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It Was an Exercise to Justify a Blind Budget Cut, but It Shaped the Force for a Decade. the Legacy of the Bottom-Up Review

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It Was an Exercise to Justify a Blind Budget Cut, but It Shaped the Force for a Decade. the Legacy of the Bottom-Up Review It was an exercise to justify a blind budget cut, but it shaped the force for a decade. The Legacy of the Bottom-Up Review By John T. Correll HE Bottom-Up Review, completed But that gets ahead of the story, T10 years ago this month, is one which began earlier when Aspin was of the stranger episodes in the chairman of the House Armed Ser- annals of Pentagon force planning. vices Committee. Briefly, what happened was this. Aspin had been a Rhodes scholar, In March 1993, Les Aspin, the new an economics professor, and, for a Secretary of Defense, announced short time in the 1960s, was a sys- a whopping cut to the defense bud- tems analyst in the Pentagon for Sec- get. Incredibly, he made his cut retary of Defense Robert S. Mc- without calculating the impact the Namara. Aspin had been in Congress reduction would have on force ca- since 1970 and was a leading voice pability. That and other details on defense matters. would be worked out in a “Bot- He had supported the Bush Ad- tom-Up Review” to follow. ministration on the 1991 Persian Gulf The Joint Staff struggled through War, but he hammered the Pentagon the summer to bridge the gap be- regularly. By 1992, he was commit- tween Aspin’s arbitrary budget and ted to a very deep reduction of the a credible defense program. No so- defense budget and a restructuring lution had been found when the re- of the armed forces. His ideas found port was published in October. favor with Presidential candidate Bill The report called for a substan- Clinton, whose campaign Aspin joined tially reduced force structure, but thus as an advisor. cut, the force could not meet its speci- fied responsibilities. To make mat- “Desert Drizzle” ters worse, Aspin admitted that the As Aspin readily acknowledged, budget he had announced in March the armed forces were already sev- wouldn’t cover even the scaled-down eral years into a major drawdown, program proposed in his report. instigated by Gen. Colin Powell, There was a torrent of criticism, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but Aspin stood by the Bottom-Up with the concurrence of Secretary of Review, and it became policy. In Defense Dick Cheney. fact, it went on to shape the defense At the end of the Cold War, Powell programs for the rest of the 1990s. and Cheney had revamped the de- 54 AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2003 Aspin shrugged off the criticism. “McPeak is wrong and the Desert Storm equivalent could do the job,” he said. The Blind Budget Cut AP photo/Jeffrey Markowitz President Clinton came to office in January 1993 without much inter- est in foreign policy and spring- loaded to cut defense. When a mem- ber of Congress sought to engage him in a discussion about Russia and China, Clinton interrupted, saying, “I just went through the whole cam- paign and no one talked about for- eign policy at all, except for a few members of the press.” Powell recalled that, at his first meeting with defense leaders, the only defense issue of interest to Clinton was gays in military, and so Rep. Les Aspin supported the 1991 Gulf War, but he soon became committed to deep reductions in the defense budget. As Defense Secretary in 1993, he “we spent the next 105 minutes solely first crafted a budget and then tried to shape a military force to fit it. on homosexuals in the armed forces.” Clinton had chosen Aspin to be his Secretary of Defense, and Aspin fense strategy to focus on regional reduction of 233,000 military per- had honed and polished his Option C conflict. They also adopted a new sonnel, 93 percent of them to come theories. His opportunity to imple- force structure—called the “Base from the active duty forces. ment them was at hand. Force”—that would reduce military Aspin developed a benchmark he The heyday of big defense bud- strength by about 25 percent over called “the Desert Storm Equivalent,” gets was long past, having topped six years. Numerous overseas bases the force that was supposedly em- out in 1985. Defense had been cut were to be closed, and US forces in ployed in Gulf War I and approxi- every year since 1986, but the fed- Europe would be cut by half. mately the force that would be re- eral deficit continued, with no po- Aspin was not impressed. The Base quired for a major regional conflict litically acceptable way found to re- Force, he said in a speech to the in the future. solve it. At a “Budget Summit” in Atlantic Council in January 1992, He said that the Desert Storm 1990, the Bush Administration and “did not represent a new conceptual Equivalent, “the force that mattered,” Congress suspended the Gramm– approach for a new security era but consisted of “six heavy divisions, an Rudman–Hollings deficit reduction was essentially ‘less of the same,’ air transportable, early arriving light act and in its place established re- that is, a downsized force largely division, one