The Measure of Carlucci

Washington Watch The Measure of Carlucci

By Robert S. Dudney, SENIOR EDITOR

Just as Mr. Weinberger's ques- some new starts. I think we have to Predictions about his tioners (they were Sens. John Tower, look at everything. I don't think any- "flexibility" may be exces- Henry Jackson, and Alan Cranston, in thing can be sacrosanct." sive. The new Pentagon boss that order) misjudged the godfather • Use of Military Power. In a depar- of the Reagan rearmament, experts ture from the Weinberger philosophy, is a tough operator in bu- may now be taking the wrong mea- Mr. Carlucci suggests that Washing- reaucratic combat, and time sure of Mr. Carlucci. ton may sometimes have to commit will tell what his "consulta- True, he is unlikely to bombard US forces to combat even though a tion" pledge means. Congress, as did his predecessor, domestic political consensus sup- with unrealistic demands for ever- porting the move is absent. higher budgets. When Mr. Wein- Mr. Weinberger's reluctance to use Washington, D. C. berger left office, the gap between the force in such ambiguous circum- Those attempting to arms he sought and the money he was stances was a key feature of his stew- predict the course to get, over five years, came to $300 ardship—enshrined in the public dic- of Frank C. Carluc- billion. Under Mr. Carlucci, such tum that there should be a political ci's term as Defense wishful thinking is certain to recede. consensus in advance. The Carlucci Secretary in 1988 But on most issues, Mr. Carlucci is view: "I don't know that it's always should ponder steering a course consistent with that feasible to have full consensus... . some preliminary set by Mr. Weinberger. What's more, in There are times when the President events. Consider, the few areas where Mr. Carlucci parts needs to move forces in advance of for example, a company with his predecessor, his total agreement of the body politic." scene from a confirmation hearing. It avowed willingness to "consult" Even as lawmakers were endorsing is in an atmosphere of grave concern seems unlikely to offer the lawmakers Mr. Carlucci, praising him as a man about defense spending that mem- much comfort. who would consult them, a big ques- bers of the Senate Armed Services Why? Where, in fact, does Mr. Car- tion became obvious. Committee meet the man newly lucci differ from Mr. Weinberger in his Does Congress, in an election year, chosen to be Pentagon chief. Hawks stance on national defense? Mr. Car- really desire to take a leading role in and doves alike quickly get to the lucci's own November 12 confirma- (1) dismantling the US military, (2) point. The point is money. tion hearing in the Senate suggests canceling a number of billion-dollar The conservative chairman worries three principal areas. programs (and the jobs they create), aloud that the nominee's selection • Force Structure. Mr. Carlucci and (3) acquiescing in a possible mili- "signals some change in the defense says continuing reductions in military tary operation that may be necessary policy" of Ronald Reagan. Another spending are likely to lead to a smaller but unpopular? hawkish Senator expresses doubt force. "As I look at the budget figures In pledging to "consult," what Mr. that the new man really wants that are being debated, it is becoming Carlucci is holding out to Congress "substantial increases" in spending very clear to me that we may well be looks less like an olive branch than it for arms. A leading dove, saying the talking about a different kind of mili- does a noose. An often-overlooked Pentagon "throws money at prob- tary force.. . . fact about Mr. Carlucci is that he is a lems," takes heart knowing that the "We may well be talking about a tough operator—in bureaucratic new Secretary will be "very tight- smaller force. I would rather have a combat, far tougher than Mr. Wein- fisted" when it comes to funding the smaller force that is effective and that berger. For many in Congress, "con- armed services. has necessary equipment, the neces- sultation" is a euphemism for politi- This scene did not take place at Mr. sary ammunition, the necessary per- cal cover for unwise decisions. In this, Carlucci's confirmation. The day, sonnel, than to have a larger structure Mr. Carlucci could prove to be most rather, was January 6, 1981. The nomi- that is not effective." Mr. Weinberger unhelpful. nee was Caspar Weinberger—he of thought size itself was at least as im- In 1960, as a foreign service officer the $2 trillion arms buildup. The rest, portant as the other factors. posted to what was then known as the as they say, is history. • Weapons Programs. Whereas Mr. Congo (now Zaire), Mr. Carlucci was It is instructive history. Today, as the Weinberger preferred to keep produc- involved in a traffic accident. An angry Reagan Pentagon enters its final lap, tion lines open by stretching out pur- mob surrounded him. One thing led Washington again rings with facile chases, Mr. Carlucci shows every in- to another. It was only afterward, predictions about the new leader at clination to bite the bullet and scrap when informed by a horrified col- the Defense Department. Mr. Carlucci programs altogether. league, that Mr. Carlucci learned that will be "more flexible," it is said, than The present budget crunch, he someone had driven a knife between Mr. Weinberger was. He will not be as says, "does mean terminating some his shoulder blades. "hard-line." He is willing to "consult" programs in order to fund others The incident led a wit at the Sunday with lawmakers. more fully. It does mean delaying Times of London to observe that

