Why Was the U.S. Unarmed?

War begun without good provision of money beforehand . . . is but as a breathing of strength and blast that will quickly pass away. Coin is the sinews of war.

--Rabelais

When war began in Korea, Americans had good reason to believe that the sinews of their war machine were tough & thick; never in peacetime had U.S. coin been spent so lavishly on the armed forces of the nation.

In the five years after World War II, the U.S. had poured out a staggering $90 billion for the Army, Navy and Air Force. Another $3.4 billion went for other defense expenses such as atomic energy, military aid abroad, stockpiling of strategic materials. In 1949, the defense bill came to $100 for every man, woman and child in the U.S., v. only $8 apiece in 1938. The total defense outlay was nearly half again as much as 1941's entire U.S. budget.

Yet the first agonizing weeks in Korea proved well enough that all this coin had failed to develop the sinews of war. Said one military man: "The fist is still there, but the muscles of the arm have been wasted away."

For its $90 billion the U.S. got--not a powerful fighting force--but only ten combat divisions. And even those were sadly understaffed, full of green troops, and underequipped. U.S. tanks, almost all left over from World War II, were obsolescent; antitank weapons were out of date. Most of World War II's mighty Navy lay cocooned, prepared to fight off rust rather than an enemy. Even the Air Force, the strategic bombing darling of military planners, had to scramble to find planes to give ground troops limited tactical support.

Faced by the shocking weakness of its armed forces many an American bleakly asked:

Where did the $90 billion go?

Why did the U.S. get so little for its money?

How much will it cost to guarantee reasonable security in the future?

WHERE WASTE BEGAN

One reason the U.S. got so little for its money was that $42 billion of the $90 billion was not spent to prepare the U.S. for the future. It was spent to wind up World War II.

At war's end the U.S. had vast stores of equipment which it had not yet paid for, more billions still on order which it suddenly did not need. It spent $6.8 billion simply terminating contracts for undelivered goods.

There was enormous wastage: because Congress had provided no sound accounting system to check on payments, the U.S. overpaid to the extent of an estimated half a billion on terminated war contracts. There was fraud and there were mistakes; Comptroller General Lindsay Warren found glaring errors in one out of every seven of the settlements he examined --"and never an error in favor of the Government." At the time, everyone thought that haste, even though it meant waste, was better than delay which might have cost the nation a bigger sum in lost civilian production, long lines of unemployed and slow reconversion of plants to peace.

The greatest waste of all resulted from the frenzy to "bring the boys home" in 1945. Said Army Chief of Staff Joseph Lawton Collins: "The haste of demobilization was such that troops virtually had to walk off and leave their equipment." They abandoned billions of dollars' worth of equipment overseas to be given away, stolen or left to rot. In Manila harbor, an entire shipment of small arms was dumped into the sea; in Germany, whole fields of planes were dynamited. At home, even items that could be easily stored--and that would have proved useful today (such as clothing)--were declared surplus.*

The Navy managed to provide somewhat better for its future, chiefly because ships could be sailed back to the U.S. before the crews were demobilized. Thus, the Navy was able to mothball 2,027 ships, for the small cost of $173 million. The Army did succeed in storing $15 billion worth of ammunition, tanks, trucks, etc., according to its estimates. But whether it had that much was questionable. Army records, for example, showed 25,000 tanks on hand at war's end; but when the Army looked for the tanks, it could find only 16,000. And some of the stored material (e.g., communication equipment) turned out to be rotted when it was sent into battle in Korea.

Said New Hampshire's Senator Styles Bridges of the Senate's Armed Services Committee: "The haste to declare things surplus was one of the very tragic things that went on in this country . . . Specific items of military equipment might become outmoded, but basic material (e.g., uniforms, underclothes) could have been stored easily and would be just as good now as then. We had the supply and equipment for 128 divisions at the end of the war, and look where we are now."

HOW COSTS ROSE

Though the winding up of World War II took the biggest single slice of postwar military spending, the services still had $48 billion left. Where did that money go?

The bulk of it (before Korea) went for "housekeeping" expenses, i.e., the basic needs of military life. Out of

every defense dollar, 40-c- went for pay, food, clothing and transportation. And for the military, as for every other housekeeper, the cost of living has been bouncing higher almost every day. Examples:

P:A G.I.'s daily rations used to cost 43-c-; now the bill comes to nearly $1 a day.

P:A flannel shirt which cost only $3.68 ten years ago, now costs $5.47; cotton khaki trousers which used to cost $2.25, now cost more than $4; boots priced at $3.66 in 1940 now list at $6.84.

P:At the start of World War II, clothing and equipping a recruit cost $122; now it comes to $377.

P:Maintaining an individual soldier for one year now costs $5,300--more than four times what it cost just before World War II.

The military can hardly be blamed for civilian inflation; but the military has shown little ingenuity in stretching its dollar to make up for rising costs. The Army, for example, had been issuing six pairs of trousers to each new recruit--simply because it thought that Marines got six pairs apiece. Not until two years ago did the Army learn that the Marines issued only three pairs --and that many an Army recruit threw at least three of his six pairs away. Faced with this blunt fact, the Army forthwith halved its issue. Said the Hoover Commission: "The military services are far too prodigal with Government funds."

Another big share of housekeeping money (26-c- out of every defense dollar) went for maintenance and operation of ships, planes and military bases. These costs also rose, in some instances quadrupled. Today's destroyer costs almost $1,000,000 a year to run, v. $293,000 in 1940. A B17, once the No. 1 U.S. heavy bomber, used to cost $145 an hour to operate; the B-36 costs $1,000 an hour.

