NORAD's Classic Example

OUR MISSION IS TO DEFEND THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, ALASKA AND THE NORTHEAST AREA FROM AN ATTACK: NOT TO DEFEND THE ROLES OF THE RESPECTIVE SERVICES!

So read the printed signs on the desks of high-ranking Army, Navy and Air Force officers at the Colorado Springs headquarters of the North American Air Defense Command, the combined-services organization set up last fall to run the continent's $18 billion air-defense system. Hailed in its early months as a model of interservice cooperation, by last week NORAD was proving itself something quite different: a classic example of the sort of interservice rivalry that President Eisenhower's defense-reorganization plan is designed to prevent.

"We have a real organization, and it is on a war footing 24 hours a day," said a top NORAD officer last week. "But we have our troubles. If you even ask a simple question, such as who is in charge of the defense of North America, the argument starts." Another officer described NORAD more simply: "A monstrosity."

Alphabet Soup. NORAD, under the command of Four-Star Air Force General Earle Partridge, is a joint U.S.-Canadian venture (Partridge's second in command is Canada's Air Marshal C. Roy Slemon) with Air Force, Army and Navy each marked out for specific assignments, e.g., the Navy for seagoing radar pickets, the Air Force for intercepting enemy bombers with aircraft and surface-to-air area defense missiles, the Army for point defense of U.S. cities and bases with its Nike system. To work at all, NORAD must function with electronic precision and supersonic speed. But in practice, hardworking "Pat" Partridge finds himself little more than chef for a batch of alphabet soup, including 1) USAF-ADC, the Air Force's Air Defense Command, 2) USARADCOM, the Army's Air Defense Command, 3) NAVFOR, meaning Naval Forces of the North American Air Defense Command, and 4) RCAF-ADC, the Royal Canadian Air Force home defense unit. NORAD's cumbersome components must answer not only to Partridge, but to their own service Chiefs of Staff in Washington and Ottawa. And the service chiefs, under NORAD's peculiar charter, can pull fighting units and equipment out of NORAD with little or no reference to NORAD's requirements.

They frequently do just that. Items: P:The Air Force last year cut NORAD's Air Force radar warning patrol for three months to meet cuts in its own maintenance and operation budget. P:The Army recently decided not to man a $2 million NORAD radar station in Arizona. It also reduced the personnel of its Nike missile batteries. P:The Navy last week pulled one of NORAD's radar picket ships off NORAD's early-warning patrol without prior notice to NORAD headquarters.

NORAD's Partridge, though designated operational commander, has little real control over the operational deployment of Air Force interceptors and Army missile batteries. He has difficulty getting quick interservice decisions out of the Pentagon. Beyond that, he is well aware NORAD is as much a diplomatic alliance as a military command, that some Canadian politicians have latched onto Canada's contribution to NORAD as an issue--"They've got command of our air force!"

"It's Got to Come." Dissension has seeped down through NORAD's ranks. Result: interservice rivalry in the best bitter Pentagon tradition. Said a NORAD Air Force officer last week: "Years ago in the Air Force I learned to hate the Army. I've had an Army officer run his fingers along the cable of my plane and say sharply, 'Dirt.' And when I said 'Sir, that is preservative,' he snarled, 'Clean it before the next inspection.' " At the same time, an Army officer on NORAD's staff complained that Air Force influence over NORAD was too strong, that the Air Force was "an agency which is capable, the English language being what it is, of injecting its own ideas into orders."

So embattled, many a NORAD officer has come to realize that the only real hope lies in President Eisenhower's defense-reorganization plan for strengthening unified lines of command. "It's got to come," said a top NORAD officer last week. "We've got to have it--and this place is a classic example of the need for it."

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