AIR FORCE Magazine / January 1988 17 Washington Watch

"Frank Carlucci must be the only • Finally, because such budget- way to proceed. It is due in March of American to have been stabbed in the cutting mechanisms as the Gramm- this year. back before exposure to high office." Rudman-Hollings Act focus on reduc- Mr. Ambrose, who has no difficulty Now that knives are out again in ing current outlays, it takes relatively telling the difference between studies Washington for defense spending, big reductions in long-term procure- and funded programs, is skeptical. the fact that the Pentagon is being led ment accounts to achieve small sav- "I don't know what the next Air by a man who knows a little bit about ings in the year immediately at hand. Force study will show," he says, "but I knife fights may be no bad thing at all. It may already be too late for the think I'm correct in saying that there is Army to head off severe retrenchment not, in the present or future [USAF] The Cloud Over the Army in its modernization program. That is funding lines, enough money to get If, as Mr. Carlucci suggests, reduc- because reductions of force, even if either an old, reworked airplane or a tions in force structure do indeed be- they were implemented today, would new one. That's an expensive proposi- come the order of the day for the not produce large savings rapidly. tion. It's just not there." American military, there is one service In this circumstance, what is the The Army official makes plain that that may view it with something like prospect that the Army will suffer can- the responsibility for this situation relief. It is the United States Army. cel! ations of planned arms pro- lies not so much with the Air Force as The Army is finding it difficult in the grams? "Oh, it's very high," asserts it does with officials at the highest extreme to live with a Weinberger de- Mr. Ambrose. "The easiest thing in the reaches of the Pentagon. The ques- cree that there be no shrinkage of the world to do at the moment is to start tion, in his view, should be dealt with 780,000-strong, eighteen-division nothing new. There may be regrets by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of American land force. Only by scaling about that decision later. But it's Staff and the Secretary of Defense. back can the Army hope to maintain much easier to keep on producing Does the failure of either office to combat readiness with modern arms what's running rather than move promote the project indicate a lack of at a time of austerity. ahead with new starts." concern about providing air support That, at least, is the message from It is not only its own programs that for the Army? Army Under Secretary James Am- the Army worries about. There is con- Says Mr. Ambrose: "I don't think brose, the man with day-to-day re- viction—from the controversial Army there's any other conclusion that you sponsibility for managing the force. Under Secretary, at least—that the can draw." The Ambrose view of the Army's situa- crunch will erode future Air Force tion, delivered recently to a few mili- willingness to pursue a program of Close Air Support: Round ll tary writers, comes across as remark- critical importance to the land One does not have to strain very ably bleak. forces—specifically, development of hard to hear the gnashing of teeth "Inevitably, we'll reraise the ques- a new close air support aircraft to as- around Washington in the wake of the tion about [maintaining] the force sist the Army in European battles. Army Under Secretary's words about structure itself, even though deci- While the solution will not come for the close air support situation. Few sions have been made or [are] years, if then, the problem is critical issues are more sensitive. thought to [have been] made," says today. As Mr. Ambrose tells it, there's The Pentagon, the JCS, the Air Mr. Ambrose. "The arithmetic may not been an obvious need for years to re- Force, and even the uniformed Army be there to support them." place the Air Force's A-10 close air are not only irritated but mystified by The Under Secretary volunteered support plane. his remarks. no specifics about cuts contemplated The A-10 is