TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/030491/0304991.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.7 KB | 183 lines

                                                                                THE GULF WAR, Page 38

PREPAREDNESS

How Many Wars Can the U.S. Fight?


The Pentagon argues for a leaner military establishment, even
though the gulf conflict has stretched its resources to the
limit

By JESSE BIRNBAUM -- Reported by Barry Hillenbrand/Tokyo, James
O. Jackson/Bonn and Bruce van Voorst/Washington


    During the cold war, Pentagon planners boasted that the U.S.
was prepared to battle the Soviet Union while simultaneously
waging a smaller conflict against another, less formidable foe
elsewhere in the world. Now the cold war is finished -- and so
is that 1 1/2-war strategy. Even before the outbreak of major
fighting on the ground, the gulf war had severely strained U.S.
military resources and raised troubling questions about
America's ability to fight one war -- defending Western Europe
against a Soviet onslaught -- much less 1 1/2.

    Serious doubts arise from the length of time it took the
U.S. to deploy the 525,000-strong forces of Operation Desert
Storm. In the event of a Soviet offensive in Europe, Pentagon
strategy called for reinforcing NATO with six armored and
infantry divisions airlifted or shipped from the U.S. in only
10 days, but it has taken nearly six months to complete the
buildup in the gulf. That buildup has stripped American bases
in the U.S. and overseas of troops and war machines. More than
70,000 U.S. Army soldiers and 40,000 tanks, artillery pieces
and other equipment have been moved to Saudi Arabia from Germany
alone. Of the six armored or mechanized divisions that had
been deployed with NATO, only slightly more than two now
remain. Another two are held in reserve in the U.S.

    The other service branches have also been drained. Ninety
thousand Marines -- nearly half the corps's manpower -- are in
the gulf. The Air Force has sent in more than 1,400 tactical
aircraft, about a fourth of its inventory, as well as nearly
all of its B-52Gs. Of the Navy's 13 aircraft-carrier battle
groups, six are in the gulf theater. Specialized forces in the
Far East and Southeast Asia have been reduced.

    So have U.S.-based Reserve and National Guard units that had
been assigned crucial roles in contingency planning for a
European war. For the most part, they have acquitted themselves
well in the gulf, but there have been embarrassing exceptions.
Some National Guard brigades were simply unprepared to fight.
In Louisiana dozens of reservists from the 256th Brigade went
AWOL for a weekend to protest training conditions, and the
commander of the 48th Infantry Brigade from Fort Irwin, Calif.,
was removed from active duty after his unit performed poorly
in training.

    Despite these strains, the Pentagon asserts that the U.S.
and its NATO allies could fight the Soviets in Europe if
necessary and at the same time handle a challenge elsewhere.
Others are not so sure. "The gulf deployment," says Lawrence
Korb, a Brookings Institution military expert and former
Defense Department expert on manpower, "puts to rest that
idea." Says Washington defense analyst Steven Canby: "Let us
pray that we don't face any new threat elsewhere."

    Given the logistical and manpower problems the gulf war
highlighted, the Pentagon might be expected to argue for a
bigger military establishment in the future. The opposite is
true. In testimony before two congressional committees last
week, Pentagon bosses Dick Cheney and Colin Powell defended
their new multiyear budget, proposed earlier this month, which
calls for a 25% cut in military personnel by 1995, a 4%
reduction in spending and even the elimination of many of the
weapons that have proved to be so dramatically effective in the
gulf.

    Cheney and Powell make three arguments in favor of the
cutbacks: 1) the runaway federal deficit dictates smaller
defense budgets, 2) the Soviet threat has declined, and 3)
quality can replace quantity.

    The key to the Pentagon's new approach will be a sharply
reduced American "forward deployment" in Europe and the
Pacific, backed by a strong, mobile capability stationed in the
U.S. The Army would be reduced from 28 divisions to 20,
supported by increased, speedier airlift and sea-lift capacity,
and including a quick-reaction Contingency Force consisting of
the XVIII Airborne Corps reinforced with two armored divisions.
The Pentagon would also proceed with its plans to close 225
military bases around the world and to tighten its procurement
policies. All told, the current force of 2.1 million
active-duty personnel would be reduced about one-fourth,
roughly equal to the number of troops engaged in the gulf war.

