Price of Reagan's defence promises

Press, 29 December 1980, Page 16

Price of Reagan's defence promises

From the‘Economist,* London.

Of all Mr Reagan’s campaign themes,. perhaps the clearest concerned defence: catch up with the Russians, make America number-.' one again was the repeated message.' ■■ . ■

When the defence experts on his transition team moved into the Pentagon their mood was - expansive and confident: Barely 1 a month later the confidence began to melL.The transition was turning out to be a matter of getting not just from one Administration to the next, but from great ex-, pectations to reality. Then the blow fell: Mr Caspar Weinberger, a man who made his Washington reputation as a budget-cut-ter, was named Secretary of Defence. ' ><>■.

It was not long before Mr Weinberger was declaring that he would be demanding careful calculation -of .costeffectiveness for, all new spending. His first meeting with the transition-team, leaders , caused something between panic and dismay.

When 'advised that the transition team thought that the new Administration would want to ask Congress for perhaps as much as an extra $25 billion for defence for the current financial year (which lasts until next October), Mr Weinberger he had been thinking of a figure more like zero,

He, too, is in for .a shock when he comes to grips with what is needed and how much it will cost. So the adjustment process in defence may turn out to be no easier than in. any other department, despite the fact that Congress is certain to be willing, even eager, to write some pretty large cheques. These are some of the main issues to be settled:

Spending. Extra money — probably $l2 billion if Mr Weinberger permits it —

be pumped into defence for the current year. Much of this will be spent to immore.spare parts, bigger amprove readiness: on fuel, more training exercises, munition. stocks and more civilian workers to release soldiers from non-military work: , ; ; '

Probably no new. hardware programmes will be started, although some money may well be spent in starting to redesign the B-l bomber which Mr Carter tried to kill, but which is still very much alive. ' The 1982 ? budget request will go to Congress in January in the form that the present Administration writes it. It will call for something like $l9O billion in authorisations. The Reagan defence team, if not its boss, will want these increased: it would almost certainly, like authorisations of as much as $230 billion. Much of the increase would be .for. nuclear programmes. Later .bn, the Navy may become a big beneficiary. A netfr .five-year shipbuilding plan jwili probably call for three more nuclear-powered aircraft-carriers.

< : Combat aircraft. One of the first problems the . new. men tin. the Pentagon will have'to, tackle-is what aircraft to buy, how many and hoV? fast: Last year the Navy was. not. allowed to buy as mhny .as it crashed. In order to keep spending down, aircraft have been bought at a trickle. This has made them individually more expensive than they peed be. They would come cheaper if there were more of them and they were bought faster.

A decision will also have to be taken about the F-18 fighter-bomber that the Navy is developing and the AV-8B short-take-off-vertic-al-landing Harrier that the Marines want instead of it. It is possible that the F-18 could be cancelled in favour of more F-14 fighters and

A-6 attack. aircraft for the Navy’, built at faster, rates. The new defence, team is likely to be mildly against the new Harrier for the Marines in the belief that conventional jets from big carriers can do the job better than the .shortrange Harriers. But many who hold that view are inclined, . now that the programme is in progress, to let the Marines haye. their way and collaborate with Britain in making the AV--88. Military pay. It would cost about $6 billion ’ to bring military pay back to die relationship to civilian, . pay that it enjoyed in 1976. Sometime there will almost certainly be an effort by the new . Administration to get military pay back to that level.' , Nuclear weapons and S.A.L.T. All Mr Reagan’s advisers on nuclear weaponry believe that the present plan for the basing of the new MX intercontinental ballistic missile — each missile moved randomly among a batch of horizontal shelters — is too expensive. They argue that it was cooked up only to meet the objections Of the Russians, who said they would regard other deployment schemes, such - as* one using vertical silos, to be a violation of S.A.L.T. 2— the second strategic arms limitation treaty which, in its present form, is now dead. It is possible that Mr Reagan will go back to the “shell game” • deployment scheme of vertical silos, which would give a better blast resistance than any horizontal shelter yet devised, and would also use less land, thus de-fusing much of the opposition to the horizontal shelters that has developed in the western states where they would be built. If settled quickly. MX deployment could probably be speeded up by a year, to 1985. The future of S.A.L.T. it-

self is still uncertain. Most Reagan defence advisers want to scrap SA.L.T. 2 and start again. But they are divided on when to start again: some want an early start, others would prefer to spend a year or so building up strength. It seems unlikely that the new President would wish to bang the Russians over the head by scrapping S.A.L.T. 2 totally and lor ever.

So the Americans may try to agree to a sort of limbo for S.A.L.T. 2 while making an early effort to get a S.A.L.T. 3 started, with the goal of sharp reductions of long-range nuclear weapons on both sides.

Mr Reagan seems certain to order the production of the neutron bomb, despite the huge bill that will come with it. American plutonium and tritium stocks are now so low that a combination of the cruise missiles being built, and the neutron bomb, would mean that some new manufacturing sites will have to be opened.

New departures. The transition team is full of ideas, new and old, as to how to do things better in defence. Most of these will probably melt in the hot sun of Washington political infighting, but two in particular are much touted reducing the bureaucracy and trying long-term financing for big projects.

Each new Administration promises to cut down the bureaucracy; few succeed. But Mr Reagan’s defence people seem determined to reduce the decision-making levels, not so much to save money as to speed things up.

At present it takes 10 years for the United States to produce a new weapon from scratch; the Russians can do it in about half the time. The difference is in decision and approval time; the actual hardware development the United States can usually do'faster. Long-term financing is now used only for shipbuilding in the United

States. But it is reckoned that procurement costs for other big projects could be cut by nearly 20 per cent if they were financed fully at the outset rather than by instalments given a year at a time. The draft The new administration will probably not cancel the requirement for draft registration, even though Mr Reagan declared his opposition to it .throughout the campaign. But he will be lucky If he can avoid starting conscription ' again before his four years are out. The Army has been particularly badly served by the all-volunteer service, and is. now taking large numbers of ** 1 o w-mental-category recruits" (thickheads) in order to fill its ranks. At least as important, but less noticed, the reserves have all but dried up. In the days of conscription, there was an incentive to join the reserves; you avoided the draft. But with no draft there are virtually no reserves.