Marine division on land duction targets for specific catego- shaped by Cold War priorities.” and an excess of one brigade at sea, ries of spending. He said that “American concern 24 Air Force fighter squadrons, 70 The Budget Summit projected de- about economic threats means that the heavy bombers, and two early arriv- fense cuts of $325 billion between new American force must be a less ing carrier battle groups, building Fiscal 1993 and Fiscal 1997. How- expensive one” and that it “must be up over time to four carrier battle ever, the Bush Administration or- created from the bottom up, not just by groups including surface combatants dered still more cuts. Bush’s final subtracting 25 or 30 or 50 percent providing Aegis defenses and capa- five-year budget, proposed in Janu- from the old Cold War structure.” bility for launching large numbers ary 1993, took defense $113.5 bil- Not satisfied with the Base Force of cruise missiles.” lion below the Budget Summit base- projections, Aspin developed “four Powell and others objected to line. illustrative options” of his own for Aspin’s numbers and conclusions. What Aspin had in mind went much sizing the armed forces. He described Powell said that Aspin’s force alter- beyond that. these in a February 1992 report to the natives were “fundamentally flawed” In a March 27, 1993, briefing to House Armed Services Committee. and “overly simplistic.” reporters at the Pentagon, Aspin Some of his options were more Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, the Air announced a further reduction of extreme than others, but Aspin sig- Force Chief of Staff, said that $131.7 billion. Aspin’s proposal naled that the one he meant to be Aspin’s figure of 24 fighter squad- roughly doubled the cumulative re- taken seriously (“the most prudent rons amounted to “Desert Drizzle,” ductions since 1990 and put de- and promising,” he called it) was not Desert Storm. He said the actual fense $245.2 billion below the Bud- Option C. Desert Storm force had been about get Summit target. “This budget Option C proposed to cut the Base 11 US Air Force fighter wing equiva- begins to use resources freed by Force by eight more Air Force wings, lents (33 fighter squadrons) plus eight the end of the Cold War to help at three more Army divisions, and 110 FWEs from allies for a total of 57 home,” Aspin said. “The President more ships. It called for a further land-based fighter squadrons. has made clear that the chief threat AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2003 55 we face is failure to revitalize our said. “No one knows where these get full attention until victory on the economy.” cuts are going to come from.” first front. Incredibly, Aspin did not know As it turned out, the people work- Win-Hold-Win was subjected to what kind of force the new budget ing on the Bottom-Up Review did withering criticism, ridiculed as “Win- would buy. That would be deter- not know either where the cuts were Lose-Lose” and “Win-Hold-Oops.” mined later, he said, in a “Bottom- to be found. Through the summer of Within weeks, it became an unten- Up Review.” For the moment, Aspin 1993, the Joint Staff worked on force able position. Aspin soon gave up on said, the Administration had only structure options that might fulfill Win-Hold-Win, declaring, “After “marginal control” of the details Aspin’s arbitrary budget projections. much discussion, we’ve come to the and “what we’re doing is kind of Details soon leaked to the press. conclusion that our forces must be treading water.” However, the gen- able to fight and win two major re- eral inspiration for his plan was Win-Hold-Oops gional conflicts and nearly simulta- Option C. One of the possibilities explored neously.” Sam Nunn, chairman of the Sen- was a concept called “Win-Hold- An assumption of the Bottom-Up ate Armed Services Committee and Win,” in which US forces would fully Review, Aspin said, was that “we Aspin’s fellow Democrat, was ap- prosecute one regional conflict and don’t know where trouble might palled. “We have been dealing with conduct a holding action on a second break out first or second. We can numbers grabbed out of the air,” he front. The second front would not predict, however, that wherever it 1 Down to the Bottom-Up Review Competing Projections for a smaller force The Force Base Force Option C BUR Force 1991 (Actual) 1997 (Proj.) 1997 (Proj.) 1999 (Proj.) Air Force Fighter Wing Equivalents 22/12 15/11 10/8 13/7 (active/reserve) Personnel 511,000/202,000 430,000/200,000 364,000/193,000 — (active/reserve) Bombers 268 181 — Up to 184 ICBMs 1,000 550 — 500 Army Divisions 16/10/0 12/6/2 9/6/0 10/15 (active/reserve, cadre) Personnel 725,000/741,000 536,000/567,000 476,000/550,000 — (active/reserve) Navy Total ships 528 450 340 346 Carriers 15 13 12 12 Attack submarines 87 80 40 — Assault ships 65 50 50 — Personnel 571,000/150,000 501,000/118,000 432,000/112,000 — (active/reserve) Marine Corps Divisions 3/1 2.3/1 2/1 3/1 (active/reserve) Personnel 195,000/44,000 159,000/35,000 137,000/49,000 — (active/reserve) The force cut projected by the Bottom-Up Review went much deeper than that projected in the Base Force.
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