Cheney Tells Plan to Save $39 Billion : Pentagon: Defense chief proposes to trim 42,000 weapons-buying jobs in massive package of management reforms.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, faced with budget-cutting pressures, said today that his package of Pentagon management reforms will save $39 billion and trim 42,000 weapons-buying jobs over the next five years.

Offering a six-month update on his proposals to trim the Defense Department’s massive purchasing bureaucracy, Cheney said in a statement that he is aiming for major changes in the way the Pentagon is run and in the way its purchasing system works.

Weapons purchases have accounted for more than $60 billion of the department’s $305-billion budget and involves about 580,000 civilian and uniformed personnel.

President Bush asked Cheney to undertake the effort over the summer as part of a major review spurred by the weapons-procurement scandals that rocked the defense Establishment.

“The changes in the nature of the threat around the world, and the realities of the budget, mean that our defense budgets are going to be leaner in the years ahead,” Cheney’s statement said.

“So every dollar that we can cut out of the cost of running the Pentagon is a dollar we don’t have to cut from force structure, readiness or the quality of life for our men and women in uniform.”

“Real changes are being made . . . that we believe will improve Pentagon management and help make it possible for us to buy what we need at lower cost, in less time and with greater assurance of quality,” Cheney told reporters.

He had few details to offer, however, saying he is constrained because disclosing precise plans must await the release of Bush’s fiscal 1991 budget later this month.

Asked about the possibility of additional base closings, Cheney said “extensive” closures are planned to aid his overall cost-cutting effort. When asked to define “extensive,” he quipped, “More than two.”

Although reports had circulated recently that Cheney’s reforms would include doing away with the duplicative purchasing systems entrenched in the separate military services, the Pentagon announcement said the savings would be achieved primarily through:

--Streamlining each service’s purchasing system.

--Reducing the use of consultants and outside advisers.

--Creating a full-time acquisition corps in each service that would report to a “streamlined chain of command” to top civilian department officials.

--Eliminating unnecessary paper work.