WHAT 18-c- BOUGHT

By the time housekeeping and such other costs as research and administration were taken out of the pre-Korean defense dollar (see chart), only 18-c- was left for the actual purchase of tanks, guns, ships, aircraft and other weapons. For that 18-c-, the U.S. did not get much. Chief reason: postwar equipment is so much more complex than that of World War II that the price has gone up astronomically. Examples:

P:A Navy fighter once carried only $300 worth of electronic equipment; Navy jet fighters of today carry $11,000 worth.

P:A single B-17 bomber cost $300,000; a B-36 costs about $4,000,000.

P:A light tank used to cost $25,000; today a light tank costs $175,000 (though mass production might bring the price down as much as 20%).

Besides limiting procurement of new equipment, the high prices had another effect: they forced the armed forces to cut drastically the amount spent to improve weapons. The Army, which wanted $20 million a year for developing new tanks, got only $7,000,000, which was far less than the Ford Motor Co., for example, spends on bringing out a new model.

Thus the tanks that were produced were not as good as they should have been. On top of the rising costs of individual weapons, the Army stepped up the fire power of its divisions and added more weapons and men. The result was that an infantry division, which cost $14.5 million to outfit in World War II, cost $74.3 million (pre-Korea). The cost of equipping an armored division has risen from $30 million to $200 million.

WHEN POLITICS HURT

But in addition to high prices and the haste and waste of demobilization there was one other major cause for the sorry state of U.S. preparedness at the time of Korea. It was shortsightedness in Washington.

In 1948, the late Defense Secretary James Forrestal asked for about $18 billion for defense during fiscal 1950. Thanks to a budget ceiling set by an election-minded Harry Truman and politics-first economy on the part of Congress, Forrestal got only $13.3 billion. Whether the extra money would have bought adequate defense forces is open to debate; it certainly would have bought proportionately far more than the funds appropriated. Reason: the $13.3 billion paid for the skeleton of an adequate defense; the extra billions would have put on the muscles.

In Germany, for example, the U.S. has a division and a half of combat soldiers. But it is operating PXs, mess halls, command centers, communications and all the other installations necessary for a much larger front-line force. Thus the U.S. could have doubled its combat force there with very little outlay because it would not have to add to its supply troops. In the same fashion, almost all other additions to the armed forces which the extra cash would have bought would have been to their combat and front-line strength.

The Forrestal budget would have bought twelve fully equipped regular Army divisions (v. the ten Johnsonized divisions that the U.S. had at the time of Korea). It would have bought the 70-group Air Force recommended by the Finletter-Air Policy Commission and Congress instead of the 48 groups] on hand last June. It would have bought a Navy of 420 combatant ships (v. today's 245).

Under the Forrestal budget the modern tanks that are now still on the drawing boards or in pilot models would have long since been coming off the production line, ready for battle. Forrestal's $18 billion, in short, would have given the U.S. ground, sea and air power--ready for use now--that it will not be able to get for months, even at a far greater cost.

Because the U.S. was penny wise, it will now have to be pound foolish. It will have to pay more for rubber, aluminum, copper, steel and every bit of raw material that goes into armament. It may have to start making weapons that are not the best simply because it has not spent the money to develop perfection. It will have to spend heavily to remove bugs on the production line which should have been worked out, at small cost, in the laboratory.

Last week Congress appropriated $11.7 billion (on top of the $14 billion already budgeted) for the armed forces for this fiscal year. Of the total, $3.1 billion will go to the Army, $3.7 billion to the Navy, and $4.5 billion to the Air Force (the rest will go for such projects as research on atomic weapons including the hydrogen bomb).

How much rearmament this new money will buy is anyone's guess; but it is certain that it will not buy as much as needed nor as much as Congress intended. The total 1951 appropriation calls for the purchase of 5,300 new military planes. Texas' Senator Lyndon Johnson told the Senate that in the time it has taken for the funds to be appropriated price rises have chopped their purchasing power by 750 planes.

Even without the price rises, the new appropriations are far from enough to pay for the defense expansion planned by the Administration.

Last month Harry Truman set an ultimate goal of 3,000,000 men in uniform. Just to feed, clothe, house and pay that number will cost $3 billion more than has been appropriated for such costs. By next June, said Truman, military spending will be running at the rate of $30 billion a year (v. the $25 billion appropriated so far this year); after that, he added, "we shall have to spend much more than $30 billion."

WHAT'S NEEDED NOW

How much more no one knew. But some indication was given by the estimates of Pentagon-planners a month ago of how much hardware (tanks, guns, etc.) that the U.S. must produce for itself and its allies beginning immediately. The estimates: 15,000 tanks, 25,000 pieces of artillery and 40,000 super-bazookas and recoilless rifles. This would be merely a part of a general program which would run between $35 billion and $40 billion annually for the next three years and then would taper off to a maintenance level of about $25 billion a year. But since then the Pentagon planners have been raising their goals almost every week; the talk in Washington last week was of a possible defense budget topping $50 billion a year--or more than one-fifth of the nation's total output.

The U.S. is now paying for the folly of its hasty demobilization five years ago and its refusal to start the buildup of its armed forces in 1948, as was urgently proposed by Forrestal. If the U.S. is again unwilling to meet the cost of defense--and fails again to remember the lessons of the past--then its blast in any war to come will quickly pass away.

-Last month the Government finally clamped a freeze on all its remaining surplus property, to screen it for possible use in the current rearmament program.

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