    Oddly, Cheney also wants to phase out some of the battle
equipment that the public has only begun to recognize. The M1A1
tank as well as the Bradley fighting vehicle, both hardy
workhorses in the gulf, will no longer be produced. Assembly
lines for the AH-64 Apache and AH-1S Cobra helicopters, so
efficient in the fighting, will close; the Army wants a new
heavy battle tank and a high-tech helicopter instead. The Navy
will eliminate or scale back some weapons designed for battling
the Soviets, including its Trident SLBM submarine program and
its hunter-killer Seawolf submarine procurement, and reduce its
overall carrier group strength from 13 to 12. Increased costs
will almost certainly force the Air Force to cut its proposed
purchase of 120 C-17 transport planes.

    But Cheney wants to revive the case for other weapons whose
demise seemed likely before the gulf war started. They include
two costly gadgets that have played no role in Operation Desert
Storm:


    Star Wars. The Strategic Defense Initiative, designed to
detect and intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles in
outer space, was moribund until Iraq unleashed its Scud
missiles. The Patriot changed all that, even though it is based
on a technology that was developed long before SDI got to the
drawing board. Still, SDI backers argue that the success of the
Patriot teaches a significant lesson about the need to prepare
against ICBMs. "All you'd have to do is watch the Scud missile
battles over Tel Aviv and Riyadh," says Cheney, "to have a
sense of the extent to which ballistic-missile capability is
a threat to U.S. forces."

    More Patriots are not the answer. Despite its gee-whiz
exploits in the gulf, the Patriot flies at only three times the
speed of sound and covers only a narrow swath of real estate.
It has no trouble dealing with the unsophisticated Scud, a Mach
4 weapon that has proved to be the Edsel of missiles. An ICBM
warhead, on the other hand, enters the atmosphere at 15 times
the speed of sound. A Patriot could scarcely get off its
launcher before an ICBM did its damage.

    Thus SDI has suddenly gained a new respectability. The White
House and Senate minority leader Robert Dole are encouraging
more spending on the system. Mindful that the Soviet Union
still has 2,300 ICBMs in its arsenal, and confident that the
U.S. public no longer views Star Wars as an unattainable magic
elixir, the Pentagon proposes to boost SDI research from its
present $3.2 billion to $4.6 billion.

    The Stealth Bomber. The gulf war has deepened the
controversy over what was already the biggest weapons-funding
debate in the budget. At $860 million apiece, the B-2 is the
most expensive aircraft ever designed. Congress nearly killed
the entire program for good last year, but the Pentagon now is
seeking more than $4 billion in 1992 to build four B-2s.

    In their attempt to justify the B-2 by providing it with a
mission, advocates have argued that the bomber could be used
to hunt down and destroy Soviet mobile missile launchers. But
the allied air campaign's failure to silence Iraq's Scuds after
four weeks of relentless searching has strengthened skepticism
about the B-2's ability to locate Soviet missiles concealed in
millions of acres of forests in the U.S.S.R. Opponents argue,
furthermore, that the $70 million F-117A stealth fighter-bomber
is not only a lot cheaper than the B-2 but also brilliantly
effective; according to the Pentagon, it has had a 95% accuracy
record in hitting its targets in Iraq. Another challenge to the
B-2 is the Tomahawk cruise missile, which costs only $1
million. Tomahawks had a reported 90% success rate in the gulf
war. Congressional critics might decide that these factors will
overwhelm those favoring the B-2.


    The future shape of U.S. preparedness, and its price tag,
will depend on the course of the gulf war and the outcome of
political events in the troubled Soviet Union. Until these
matters are resolved, it is just as well that the U.S. is not
fighting even a fraction more than one war at a time.