U.S. Forces Gain but Still Can’t Meet Commitments, Study Says

An exhaustive study of the U.S.-Soviet military balance has concluded that while U.S. defense capabilities have improved sharply in absolute terms since 1980, the gains are considerably less impressive when compared to those made by the Soviet Union.

The study, commissioned by a bipartisan group of senators and representatives, expresses confidence in the stability of the nuclear balance but warns that despite the largest peacetime military buildup in American history, U.S. forces are inadequate to maintain the nation’s formal and informal commitments.

“The peacetime balance is a whole lot better than most of the public pronouncements and documents by official Washington,” the study’s author, John M. Collins, told reporters Thursday, but “the wartime balance is abominable.”

“We are still trying to play catch-up,” said Collins, a senior analyst for the Congressional Research Service.

According to the study, the nation not only continues to lag quantitatively behind the Soviet Union in almost every respect, but it also is losing or has already lost its “qualitative edge” in many important areas.

Even Shakier

Among the areas singled out for criticism is the nuclear triad, where the air- and land-based missile legs were described as even “shakier” than they were five years ago while the strongest leg, submarine-launched missiles, was being bolstered further.

In the triad, “progress has been least where impairment is most pronounced,” with Minuteman missiles and B-52 bombers--both described as having “marked debilities”--continuing as mainstays of the nuclear force.

Turning to chemical warfare, an area that “could indeed be the decisive factor in any theater nuclear or conventional combat which was close,” the study said the United States is “totally unprepared to compete with the Soviet Union.” In addition, American forces now deployed are “not what it takes to fight and win a war against the Soviet Union,” Collins warned.

Vulnerable Position

The combined lack of technology and manpower would place the United States in a vulnerable position, Collins said, shifting the war-time balance toward Moscow.

“A gulf still separates (all-volunteer force) goals from Pentagon views of requirements,” said the report, which said that American forces have “almost no ability to absorb combat attrition” and “would require early augmentation” by reserve components “for any armed conflict much greater” than the October, 1983, U.S. invasion of Grenada.

Collins and two of the congressional co-sponsors of the study, Reps. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), suggested that the nation will have to adopt some sort of peacetime conscription if it is to maintain its current commitments.

For the foreseeable future, the nuclear deterrent assures a peacetime balance--meaning that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union is likely to launch a nuclear attack.

In fact, Collins said, the probability of such an attack by Moscow is “somewhere between zero and negative eight million,” he added.

He and others, including officials of the Reagan and Carter administrations, have said that nuclear standoff provides “a window of opportunity,” offering the United States a chance to narrow the gap in military capabilities between itself and the Soviet Union.