aging, and even when it The mystification part comes by the service. Nor, he notes, is the was new, it did not possess enough through loud and clear in the state- Army "racing after force structure combat power. This, he says, is partic- ments of Gen. Bernard Randolph, with an axe." It's just that "simple log- ularly true in the realm of night fight- new Commander of Air Force Sys- ic" leads one to the conclusion that ing. There is near universal doubt, tems Command. At a private breakfast force structure is vulnerable. too, that the slow-flying A-10 could with a group of defense writers, the The reason stems from a number of survive the current Soviet weaponry it General made plain that he was at a interrelated factors. would face in battle. loss for an explanation. • First is the fact that the Army is The earliest that the Air Force could "I just can't comment on the Army the most labor-intensive of the ser- deliver a new, improved version of Under Secretary's statement to you," vices. Personnel costs—pay, training, such an airplane, assuming ideal con- says the General. "I can only tell you and the like—consume sixty percent ditions, would be the mid-1990s, and the part that I know. The part that I see of the Army budget, far more than in even that looks like a bad bet to the is a good solid working [Army-Air the Air Force or Navy. Army. "So, from my perspective," the Force] relationship" on this and other That means the Army has less mon- Under Secretary states, "which is the matters. ey, as a percentage of budget, for parochial one of the Army, we are not As evidence, General Randolph weapons to begin with. getting the fixed-wing close air sup- points to a public hearing, held the • Second, with the personnel ac- port that we need." day following the Ambrose remarks, counts deemed to be off-limits, there The current Air Force position is in which Army and Air Force generals is no way to spread the budget cuts that the service believes the close air assured Congress that the two ser- broadly. Thus 100 percent of the re- support mission is important and vices were on track with respect to ductions are imposed on only forty must get a significant degree of future close air support issues. percent of the Army budget. support. USAF is considering several General Randolph's words: "The That is the forty percent that funds options along these lines (see testimony of the Army representative weapons procurement, research and "Making Warplanes Lean and Mean," was that the United States Air Force development, and all the other items p. 38). The Air Force is in the throes of was dedicated to supporting the the Army needs to equip and sustain a major study—its second in recent Army, was dedicated to working the its forces. years—aimed at determining the best problem of close air support. That 18 AIR FORCE Magazine / January 1988 Washington Watch was official testimony to the United signed and delivered into the hands of Germany as the prime target and re- States Congress by a general officer Senate ratifiers, one might have hope pository of the remaining short-range of the United States Army. that Washington can take a breather weapons, of which there are about "Believe me, we don't go over and from NATO nuclear cares for a spell. 4,600 in NATO. The Germans refer to say things to Congress without ap- Yes? No. this as "singularization." proval of the leadership." When it comes to nuclear weapons The reality, says Mr. Keel, does not What, actually, is happening with in Europe, US officials were appear- support the charge of singularization. respect to this aircraft? ing to grow increasingly edgy about Thousands of nuclear weapons exist Defense Department officials have West Germany on two scores. in European sites outside West Ger- approved the Air Force's broad mis- The first worry is whether or not many. Not to be overlooked are the sion requirements package. Added Bonn will fully discharge its commit- thousands of nuclear weapons based was a caveat that the service will look ment to help modernize aging short- on American soil. at a broader range of candidate air- range NATO nuclear weapons on its "I'm not trying to underestimate planes than has been studied to date. soil. that concern," he explains. "It is a par- Approval of that package makes it The second, perhaps more impor- ticularly real concern in Germany. It's possible to award study contracts to tant, issue is the question of whether one we have to be sensitive to. It's a aerospace companies. or not the political system of the West product of geography. What has to be In a somewhat surprising turn of Germans will be able to resist a Soviet done is to continue to have European events, the General seemed to leave call for further nuclear talks in the political leaders voice support for open the possibility that the Air Force wake of the INF accord. moving ahead with decisions that