Is the U.S. Ready to Fight a War?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 13, 1999 | by Charles A. Cerami

The U.S. military has been stretched to the breaking point. For the U.S. to have a 21st-century fighting force will call for new spending of a magnitude that will stun the public.

Six years of spending cuts have the world's only superpower creaking with aging weapons and untrained personnel. A call for massive outlays is looming, with startling effects on politics and the economy. With Washington abuzz with ideas about what to do with the budget surplus, scant mention is being made of a subject sure to gobble a large chunk of it. The skimpy defense spending of recent years is about to have a boomerang effect, bringing monumental new bills for military equipment and training -- not only for new-generation weapons but also just to maintain minimum readiness.

The few lawmakers who still pay close attention to military matters have been warning that the U.S. military for mo long has been trying to do more with less, that the United States has lost its ability to fight two separate wars at once and that the longer it takes to reverse the trend the more disruptive the huge expenses will be to the economy and to taxpayers. Few listened.

Then came the NATO attacks on the former Yugoslavia. While TV viewers may have been impressed with the missions that were flown with efficiency, observers on the spot saw harsh signs that even against a minor-league opponent the effort took too long to mount and began to exhaust vital supplies.

Still, it comes as a shock when one of this country's most experienced experts talks about the costs that lie ahead -- and what they can do to the projected budget surplus. James R. Schlesinger, whose resume includes leadership of the Atomic Energy Commission, the CIA and the departments of Defense and Energy, tells Insight that the United States is in for a sobering wake-up call when the next Quadrennial Defense Review, or QDR, of military preparedness is undertaken in 2001.

"It will show," Schlesinger says, "that the aging of our weaponry -- apart from the personnel-in-readiness problem -- will call for us to increase procurement spending to some $100 billion if we intend to be anywhere near the ability to conduct two serious wars at the same time. That's about $60 billion more than the present level."

Members of the Senate and House of Representatives who have been closest to the military substantially are in agreement. The Pentagon wants new equipment but has fated to plan adequately. The result: bipartisan rejection of some of the military's most coveted programs.

In explaining their reason for opposing the next-generation F-22 stealth-fighter program, two leaders of the House Appropriations subcommittee on Defense -- Chairman Jerry Lewis of California and ranking Democrat John Murtha of Pennsylvania -- pointed out existing areas in desperate need of funds. "The plan to modernize bombers is inadequate," they wrote. "We are told that the Air Force plans to operate B-52 aircraft until they are 80 years old. No plan exists to upgrade or replace the electronic jammer aircraft that must accompany even B-2 bombers on their missions. No plan exists to buy the required number of JSTARS [Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System] surveillance planes. Funding is inadequate to modernize aging AWACS [Airborne Warning and Control Systems] aircraft" to control combat from the skies. Their list of such inadequacies shows how much other supporting equipment was strained to the maximum solely to make the Kosovo operation possible.

Some lawmakers especially are concerned about the human element -- the morale and confidence of U.S. armed-forces personnel. Sometimes they talk about the fatigue they see among technicians and mechanics who spend extra hours repairing trucks and helicopters and robbing spare parts from planes in order to keep others flying.

But there also is a general sense that these servicemen suffer from not understanding why their work in defending the nation is so overlooked that the problems are allowed to go on unchecked. Senate Armed Services subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support Chairman James Inhofe says, "I am often struck by their willingness to adapt to deficiencies in equipment, weapons systems and spare parts, not to mention long hours, difficult deployments and inadequate pay. But what I find they miss more than anything else is the confident sense of mission that comes from knowing what America's role in the world is and knowing the public understands and supports that role."

The ongoing crisis in Yugoslavia illuminates the imbalance between demands and resources. When President Clinton sent troops into Bosnia in 1995, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili told Congress that he supported a one-year operation costing less than $1.2 billion. Anything beyond that, he said, would cause an unacceptable drain on U.S. readiness. Now, with no end in sight, the Bosnia mission alone has cost more than $12 billion -- and drawn the United States far deeper into the Yugoslavia quagmire.