Questioning Combat Readiness

By Ed Magnuson

A House group takes a gloomy look at the U.S. military machine

One of the great debates of election year 1984 has long been expected to center on President Reagan's costly demands for such new weapons systems as the MX, the B-1B bomber and the space-based Star Wars defense against nuclear attack. But last week the argument began over a much more mundane question: Are the U.S. armed forces better prepared to fight conventional wars now than when Reagan took office in 1981?

According to a 376-page report compiled by the Democratic-controlled House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, U.S. combat readiness has declined rather than improved under Reagan, despite sharp increases in military spending. The principal charges of the 18-month study: the Army "cannot be sustained in combat for any extended period of time"; the Navy is "unable to sustain full combat air and surface operations for more than a week's time"; and the Air Force is "not capable of conducting sustained conventional war operations against the Soviets."

The critique offered a wide array of facts to support its conclusions. It contended, for example, that the Air Force is so short of spare parts that F-16 squadrons are assigned extra fighter-bombers (cost: $24 million each) solely for the purpose of cannibalizing their equipment. The Army's highly touted 101st Airborne Division, based in Fort Campbell, Ky., had an astonishing personnel turnover rate of 16.6% a month. Of the 190 F-14 fighters in the Navy's Atlantic Fleet equipped with the Phoenix air-to-air missile, 32 were recently either in maintenance or storage. The report quotes a senior Army commander in the Pacific as saying that if a war in Europe preceded a conflict in Korea, "the U.S. troops in Korea best learn how to swim to Japan as there is nothing left to reinforce them."

The study noted that even though the Army had received substantially more funds for operations and maintenance (O. and M.), the "increases have not demonstrably improved the readiness of the existing force." Democrat Joseph Addabbo of New York, chair man of the subcommittee, said that the fiscal 1985 budget includes "a 14% in crease in O. and M., but a 26% increase in weapons procurement."

Both the White House and the Pentagon assailed the subcommittee report, which Presidential Spokesman Larry Speakes said was "rehashing a lot of old stuff." At a press conference, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger conceded that he could not fault most of the report's facts, but charged that its conclusions contained "potentially dangerous . . . misstatements." He said that his department had faced the problems listed in the report and he added that "we are vastly improved over what we were in 1980." The problem, Weinberger said, was that "we have a long way to go because we had a long period of neglect in the '70s."

General John Vessey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cited some indications of improved combat readiness:

the U.S. can quickly airlift 25% more supplies to troops in Europe than four years ago, and the new F-16s that support ground forces there now carry far more accurate weapons than the F-4s that they replaced. Weinberger said that the Navy's sea-lift capability had improved more in the past three years "than in all the years since World War II put together."

-- By Ed Magnuson.

Reported by Bruce van Voorst/Washington

With reporting by BRUCE VAN VOORST