TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/091090/0910012.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 11.2 KB | 236 lines

                                                                                THE GULF, Page 30

Military Message


With a new emphasis on Third World conflict, the Pentagon will
have to trim some desires to fill its needs

By BRUCE W. NELAN -- Reported by Bruce van Voorst/Washington


    America's amazing August charge into the desert of Saudi
Arabia could have been a military disaster. The first troops
to arrive were ill-equipped and vastly outnumbered by the Iraqi
tank army poised in occupied Kuwait. Soldiers of the 82nd
Airborne Division were told to expect to go directly into
combat, though they carried nothing more effective against
tanks than puny Dragon rockets and risky-to-use TOW missiles.

    "If Saddam Hussein had struck during those early days," says
Dave McCurdy, a member of the House Armed Services Committee,
"our troops would have been slaughtered." Since then, at least
40,000 American soldiers and Marines and almost a million tons
of equipment have followed. But senior officers say they still
need another month or two of rapid buildup to reach adequate
defensive strength. Only last week, 22 days after Operation
Desert Shield got under way, did the first M-1 tanks, which
would be essential for fighting Iraqi armor, arrive at Saudi
ports.

    Fortunately the only battle in the gulf so far has been
against distance. It is proving to be a tough one. Despite the
$2.5 trillion spent  on defense over the past decade, the U.S.
lacks enough cargo planes and ships to deliver its armed forces
to trouble spots around the globe. Transport planes like the
C-141 Starlifter and C-5A Galaxy are still the workhorses of
the Air Force, but they are aging, and their production lines
have long been closed. The next-generation airlifter, the C-17,
has encountered repeated delays in nine years of development
and is not yet in service. In the meantime, most of the troops
and 25% of the supplies flying to Saudi Arabia are traveling on
wide-body planes leased from commercial airlines.

    Much of the Army's heavy equipment, including hundreds of
tanks and helicopters, will be delivered by sea -- the biggest
bottleneck. The Navy has only eight SL-7 fast-logistics ships
specifically designed for such work, and two have already
broken down at sea; one is being towed across the Atlantic. In
a pinch like this, the Navy is supposed to be able to
reactivate its mothballed fleet of transport vessels. It has
ordered up 41 of them, but so far only 25 have got under way.
The Navy last week was chartering 15 American and foreign
cargo ships to pick up the slack.

    Such difficulties have revived a debate over U.S. defense
needs in the post-cold war world that had seemed all but
settled. No longer faced with the threat of a Soviet onslaught
in Europe, it appeared that America could safely spend far less
on military might. Only two days before Iraqi armored units
rolled into Kuwait, the House had slashed $24 billion from the
Pentagon's $307 billion proposed budget, eliminating such
high-priced weapons as the B-2 Stealth bomber and mobile MX
missile. The Senate was only slightly more restrained, chopping
$18 billion. While disagreeing with some items on the
congressional hit list, even Defense Secretary Dick Cheney
agreed that some reductions were needed. He had just completed
a strategic review and was about to propose cutting 10% from
the Pentagon budget and 25% from its manpower over the next
five years.

    Saddam's aggression has given new ammunition to skeptics who
contend that, Soviet threat or no Soviet threat, the U.S. needs
every high-tech weapon system it can develop. The Pentagon
budget will still be cut, but perhaps by as little as $10
billion, obliterating any chance that a substantial peace
dividend will help relieve pressure on the government deficit.
"Every politician will cite the gulf crisis as a justification
for his favorite weapon," says Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon
official now at the Brookings Institution in Washington. For
example, Senator Robert Dole has already argued that Iraq's move
proves the need for the Stealth bomber, a plane less useful
in the gulf than the A-10 tank killer that Air Force pilots
disdain because it cannot fly more than 500 m.p.h.

    Moreover, the crisis has raised doubts about the Pentagon's
post-cold war concepts. In his strategic review, Cheney
envisioned potential conflict with states that are lightly
armed compared with the U.S. Iraq, with the world's fourth
largest army and a huge array of Soviet-built tanks and planes,
modern missiles and artillery, is not what the Pentagon was
planning for. Another rethinking is getting started.

    The question is whether that re-evaluation will be any more
productive than prior Pentagon brainstorming. There is no
question that the U.S. is well armed. The Reagan-Bush buildup
has produced 2.1 million highly trained men and women in
uniform, a 549-ship Navy and an Air Force of 2,600 planes. But
these muscular formations are of little use if they cannot
arrive quickly where they are needed. The embarrassing fact is
that the Pentagon was not ready to fight even the war it was
supposed to be preparing for. One revelation delivered by the
long, slow sea-lanes to the Persian Gulf is that the U.S.
could never have made good on its NATO commitment to move 10
Army divisions to Europe in 10 days in the event of a Soviet
attack.

