"Minimum Necessity"

The rearmament program which Defense Secretary Forrestal laid down before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week was described by him as a "minimum necessity" of U.S. military strength. Its immediate objective was to boost the armed forces to a new total of 1,734,000 men. The breakdown:

P: An Army of 782,000--up 240,000 from its present strength.

P: Navy of 460,000--up 63,000.

P: A Marine Corps of 92,000--up 11,000.

P: An Air Force of 400,000--up 35,500.

To acquire that increment of manpower, Secretary Forrestal would clamp selective service on the 3,600,000 young men aged 19 to 25. To provide the added strength, and constant replacements, the total number needed in the first year: 720,000. Even with deferments for World War II veterans, married men, doctors, scientists, etc., it ought not to be hard for the Government to fill that quota. It might be hard on some young men. The draft would be for a minimum of two years. The Government might register all U.S. men from 19 to 45, just to have everybody on tap.

The cost of the added manpower, he estimated, plus the cost of arming them, plus the cost of filling out some big gaps in the U.S. arsenal, would add $3 billion to the nation's 1948-49 defense budget, now set informally at $11 billion.*

The Forrestal program also included universal military training, which would supply a constant pool of 850,000 men at least partially trained. Forrestal did not explain how U.M.T. would be separated from selective service. Presumably U.M.T. would catch the 18-year-olds.

The Order of Bottle. The hearing was remarkable for the frankest and possibly most calculated discussion yet of "the enemy," i.e., Russia.

To the Congressmen, Forrestal's chiefs of staff explained in astonishing detail how they would employ the military establishment which he proposed. A little more than a quarter of a million troops would have to be used in occupation and garrison duties. Alaskan forces should be increased from 7,000 to 15,000 combat and air-service troops. The balance (510,000) would be the nation's ready force, whose various missions would be to repulse an invasion, deny nearby bases to the enemy, secure faraway bases for the Air Force.

Those bases would have to be within at least 2,000 miles of the objective, declared Army Secretary Kenneth Royall. "Even from any of the Atlantic island nations or from Japan or Alaska, frequent and intensive strategic bombing could touch only fragmentary parts of central Eurasia," he maintained.

On a map of the Egyptian littoral, General Omar Bradley, Army chief of staff, lectured Congressmen on the problem of maintaining a hypothetical 20-group air force within "effective" striking distance of Russia. A minimum of seven divisions would be needed to protect the base from overland attack by massed armies. The ground troops alone--to say nothing of 125,000 Air Force officers and men--would require 12,500 tons of supplies daily. Movement of this tonnage from the U.S. and protection of this one base from sea attack would involve a major naval force.

The Balanced Force. This primer lesson in logistics was the key to Forrestal's whole strategic program. He had rejected, for the present at least, demands for a 70-group Air Force. He had held it to 55 groups in order to build up, with limited funds, the vital auxiliary ground strength. His theory was that land, sea and air forces had to be held in balance or none of them would be effective.

On that basis, instead of cutting down the Marines, he had increased their strength. In effect, he added riflemen at the sacrifice of Air Force dreams of more planes. His problem now was to get Congress to give him the riflemen.

* An amount "arbitrarily allocated by the Bureau of the Budget," a joint congressional board on aviation recently noted. The figures "do not even approximate the stated requirements of the services."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.