Military Message

By Bruce W. Nelan

America's amazing August charge into the desert of Saudi Arabia could have been a military disaster. The first troops to arrive were ill-equipped and vastly outnumbered by the Iraqi tank army poised in occupied Kuwait. Soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division were told to expect to go directly into combat, though they carried nothing more effective against tanks than puny Dragon rockets and risky-to-use TOW missiles.

"If Saddam Hussein had struck during those early days," says Dave McCurdy, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, "our troops would have been slaughtered." Since then, at least 40,000 American soldiers and Marines and almost a million tons of equipment have followed. But senior officers say they still need another month or two of rapid buildup to reach adequate defensive strength. Only last week, 22 days after Operation Desert Shield got under way, did the first M-1 tanks, which would be essential for fighting Iraqi armor, arrive at Saudi ports.

Fortunately the only battle in the gulf so far has been against distance. It is proving to be a tough one. Despite the $2.5 trillion spent on defense over the past decade, the U.S. lacks enough cargo planes and ships to deliver its armed forces to trouble spots around the globe. Transport planes like the C- 141 Starlifter and C-5A Galaxy are still the workhorses of the Air Force, but they are aging, and their production lines have long been closed. The next-generation airlifter, the C-17, has encountered repeated delays in nine years of development and is not yet in service. In the meantime, most of the troops and 25% of the supplies flying to Saudi Arabia are traveling on wide- body planes leased from commercial airlines.

Much of the Army's heavy equipment, including hundreds of tanks and helicopters, will be delivered by sea -- the biggest bottleneck. The Navy has only eight SL-7 fast-logistics ships specifically designed for such work, and two have already broken down at sea; one is being towed across the Atlantic. In a pinch like this, the Navy is supposed to be able to reactivate its mothballed fleet of transport vessels. It has ordered up 41 of them, but so far only 25 have got under way. The Navy last week was chartering 15 American and foreign cargo ships to pick up the slack.

Such difficulties have revived a debate over U.S. defense needs in the post- cold war world that had seemed all but settled. No longer faced with the threat of a Soviet onslaught in Europe, it appeared that America could safely spend far less on military might. Only two days before Iraqi armored units rolled into Kuwait, the House had slashed $24 billion from the Pentagon's $307 billion proposed budget, eliminating such high-priced weapons as the B-2 Stealth bomber and mobile MX missile. The Senate was only slightly more restrained, chopping $18 billion. While disagreeing with some items on the congressional hit list, even Defense Secretary Dick Cheney agreed that some reductions were needed. He had just completed a strategic review and was about to propose cutting 10% from the Pentagon budget and 25% from its manpower over the next five years.

Saddam's aggression has given new ammunition to skeptics who contend that, Soviet threat or no Soviet threat, the U.S. needs every high-tech weapon system it can develop. The Pentagon budget will still be cut, but perhaps by as little as $10 billion, obliterating any chance that a substantial peace dividend will help relieve pressure on the government deficit. "Every politician will cite the gulf crisis as a justification for his favorite weapon," says Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon official now at the Brookings Institution in Washington. For example, Senator Robert Dole has already argued that Iraq's move proves the need for the Stealth bomber, a plane less useful in the gulf than the A-10 tank killer that Air Force pilots disdain because it cannot fly more than 500 m.p.h.

Moreover, the crisis has raised doubts about the Pentagon's post-cold war concepts. In his strategic review, Cheney envisioned potential conflict with states that are lightly armed compared with the U.S. Iraq, with the world's fourth largest army and a huge array of Soviet-built tanks and planes, modern missiles and artillery, is not what the Pentagon was planning for. Another rethinking is getting started.

The question is whether that re-evaluation will be any more productive than prior Pentagon brainstorming. There is no question that the U.S. is well armed. The Reagan-Bush buildup has produced 2.1 million highly trained men and women in uniform, a 549-ship Navy and an Air Force of 2,600 planes. But these muscular formations are of little use if they cannot arrive quickly where they are needed. The embarrassing fact is that the Pentagon was not ready to fight even the war it was supposed to be preparing for. One revelation delivered by the long, slow sea-lanes to the Persian Gulf is that the U.S. could never have made good on its NATO commitment to move 10 Army divisions to Europe in 10 days in the event of a Soviet attack.

The explanation for the logistics shortfall is simple enough: the armed services are not interested in spending money on programs that do not produce weapons. Promotions go to those officers who command warships and fly warplanes. Says a Navy captain: "You don't make admiral driving freighters." Left to their own devices, Pentagon planners invariably opt for the furthest reaches of technology, seeking machines with almost magical properties. What they usually get are production delays, cost overruns and hardware that never lives up to its advance billing. They are again talking up their pet projects. "The Pentagon sees this crisis as 100% justification for every system it has or wants," says a key Senate staff member.

Though the need to match Soviet nuclear weapons and massive conventional strength has faded, the services have not changed their ways. The Air Force is planning for a new generation of advanced Stealth fighters, the Army for a new breed of 80-ton tanks so massive they could not be driven across bridges even in Europe, the Navy for faster, quieter nuclear submarines and a fleet of destroyers costing $1 billion apiece. If they could bring themselves to accept modernized follow-on generations of the highly capable weapons already in the inventory, the services could acquire more of them faster and more cheaply.

Instead, the services are seizing the moment to argue against cutbacks they reluctantly agreed to during Cheney's strategic review. The Air Force puts out straight-faced claims for potential B-2 utility in the gulf. Generals argue that reducing the Army from 18 to 12 divisions is not a good idea. The Navy insists it must keep 14 aircraft carriers deployed and not 11, as Cheney had proposed to the service chiefs.

So far, the lessons of the gulf have been otherwise. Even if the U.S. shipped 250,000 troops to the area, that would be only 12% of its current forces. Tactical aircraft like the F-15, F-16 and A-10 have been the main elements in putting Saddam's tanks and planes at risk. If heavy bombing were necessary, the veteran B-52 would be more than adequate.

Even if a shooting war with Iraq occurs, the modest cuts Cheney was about to order are still reasonable. If he draws back under service pressure, it would take courage for Congress to ignore charges of lack of patriotism and push the reductions through. It may come to that. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Les Aspin, offers a Washington truism: "It's still easier for politicians to cut defense than to raise taxes or cut domestic spending." Of course, if a hot war with Iraq breaks out, all such bets are off. That could cost the U.S. thousands of casualties and an estimated $1 billion a day.

With reporting by Bruce van Voorst/Washington