might eventually develop a brand- These were the two major issues on were endorsed and are no less neces- new, next-generation airplane for the the minds of NATO defense ministers sary." mission rather than modify one or and other Western officials who gath- The sense of singularization has more existing aircraft for support of ered not long ago in Monterey, Calif., also increased divisions between the infantry. "We're talking about a at the most recent Nuclear Planning West Germany and the rest of the al- whole range of candidates," says he. Group session. They are certain to lies on the question of arms talks. "If the requirement is more stressing emerge again in months ahead, be- As Mr. Keel puts it, there is near than we could handle by modifying an cause they go to the heart of NATO's unanimity among the allies that there existing design, then we'll have to go strategy of deterrence. should now be a "pause" in Soviet- to something new." One of the participants in the Mon- American talks on nuclear weapons. This appears to contradict an ear- terey session was Alton G. Keel, Jr., That is necessary to blunt Gor- lier statement by James McGovern, the US ambassador to NATO based in bachev's plan to negotiate US nuclear the Air Force Under Secretary. Mr. Brussels. Mr. Keel, an astute observer weapons completely out of Europe. McGovern had indicated that the ser- of Alliance politics, stopped off in The Bonn government, itself, vice is not interested in developing a Washington to visit with Pentagon agrees that the elimination of the re- new airplane "in this budget environ- correspondents, where he was asked maining US weapons would be bad, ment." His view is that the proper about the new German question. says Mr. Keel. But it still wants to have course is to modify an existing plane Mr. Keel drew attention to the need negotiations, mostly for domestic po- for the task. for the Alliance to follow through with litical reasons. Hovering over all the debate, of NATO agreements, concluded in Oc- "The Germans," Mr. Keel notes, course, is the contraction of defense tober 1983 at Montebello, Canada, for "are not of the same view as the rest of funding, which is forcing harsh trade- modernization of nuclear systems on the allies on this question. The dilem- offs of weapons programs. It is a real- the Continent. ma, one even the Germans recognize, ity that is certain to persist for the next His view is that this requirement is is how do you get back to the nego- few years at least. A large number of made more important now that the tiating table and yet say 'no' to Gor- good intentions—the desire to build a longer-range systems will be with- bachev's trump card?" new CAS plane among them—may go drawn. His point is that the remnant That trump card, says the NATO am- glimmering as a result. must be sound and modern. bassador, is a call for removal of the The issue was put squarely in this Mr. Keel is frank in noting that there remaining, battlefield-range nuclear fashion by General Randolph: could be trouble on this score. weapons in Europe and with them the "We buy, within the dollars that are "Obviously, it's a concern that there vigor of NATO's deterrent. available, the things that we think are might be some tendency to backslide Are there official concerns about important. Some things you have to on Montebello," says he, though it the danger? "I would say, yes, there give up. If the belief is that [the CAS would be most unwarranted. are concerns," Mr. Keel states. "I aircraft] is an important thing, we'll Most of the nuclear modernization would characterize the European have to give something up in order to would take place on West German mood in very simple terms. They are fund it. We're not going to get any soil, but Mr. Keel says he "wouldn't try seeing it as a cause for celebration more money [above current budget to single out the Germans" as re- and a cause for a pause. They see it as levels]. I think that message is loud calcitrant parties. Then, however, he being in our security interests. They and clear. That means something else came close to doing SO: "Clearly, in are not concerned about where INF has to go." Germany, some have indicated that leaves us. They are concerned about The critical question of the next they're not going to be enthusiastic where Gorbachev's [next] initiatives several years will be what, if anything, about modernizing the remaining may lead us. is that "something else" going to be? forces." "It's not so much denuclearizing The problem stems from the fact Europe, but forcing US nuclear weap- The German Question, 1988 that the INF accord, while eliminating ons from Europe. They are concerned Now that the Intermediate-range much of the nuclear threat for most about where we go from here. We are, Nuclear Forces (IN F) treaty has been West European nations, leaves West too." • AIR FORCE Magazine / January 1988 21