Military Services Study ‘Worst-Case’ Cutbacks : Budget: The Navy, Army and Air Force outline their contingency plans. Cheney calls prospects for sharp reductions ‘a realistic expectation.’

The U.S. Navy would have to mothball its fleet of four World War II-era battleships, the Army would be forced to cut as many as six divisions and the Air Force would need to revamp its proposed production of 132 B-2 bombers, if the services are ordered to cut $180 billion out of the defense budget for 1992-1994, defense sources said Sunday.

The sources said that Defense Secretary Dick Cheney is considering these proposals and others in the wake of the services’ responses to a “worst-case” budget exercise ordered by Pentagon Comptroller Sean O’Keefe.

Interviewed Sunday on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley,” Cheney called the prospects for deep budget cuts “a realistic expectation” and warned that “there’ll be great consternation on Capitol Hill because some of the things that will be cut, members of Congress are very fond of.”

He added that he had made no decisions on the services’ proposals of how to absorb the cuts if they are ordered.

Congress had repeatedly warned Cheney that a five-year budget plan he had presented earlier this year was unrealistic. Cheney had resisted the calls for a new plan. But last week he asked each branch of the military for contingency plans, citing the growing federal deficit and what he called a diminishing Soviet threat.

Cheney said that reductions in the Pentagon’s five-year budget blueprint would require troop cuts, the closure of military bases and the termination of weapon systems.

One defense official added that the budget review will reopen questions about the need for the Air Force to develop and deploy two new mobile missile systems--the rail-garrison basing scheme for the MX missile and a smaller, single-warhead missile widely known as the Midgetman.

“I don’t see how you do the Midgetman if these deficit-reduction targets kick in,” one Pentagon official said.

In early rounds of debate within the Bush Administration, Cheney argued against the development of the $18-billion Midgetman, favoring the cheaper alternative of placing existing, land-based MX missiles on rail cars.

On Sunday, Cheney said that “we need to add the element of mobility to the force.” Noting that Congress this year approved funds for the rail-based MX system, Cheney said: “I expect that program will continue.”

Cheney also confirmed that the Pentagon may be forced to scale back its planned purchase of B-2 bombers, which he called “still clearly very important.”

“Exactly how many we buy and at what rate we buy them I think is an open question.”

The Navy, meanwhile, told Pentagon leaders that it would have neither the men nor the budgets to continue operating the fleet’s four battleships, two of which are based in Long Beach. The battleships require a crew of 1,500--a substantial manpower drain on a Navy that has warned that it may have to reduce its rolls by 76,500 next year alone.

“People were trying to figure out how to use them,” one Navy official said of the ships that were recommissioned in the mid-1980s at a cost of $1.7 billion. While the ships carry 32 Tomahawk cruise missiles capable of striking land targets, the Navy has been wary of using the battleships in such a role.

While some Navy ships would be transferred to the Naval Reserves in a bid to save money, the Navy argued that the battleships are too unique to entrust to forces that do not train full time.

The Navy also said that it would have to discontinue some of its efforts to disperse ships to new home ports, a program that already has been scaled back by base closures ordered by a special commission at the end of the last Congress.

The Army told defense officials Friday that it would have to cut two divisions in addition to the four divisions that it has said it would need to cut under automatic budget cuts required by the Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduction law.

Even if Congress and the White House avert the automatic cuts with an eleventh-hour compromise on the 1990 budget, the Army believes that it will have to cut all six divisions, including one based in Europe, by 1994. The cuts would reduce the Army’s current force of 768,000 active-duty soldiers and 1.06 million reservists by about 90,000.

Five of the six divisions would be mechanized units that depend heavily on M-1 tanks for mobility and firepower. The Army would likely scrub its plans to continue producing the current generation of those tanks, a Pentagon official said.

Officials also said that the Air Force proposed scaling back its purchases of F-16 fighter jets and retiring Minuteman 2 missiles early.

Apparently exempt from the Pentagon’s latest budget-cutting plans is the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as “Star Wars.” Pentagon officials said that last Monday’s memo directing the budget cuts did not go to the office that oversees “Star Wars” programs.

Until notified otherwise, officials from the SDI Office said that they will continue to operate according to a presidential order, issued earlier this year, directing them to spend $33 billion between 1990 and 1994 to research “Star Wars” technologies.