

When Clinton Didn’t Pull the Trigger

US forces were only hours-perhaps only minutes-away from striking Iraq when President Clinton ordered them to stand down Nov. 15, following an Iraqi diplomatic initiative, defense officials said.

Few held out hope that an armed confrontation with Saddam Hussein had been permanently averted, despite his agreement to allow UN weapons inspectors back into his country. The next time Saddam interferes with the UN’s free and unfettered access, an attack could come without advance notice, they warned.

“Iraq has backed down, but that is not enough,” President Clinton told the nation Nov. 15. “Now, Iraq must live up to its obligations.”

White House advisors were reportedly split on the decision to call off planned massive airstrikes. Some, such as Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, favored proceeding with the attack. They argued that the time for hitting could hardly be better, as US allies had issued assurances of support. Standing down, they said, could damage US military morale and further drain readiness.

Others-including, in the end, the President-felt that to proceed with bombing runs in the face of an apparent Iraqi cave-in, however deceptive it may prove to be, would appear overly provocative and perhaps finally shatter the post­Gulf War world consensus on containing Saddam’s ambitions.

Meanwhile, Western government assertions about the state of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capability are only becoming more dire.

According to a recent report from the British Ministry of Defense:

• Iraq could regenerate its ability to produce chemical warfare within months, absent Western threats. Some 4,000 metric tons of chemical weapon precursor agents remain unaccounted for.
• Iraq “almost certainly” retains some biological warfare capability.
• Iraqi work on a missile with a 650-kilometer range may have already begun.
• Except for the defeat of the Gulf War in 1991, Saddam Hussein might have been able to develop a nuclear weapon by 1993.

“Saddam has proved that he is ready and willing to use [weapons of mass destruction],” said the report, “and is the only leader in world history to have authorized the use of nerve agents.”

For US and Germany, Déjà Vu All Over Again

The German nuclear allergy is back, fueling tensions between NATO’s two biggest nations. When the last outbreak occurred, the White House was occupied by Ronald Reagan, Germany was divided into a democratic West and communist East, and the Soviet Union was a world power.

It was in the early 1980s that German anti-nuclear opposition nearly derailed NATO’s decision to deploy US Pershing 2 missiles on German soil to counter Soviet SS-20 weapons. The government in Bonn solidly backed the plan and the missiles went in on schedule, but years of street protests and acrimony caused severe strains in the Alliance.

Now, the United States and Germany may be headed for a struggle over a more basic issue-NATO’s central strategic belief that it has the right, under certain circumstances and in self-defense, to initiate use of nuclear weapons. This time, the German government itself is questioning NATO’s doctrine. In a surprise, Germany’s new left-wing government has suggested NATO adopt a “no-first-use” policy-pledging never to be the first to go nuclear.

German officials contended that, with the Soviet Union gone and the Cold War a distant memory, change in NATO nuclear doctrine is overdue. They say initiatives such as a no-first-use pledge will help deter non-nuclear nations from acquiring atomic arms.

The mid-November German initiative shocked and angered the Clinton Administration. The government of Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats and the Green Party evidently had given Washington assurances that, on major issues of defense policy, Germany would maintain continuity with the past and not seek change.

German officials were themselves taken aback by the vehemence of Washington’s reaction. Senior US officials warned bluntly, publicly, and often that such a shift in deterrence strategy-one that has kept the nuclear peace for more than 50 years-could gravely undermine NATO’s military credibility.

Said Defense Secretary William S. Cohen: “We think that the ambiguity involved in the issue of the use of nuclear weapons contributes to our own security, keeping any potential adversary who might use either chemical or biological [weapons] unsure of what our response would be. We think that it is a sound doctrine. … It is an integral part of our strategic concept, and we think it should remain exactly as it is.”

State Department spokesmen said that Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright relayed the same message. The Washington Post quoted a US official as accusing Germany of using “flawed logic and phony arguments” to reach its conclusions.

Faced with such US displeasure, Schroeder’s government backed away somewhat from its earlier threats to press the matter in NATO councils. After a Nov. 24 meeting with Cohen at the Pentagon, Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping said, “There is no intention in my government to question any core element of NATO strategy, including the fact that nuclear forces play a fundamental political role.”

Even so, Scharping noted that Germany “is following the vision of a nuclear-weapons free world,” virtually assuring that the German proposal would provoke acrimonious trans-Atlantic debate for months to come.