Future of High-Tech Arms in Doubt as Threats Fade

Assigned the mundane task of dropping a pair of 2,000-pound bombs on an empty field as a diversion to cover an Army paratroop drop during the Panama invasion, the Air Force reached up to its very top shelf and gave the mission to the ultra-sophisticated F-117 Stealth fighter.

The Air Force said it chose its most advanced warplane, designed to penetrate 21st-Century Soviet air defenses, for the accuracy of its laser-guided bombs.

But there is another reason the secret warplane was used--a reason that reveals much about what senior Pentagon officials are thinking as they confront the most critical budget battles and the most far-reaching policy decisions faced by the U.S. military Establishment in four decades.

Privately, defense officials said the Stealth fighter’s use on the low-tech mission--to set off thunderous but deliberately harmless explosions to disorient Panamanian defenders just before Army Rangers dropped from the sky--demonstrates that the Pentagon’s massive expenditure on state-of-the-art weaponry can still be justified in a world that appears to be growing less dangerous by the day.

The mounting of such arguments reflects the fact that--for the first time since the dawning of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry--a serious national debate is getting under way about whether America any longer needs the military juggernaut that now consumes 25% of the federal budget.

And the Pentagon, scrambling to defend its now $300-billion-a-year budget, is being barraged with fundamental questions:

Now that the Soviet threat seems to be fading, exactly what kinds of military threats will the United States actually face in the 1990s? What is the appropriate military posture to respond to these threats?

Do multibillion-dollar weapons systems such as the Stealth bomber and “Star Wars” any longer make sense? If the nation doesn’t need them to deter Moscow, would simpler and cheaper weapons be just as effective in Third World skirmishes? How far can the strategic nuclear arsenal and the U.S. ground presence in Europe be drawn down? What components of the military might have to be built up?

Peace Dividend’

Critics in Congress and elsewhere argue that the nation cannot afford continued massive spending on a high-tech military machine that has no more important mission than crushing a troublesome Latin dictator.

They contend the defense budget can be cut by as much as half and the resulting “peace dividend” used to rebuild the cities, house the homeless, clean up the environment and restore America’s economic might. Dealing with such debilitating problems would do more for America’s national security than building more bombers or turning the U.S. military into the world’s policeman, it is argued.

Who is right?

Absolute answers to these and a host of similar questions are, like the future itself, beyond immediate reach. But the apparent decline of the global military threat, coming at a time of perennial budget crunches and increasingly urgent needs for non-defense spending, is opening the Pentagon’s spending plans to unprecedented challenges.

Two-Pronged Strategy

And the shape of the Pentagon’s defensive strategy is already becoming clear. It is a two-pronged argument:

First, say Pentagon leaders from Defense Secretary Dick Cheney on down, there is no proof yet that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s avowed policy of scaling back Moscow’s defense budget and renouncing the use of force will endure. Gorbachev could fall from power and his policies be swept away almost overnight, it is argued.

Second, the Soviet threat is only part of the reason America needs to keep spending $300 billion a year and more on defense. Such outlays will be needed even if the Soviet threat really does fade, it is argued--to fight drugs, combat terrorism, keep order in the Third World and project power in furtherance of U.S. interests around the world.

The Panama invasion, Defense Department officials assert, epitomizes the diverse security threats that still confront the United States and that still require military spending at Cold War levels, even though the chances of all-out war with the Soviet Union seem increasingly small.

The use of the Stealth fighter, they contend, demonstrates how weapons built for superpower conflict can be adapted for use in the developing world.

In particular, the defense Establishment is worried about drastic cuts made in haste by a stampeding Congress.

“What we should do and what we’re going to do are two different things,” Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., the recently retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a recent interview. “Political momentum will build for us to do dumb things very, very quickly.”

He said large cuts in manpower or cuts in weapons research and development that are not quickly reversible would be especially damaging. Crowe’s advice to the Administration and Congress when they hear calls for such cutbacks: “Walk, don’t run, to the exits.”

Today’s huge military Establishment came into being in the years following the end of World War II, based chiefly on the perceived threat from the Soviet Union’s vast strategic and conventional power.

If that threat today seems more hypothetical than ever, the generals and admirals are quick to note that prudent military planners must consider capabilities, not intentions.

“A nuclear attack has never been very likely, and is not now. But they have done nothing that lessens their strategic nuclear capability, the one threat that can be catastrophic to us. It is intact and ready to go, has nothing to do with their economic problems, and they can unleash it at any second,” Crowe said.

“On the conventional side, the threat of a surprise attack on Western Europe is just gone. The military people say it’s reduced. (But) I don’t think it can be resurrected,” the admiral added.

Cheney, striking a markedly more cautious tone, said last month that the United States should not inflict long-term damage on its armed forces on the basis of Soviet moves that may prove temporary.

It would be foolish, perhaps even fatal, Cheney suggested in a December speech, to base American defense planning on “what fate may have in store for one man”--Gorbachev. Last spring Cheney predicted that Gorbachev would fail in his reform efforts and be replaced by a hard-liner hostile to the West. He has not repudiated the remark.

