Aspin Urges New Ways to Fund Weapons

The Defense Department, facing flat or declining budgets for the foreseeable future, should adopt a radical new approach to planning and financing the nation’s strategic forces, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Wednesday.

In a speech to the National Press Club, Rep. Les Aspin proposed pooling all of the funds now spent by the military services on long-range nuclear weapons and the “Star Wars” missile defense system, keeping the figure constant for 10 years and buying new systems one after another, rather than in small pieces all at the same time.

Predicts More Stability

The result, Aspin said, would be funding stability for key programs and a chance to build a consensus on costly weapons like the MX missile and the B-2 stealth bomber that have generated intense political controversy.

“With everything on the table, imaginative solutions and political consensus have a chance to emerge,” the Wisconsin Democrat said.

Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci called the proposal “an interesting idea,” but said that it poses problems if Congress later goes back on the deal.

Carlucci cited the MX missile, which is not very popular in Congress, and questioned whether lawmakers would be willing to agree to a long-range financing plan without the right they now have to review the program on a year-to-year basis.

If lawmakers decided to stop funding the MX, Carlucci noted, the Pentagon would be faced with huge “termination costs” that must be paid to contractors if a contract is canceled before its agreed-upon end date.

“You not only don’t get the savings, but you lose a considerable amount of money,” Carlucci said Tuesday in a session with reporters.

Aspin’s plan would take the $31 billion now spent annually on all strategic systems--ballistic missiles, long-range bombers, missile-carrying submarines and the “Star Wars” space-based program--and keep the number steady after inflation for a decade.

‘Surge or Starve’

That would allow military planners to decide which systems best meet military requirements and quickly build and develop them. Under the Reagan Administration’s “surge or starve” defense budgeting, weapons have gotten started at high production rates, then have been slowed drastically because of spending cuts. The result is program instability and inefficient production, Aspin said.

“In a 10-year plan, as one program begins to tail off, another can be fit in and funded. The sequencing of programs becomes the prime consideration,” he said. “The question is no longer merely either/or. It is also sooner or later.”