Design -for Cooler Days

The Pentagon could feel the rustle among parents worried about the draft, and hear the gripes of reservists and guardsmen unwillingly and inequitably called back to the colors. Whether or not peace settled over Korea, something had to be done about the makeshift way the armed forces got its fighting men.

Last week a distinguished five-man commission,* paid $50 a day apiece as experts, worked in a Pentagon office to make something specific out of the Pentagon's own long-range solution--universal military training.

U.M.T., steadfastly advocated by military men since George Washington's day, had finally been bulled through a somewhat reluctant Congress, was at last the law of the land. Marshall, Bradley, Eisenhower, Collins had urged it. And Anna Rosenberg, George Marshall's able, bracelet-jangling Assistant Secretary, had worked out many of the details.

What is U.M.T. all about?

The most important fact about it today is that so long as there are Koreas and an armed force of 3,500,000 men, there isn't much chance of its really getting started. U.M.T. is designed for cold war that has cooled off. It is the Pentagon's plan for keeping up a supply of trained men in a time when the nation does not want, or does not need, a large standing armed force. It is one answer to Pentagonia's recurring fear: What happens if the U.S. gets "all dressed up with no place to go"?

Mothers & Boy Scouts. The U.M.T. law provides that all males 18 years of age take six months of "basic military training," then spend the next 7 1/2 years in the reserves. But technically, UMTers will not be in the regular services while taking basic. That is why the $50-a-day experts must report back to Congress in three months, after working out a special system of military justice, of death and disability benefits and similar safeguards for the boys. They must also provide against the possibility that Congress, beset by anxious mothers, will water down the training so much that a UMTer will end up not a soldier but a Boy Scout in long pants. Already, the American Legion is urging that training be broken into two three-month periods, which the Army regards as disastrous to its training plans.

Though the Pentagon talks bravely of starting U.M.T. next year with a "pilot operation" of 10,000 boys, it could not do much more even if it showed it wanted to. The hard military fact is that there is simply not enough manpower to maintain a standing army of 3,500,000 and at the same time siphon off the best crop of recruits--the 18-year-olds--into U.M.T. Each year 800,000 draftees, their 24 months of service ended, will be released from the Army. Unless Congress raises the draft age or increases the draftee's length of service, replacements must come from the million Americans who turn 18 each year (of these 200,000 are deferred or rejected). Even to train the 18-year-olds as UMTers today would lay a ruinous load on the services; at best, 150,000 officers & men would have to be pulled out of the Army, Navy and Air Force establishments to be used as trainers and administrators. So the Pentagon intends U.M.T. for some future day when & if standing forces can be eased back to the point (1,500,000) where they can be maintained entirely through the normal ebb & flow of enlistments. At such a point, the current draft would either be repealed or allowed to wither away.

A reserve of men with six months of U.M.T. training, the Army figures, would knock 1,000 hours off the 2,500 to 3,000 hours it takes to make a division ready for combat infantry duty (6,000 for airborne). After basic, the U.M.T. graduates would be organized into reserve units, would get more and specialized training. Called back, they could spring to active duty 40 to 60% combat ready.

Early & Late. But if U.M.T. is to work, it will have to be meshed with an effective reserve. And there lies the trouble. The Army's present ramshackle and disorganized reserve system needs drastic overhauling. Candid Pentagoners say that the National Guard is wobbly, often clique-ruled, often riddled with politics, should either be abolished or strictly disciplined its overage officers retired, its 33% yearly turnover halted. The half-equipped, half-manned Organized Reserves, twice as big as the Guard and about 50% officers, also needs to be taken in hand. Each organization is powerful. Is the Defense Department really ready to take them on?

This week Anna Rosenberg presented Congress with a new reserve program, which implies an answer to this thorny question, but doesn't say it right out.

Anna Rosenberg's new unified reserve would be divided into two sections, both dovetailing into U.M.T.: a "ready" reserve in which all U.M.T. graduates would serve three years, and a "standby" reserve in which they would serve out the last four of their eight years' service. In full-strength units, the ready reserves would drill once a week, go to summer camp two weeks a year. They would be subdivided into "early" and and "late" units, the earlies able to spring into action almost overnight, the lates within a few months. Units would have 50% of their equipment on hand, pick up the rest in packaged loads at predesignated mobilization points.

At the first sign of another Korea, the U.M.T. man in the early reserves would move into "warm" areas in Europe and Asia, thus freeing regular, fully trained troops for duty in "hot" battle areas. As the early reserves finished their final combat training, they would move out and the late reserves take their place.

The standby reserve for U.M.T. graduates would compare to the present inactive reserve. It would not train regularly and could only be called to active duty by a formal declaration of war. Finally, after eight years of off & on service, the youth who began his military schooling in U.M.T. at the age of 18 would be released.

So goes the plan for U.M.T. It must still be resubmitted to Congress, in an election year, and be subject to potshooting by the reserve organizations and the politically powerful National Guard. If war with Russia should break out in the next year or two, it would quickly be put on the shelf.

* The five: Chairman James W. Wadsworth, onetime New York Republican Congressman; M.I.T. ex-president Dr. Karl T. Compton; former Under Secretary of State William L. Clayton; retired Admiral Thomas Kincaid; Lieut. General R. S. McLain, onetime banker (Oklahoma City) and only National Guard officer to command a combat corps in World War II.

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