“It may now be that as a result of Mr. Gorbachev’s coming to power that things will change permanently in the Soviet Union, but it’s far too soon, I think, for us to make the judgment that the changes we’ve seen to date are irreversible, that the change we would like to have occur is permanent, that the Soviet Union is about to become a democratically governed society,” the defense secretary said.

“Over time, we can significantly reduce the defense budget” if Soviet demilitarization continues, he said. “But it does have to be done cautiously and prudently.”

Cheney has proposed a 2% after-inflation annual decline in defense spending for the next five years, a modest goal that he says reflects political realities. But as he designs the smaller force, he is trying to build in a concept he calls “reversibility.”

He says he will not close overseas bases that cannot be reopened, he will not cancel technology programs that cannot be restarted, he will not strip the military of an officer corps that cannot quickly be replaced.

Severe Cuts

Critics reject Cheney’s caution as old thinking and say that U.S. defense spending can and should be radically cut.

Americans are “rightly losing patience” with continued massive spending on a bloated military machine, argues retired Rear Adm. Gene R. LaRocque of the pacifist Center for Defense Information in Washington.

“It is time to get on with discarding our outmoded Cold War military strategy and moving rapidly toward a smaller force structure. Some will say ‘not yet,’ but when we spend $6 billion every week on the military Establishment, we are engaged in monumental waste,” LaRocque said in recent congressional testimony.

The retired admiral proposed that the number of men and women in uniform be cut nearly in half, to 1.2 million from the current 2.1 million. He advocates bringing the 500,000 foreign-based U.S. troops home by the end of the decade.

End to B-2 Urged

LaRocque said the costly B-2 Stealth bomber and the “Star Wars” anti-missile program should be killed and more than half the Navy’s aircraft carriers and attack submarines should be mothballed. He also proposed a moratorium on all new nuclear weapons and further deep cuts in the U.S. strategic stockpile. All those weapons, LaRocque said, are justified only to deter a Soviet attack, which he considers a virtual impossibility.

These steps would save $100 billion a year, he said. “The Soviet Union is changing in remarkable ways. The United States will also need to change and adapt,” LaRocque said.

Even if the Soviet threat has diminished, current defense officials argue, the United States will need to maintain a robust nuclear deterrent as well as a far-flung military force to fight terrorism and drug smuggling, protect American economic interests and, occasionally, fight brush-fire wars in remote corners of the globe.

“As we look out into the future, there are two certainties,” said one senior Army planner. “The Army will be smaller and the developing world will rise in importance.”

The United States will continue to play a role as superpower, serving as a counterforce to the Soviet Union and refereeing conflicts between smaller states, he said. “We don’t want to go back to a world of 1848, 1914, 1938-39. We cannot allow a regression to the instability and European rivalries that led to major wars.”

Threat to Interests

Economic crises in the Third World, too, at times may threaten American interests and demand armed intervention to protect U.S. assets or prop up friendly regimes, military officers say.

“Latin America today is a group of very feeble democracies. Their security has everything to do with economic progress and health. None can claim they’re healthy economically today,” said Army Maj. Gen. Bernard Loeffke, chairman of the Interamerican Defense Board, a group of senior military leaders from the United States and Latin America.

“Most of the threats we’re seeing in the Third World are not tied to East-West or U.S.-Soviet concerns,” said James R. Locher III, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict. “The economic, political and social problems in these countries are root causes of instability that leads to violence. We have seen no reduction in those threats.”

He said that U.S. forces will increasingly be called upon to perform what he called “nation-building” functions, as thousands of U.S. troops are now doing in Panama. That includes creating government institutions, rebuilding crippled economies, supporting health and literacy programs and providing security against insurgencies.

He said the United States military is just beginning to recognize the role it can play in fostering stability in the Third World without the use of weapons.

“It’s virgin territory,” Locher said.

Security of the Seas

Navy partisans argue that the United States remains a seafaring nation, dependent on shipping for its energy supplies, minerals and commerce. The country will always have to maintain a large and powerful Navy to guarantee the freedom of the seas, they say.

“The Soviet Union has become a factor in this need only in the last 40 years. If the Warsaw Pact is completely dismantled, the sea is still great and our interests very wide,” said John F. Lehman Jr., the former Navy secretary and crusader for a 600-ship Navy who is now an investment banker in New York.

“You still have significant threats to the security of the seas from a lot of potential sources, whether pirates in the Gulf of Siam or (Libyan leader Moammar) Kadafi in the Gulf of Sidra. Exocet missiles, smart weapons, mines and diesel submarines are available to virtually everybody in the world,” he said. “There is no low-threat area.”

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Carlisle A.H. Trost noted recently that the President has dispatched the Navy to trouble spots nearly 50 times since 1980.

“Virtually none of these had anything to do with East-West confrontation. They dealt with protecting oil shipments, rescuing Americans under siege, assistance to refugees fleeing tyranny, punishing terrorists, providing regional stability, deterring violence, assisting cleanup efforts in wake of disasters,” Trost said.