    The explanation for the logistics shortfall is simple
enough: the armed services are not interested in spending money
on programs that do not produce weapons. Promotions go to those
officers who command warships and fly warplanes. Says a Navy
captain: "You don't make admiral driving freighters." Left to
their own devices, Pentagon planners invariably opt for the
furthest reaches of technology, seeking machines with almost
magical properties. What they usually get are production
delays, cost overruns and hardware that never lives up to its
advance billing. They are again talking up their pet projects.

system it has or wants," says a key Senate staff member.

    Though the need to match Soviet nuclear weapons and massive
conventional strength has faded, the services have not changed
their ways. The Air Force is planning for a new generation of
advanced Stealth fighters, the Army for a new breed of 80-ton
tanks so massive they could not be driven across bridges even
in Europe, the Navy for faster, quieter nuclear submarines and
a fleet of destroyers costing $1 billion apiece. If they could
bring themselves to accept modernized follow-on generations of
the highly capable weapons already in the inventory, the
services could acquire more of them faster and more cheaply.

    Instead, the services are seizing the moment to argue
against cutbacks they reluctantly agreed to during Cheney's
strategic review. The Air Force puts out straight-faced claims
for potential B-2 utility in the gulf. Generals argue that
reducing the Army from 18 to 12 divisions is not a good idea.
The Navy insists it must keep 14 aircraft carriers deployed and
not 11, as Cheney had proposed to the service chiefs.

    So far, the lessons of the gulf have been otherwise. Even
if the U.S. shipped 250,000 troops to the area, that would be
only 12% of its current forces. Tactical aircraft like the
F-15, F-16 and A-10 have been the main elements in putting
Saddam's tanks and planes at risk. If heavy bombing were
necessary, the veteran B-52 would be more than adequate.

    Even if a shooting war with Iraq occurs, the modest cuts
Cheney was about to order are still reasonable. If he draws
back under service pressure, it would take courage for Congress
to ignore charges of lack of patriotism and push the reductions
through. It may come to that. The chairman of the House Armed
Services Committee, Les Aspin, offers a Washington truism:
"It's still easier for politicians to cut defense than to raise
taxes or cut domestic spending." Of course, if a hot war with
Iraq breaks out, all such bets are off. That could cost the
U.S. thousands of casualties and an estimated $1 billion a day.


____________________________________________________________
HARDWARE THE U.S. NEEDS


    C-17 AIRLIFTER

    The Air Force insisted that the C-17, its replacement for
the sturdy, cargo-hauling C-5A and C-141, be able to use short
runways and turn around in an 82-ft. radius. The results have
so far been congressional protests over delays, plan changes
and a price tag of $240 million a copy. Nine years after the
program was announced, not a single C-17 is flying.

    SL-7 LOGISTICS SHIP

    Each of these 55,000-ton, roll-on, roll-off vessels can
deliver the tanks and other combat equipment for an entire
armored division over 12,000 miles at 27 knots. The problem is
that there are only eight of them. The Navy would not have
those if Congress and the White House had not pushed for them.
The ships were originally built for a commercial company in the
1970s and bought by the Navy in the early 1980s. Congress
appropriated $592 million to buy more ships like them last
year, but the Pentagon diverted some of the money and did not
spend the rest.

    FOG-M MISSILE

    Fiber-optic guidance enables troops to drop this
jeep-mounted missile on enemy tanks while remaining safely
behind cover. It could be the answer to the Army's continuing
failure to develop effective small antitank weapons. Army
missiles in Saudi Arabia either will not penetrate heavy armor
or will require a soldier to remain exposed to enemy fire for
as long as 20 seconds.


____________________________________________________________
HARDWARE THE U.S. DOESN'T NEED


    SSN-21 SEAWOLF

    Nuclear-powered attack submarines were designed to sink
Soviet ballistic-missile subs, and the U.S. already has 93 of
them. With the threat from the Soviet Union diminished, that
might seem enough. But not to the Navy, which wants to build
29 of the new SSN-21s at about $2 billion each. The submariners
claim that the Seawolf will be quieter, smarter and carry more
torpedoes than its predecessors. Even if it will, those are
marginal advances that do not justify the price tag. Nor is it
easy to see how attack submarines would help deal with
conflicts like the one in the gulf.

    YF-23 FIGHTER

    This is one version of the Advanced Tactical Fighter, the
Air Force's proposed successor to the highly effective F-15.
The ATF will have a longer range, more maneuverability and the
latest in radar-defeating stealth technology. Though it has not
explained what threat makes the new plane necessary, the Air
Force plans to build up to 750 of them at about $100 million
each.

    B-2 BOMBER

    After spending almost $30 billion to develop the Stealth
bomber, the Air Force wants $45 billion more to build 75 of
them. It is a plane without a mission, designed to penetrate
Soviet air defenses. But by the time a B-2 could reach the
Soviet Union, intercontinental and submarine-launched nuclear
missiles would have destroyed those defenses along with up to
15,000 other targets. As Iraq demonstrates, the U.S. does need
heavy bombers, but it already has 247 B-52s and 97 B-1s to
handle real contingencies.