Defense 'Train Wreck' Confronts Incoming Bush Administration

[Guest guest]

If you think this one is bad, wait to you read the one about Clinton

changing the pay raise.

U.S. troops face high operational demand.

Defense 'Train Wreck' Confronts Incoming Bush Administration

Dec 18, 2000

Ed Offley

Stars and Stripes Editor in Chief

It never took center stage as a campaign issue in the 2000 presidential

race, but President-elect W. Bush in five weeks will be confronted by

a major issue neither he nor Congress can afford to ignore: the potential

for a systemic collapse of the U.S. armed forces within the next decade.

While the 16-month electoral contest between Bush and Democratic nominee Al

Gore turned and twisted on a host of domestic issues -- the future health of

Social Security and Medicare, income tax cuts and the federal role in

controlling prescription drug prices -- a growing number of defense experts

warn that one of the first nightmares the new president will inherit is the

threat of a " defense train wreck " looming in the next five to 10 years as

the result of a decade of massive under-funding of the true costs of

maintaining the current size and structure of the U.S. military.

Everybody hits the wall about 2005-2006 .... The [defense] derailment is in

sight.

- Dan Goure

" Everybody hits the wall about 2005-2006, " says Dan Goure, deputy director

of the international security program at the Center for Strategic and

International Studies in Washington, D.C., who co-authored a detailed

analysis of the defense budget crisis last year. " The derailment is in

sight. "

The defense crisis comes above and beyond the normal range of headaches the

incoming president must manage in assembling a national security team, Goure

and other experts say.

Multiple Deadlines Ahead

With the traditional 10-week transition period lopped in half as a result of

the prolonged ballot recounts in Florida, Bush faces multiple deadlines --

to assemble his Defense Department transition team, to name a secretary of

defense nominee and assemble the key cadre of subordinate political

appointees for the Pentagon's civilian leadership, to amend or reconfirm the

existing National Security Strategy of the United States to reflect his

foreign policy priorities and the military structure to enforce them, to

manage the ongoing congressionally-mandated 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review

and to recommend amendments to the 2002 defense budget inherited from the

outgoing Clinton administration.

But those are by far the easy tasks.

Long-Ignored Crisis

Sidelined by poll-driven campaign tacticians, ignored by the mainstream news

media and overlooked by a majority of voters, the defense " train wreck "

crisis has until very recently received scant attention. Until 1998, even

many uniformed military leaders scoffed at the notion that the armed

services faced a shortfall in resources that could threaten their day-to-day

operational capabilities.

Gen. Shelton

But the staggering dimensions of the crisis now are becoming apparent to the

military leadership and to a wider circle of Americans outside the Pentagon

E-ring, congressional defense committees and Washington think tanks.

Gen. Henry Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, formally

acknowledged the seriousness of the situation in a speech last Thursday

where he said the Clinton administration's current goal of $60 billion per

year for modernization program budgets has been found to be " inadequate. "

In the past three years alone, the demanding pace of operations demonstrated

how inadequate that [Clinton defense budget] level was.

- JCS Chairman Gen. Henry Shelton

" Based on the best projections at the time [1997], we thought this would be

adequate to maintain an acceptable level of modernization, " Shelton said of

the $60 billion figure. " Reality has dictated otherwise! In the past three

years alone, the demanding pace of operations demonstrated how inadequate

that level was. "

Outside experts agree.

" We have lived off the technology of the 1960s and 1970s that was developed

and fielded in the 1970s and 1980s, and used it ever since, " says retired

Army Lt. Gen. Lawrence Skibbie, president of the National Defense Industrial

Association. " We are in a death spiral of [military] equipment. "

'Train Wreck' Foreseen

As detailed in their December 1999 report, " Averting the Defense Train Wreck

in the New Millennium " (Center for Strategic and International Studies),

co-authors Goure and M. Ranney provided a bleak portrait of how the

Clinton administration and a Congress controlled first by Democrats, then

Republicans, opted to short-shrift the actual costs of maintaining the U.S.

military in its current size and structure by more than $426 billion, mostly

through cancellation or deferral of planned modernization programs.

Shelton, in his speech to the National Press Club, noted that defense

spending in 1985 constituted 6.5 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic

Product, but has shrunk since then to just over 3 percent of GDP today, for

an actual decrease in defense spending of about $300 billion (current

dollars) per year.

" At the 1985 rate, our budget this year in DoD would be double what it is

today, " Shelton said. " That is quite a peace dividend! "

The modernization crisis stems from the inescapable fact that most of the

current U.S. military infrastructure -- naval warships, combat aircraft and

ground combat vehicles -- is now nearing the point of obsolescence and

mandatory retirement in the current decade, experts warn.

U.S. military forces and capabilities [will] decline and deteriorate to a

degree that the United States is de facto demobilized and possesses a

diminished capacity to shape and influence world events.

- CSIS 'Train Wreck' Report

As a result of that eight-year period of inattention to actual defense

costs, Goure and Ranney predicted that the United States faces a looming

crisis where, as a result of the aging and block obsolescence of many

fundamental combat systems, " U.S. military forces and capabilities [will]

decline and deteriorate to a degree that the United States is de facto

demobilized and possesses a diminished capacity to shape and influence world

events and to safeguard and protect U.S. national interests. "

In 1997, the Defense Department conducted its first Quadrennial Defense

Review, which had been mandated by Congress the year before (and whose

primary sponsor was Sen. ph Lieberman, D-Conn.). The QDR assumed that

Congress would continue to authorize about $266 billion per year over the

next decade to support the current U.S. military structure -- a force of 1.4

million personnel including 10 Army divisions, 11 aircraft carrier battle

groups and 12 fighter wings -- configured to fight two near-simultaneous

regional wars. That has been the essential size and shape of the military

since 1993.

That review has come under criticism by a number of defense experts who say

that because the Pentagon assumed a static budget for the military, the QDR

became a mere budget drill rather than a comprehensive analysis of U.S.

military requirements and capabilities.

In its own assessment of the current state of the armed forces, the

nonprofit Project for a New American Century was unusually harsh about the

1997 QDR: " Absent a strategic framework, U.S. defense planning has been an

empty and increasingly self-referential exercise, often dominated by

bureaucratic and budgetary rather than strategic interests. "

True Defense Costs Much Higher

What the CSIS analysis, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and other

researchers have learned is that the true defense costs for the United

States have been grossly under-reported for most of the past decade.

The CSIS " train wreck " report determined that the true annual costs for the

existing U.S. military force have been nearly $100 billion higher than the

$266 billion assumption cited in the 1997 QDR. And to preserve the existing

force, Congress and the next administration not only have to raise the base

level of each annual budget, but must also cover the unfounded defense costs

from the previous eight years, Ranney and Goure found.

" DoD procurement budgets will need to average $164 billion annually during

2001-2010 to provide for steady and continued modernization and replacement

of the QDR force " the CSIS report concluded. At currently projected funding

levels, Ranney and Goure estimated that by 2005 the accumulated shortfall in

military investment will reach a negative " bow wave " of more than $815

billion.

(The CBO report was slightly less dramatic, estimating that the military was

underfunding defense by about $51 billion per year, including about $37

billion for procurement of new ships, aircraft and weapons.)

Before he left his post as Deputy Secretary of Defense last year, Hamre

was advocating an increase of $100 billion annually to restore the

Pentagon's operational and modernization accounts, Shelton acknowledged in

his speech last week.

Skibbie said the problem has grown too large to be deferred any longer.

" We have a lot of problems facing defense, " Skibbie said. " Given the

reduction in budgets [since 1993] we have this big bill we keep pushing in

front of us, a big bow wave. "

Neither Bush nor Gore came close to advocating defense spending hikes of the

magnitude cited as essential by the CSIS analysis.

Gore supported spending an additional $127 billion over a 10-year period --

an annual increase of just $12.7 billion. Bush declined to name a specific

figure for defense hikes, while explicitly advocating a multi-tiered

national and theater missile defense system that some experts say would

itself require another $60-100 billion to deploy.

The Navy Disappears

Barring a major transformation of the Pentagon budget, the CSIS analysts

predict an inadvertent collapse of U.S. military capability, including:

The current inventory of 15,682 U.S. military aircraft, which requires an

annual production rate of 578 aircraft to maintain the status quo, will

plummet to 8,421 aircraft by 2010 under current procurement funding, which

is only providing for about 148 new planes each year.

To sustain the current Navy force of 304 ships and submarines, Congress must

fund an annual shipbuilding rate of eight vessels funded by an average

procurement commitment of $15 billion each year to offset the inevitable

retirement of older ships. The 2000 ship-building request covered only six

ships and $6.7 billion in investment. Long-term projections show the Navy

constructing on average of only four ships per year. Under that trend, the

Navy will shrink to a force of only 89 ships two decades from now.

Several defense leaders have begun to step forward to confirm the necessity

of a radical shift in budgetary priorities to restore the health of the U.S.

armed forces, including Marine Corps Commandant Gen. L. and Air

Force Secretary F. Whitten s.

In a meeting with the Defense Writers Group on Oct. 26, s admitted that

the air service is seriously lagging in its efforts to modernize the

aircraft fleet.

" If you want us to continue to do what we are doing today from an Air Force

perspective, you're going to have to give us $20 billion to $30 billion a

year more, " s said. " We need to replace 150 airplanes a year from now

to the next 15 to 20 years. I think this year we did under 50. It's

substantially fewer than 150. "

, the Marine Corps commandant, has been quoted as favoring a gradual

ramp-up in Pentagon spending to a level of 4 or 4.5 percent of GDP to

restore the lost procurement funding from the 1990s. That would represent

" an investment strategy in this time of unbelievable surpluses and I believe

it is eminently doable, " told the journal Defense Daily.

Years of Denial

Goure said defense leaders are aware of the impending crisis after years of

ignoring warnings of its coming.

" The department is running scared, " Goure said of the military leadership.

" One or more of the services is about to crash and burn. "

Signs are emerging throughout the armed services of the impending collapse,

Goure said, including all tactical aviation branches of each service.

Other analysts have warned that even with the current federal budget

surpluses, an increase in the defense budget from 2.5 to 4 percent of the

gross domestic product -- as some officials have privately said is needed --

would face profound political opposition. Based on the current economy, a 4

percent GDP increase in the Pentagon budget would amount to about $438

billion in 2002.

" The 4 percent defense solution, if implemented in this decade, would be

tantamount to a declaration of total war on Social Security and Medicare in

the following decade, " wrote lin Spinney, a tactical aircraft analyst

in the Defense Department's program analysis and evaluation directorate, in

an e-mail assessment that circulated widely through the defense community.

" Such a war could be justified only if our nation's survival was at stake, "

Spinney cautioned.

Goure said there are no easy options.

" Neither one [political party] is willing to give up global power, " Goure

said. " There is no way to get out of the world. "

_________________________________________________________________

Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com