A New Military for the Post-Cold War Era

Thanks partly to the Iraq crisis--and partly to the Cold War’s end--U.S. military forces will have fewer personnel on active service but more in ready reserve, and the types of major weapons will be different from what they’ve been for the past 45 years.

That’s the picture emerging from top-level thinking at the Pentagon and the negotiations on defense spending at last week’s budget summit between Congress and the Administration.

The specific numbers on defense cuts may not look impressive. Budget negotiators’ projections show an annual defense budget five years from now, with zero growth after inflation, of $294 billion--compared to $298 billion this year.

But, behind the numbers, dramatic changes are going forward. Military forces will be reduced by 25%, or 500,000 service personnel during the next few years. Civilian employees of the military will be cut 200,000.

Even so, cutting people won’t reduce defense spending all that much. For real savings, you need to make the hard, politically charged decisions to close military bases, says Secretary of the Army Michael P. W. Stone. Inevitably, though, changes in strategy and the military’s role will shutter many bases that are operating today at only 50% of capacity.

Similar long-term changes will cut the defense industry from 3.5 million employees currently to 1.5 million, says Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense and now a fellow of the Brookings Institution. The reductions will come slowly, to be sure, over 10 years. In the interim, defense firms will have a chance to adapt to the post-Cold War environment.

The Iraq crisis is a field test for that environment, say military thinkers, for the kind of military forces and equipment the United States needs now that its adversary is no longer the Soviet Union and the projected terrain of battle is no longer the settled infrastructure of Europe.

“In Europe, we have bases and support systems ready to receive more troops in case of war,” explains Michael Rich, a military analyst at RAND Corp., the Santa Monica research firm. “But in places like the Persian Gulf, we operate with no fixed infrastructure; everything is mobile.”

Right now in the Gulf, the U.S. military’s communications and computer systems, its mobile health-care facilities--not to mention its ability to deliver gallons of water to thirsty troops--are being tested. Lessons learned there will lead to new or changed products for the military.

In larger weapons programs, too, the Iraq crisis is having an influence. Transport is in, for example. Delay in getting U.S. tanks to Saudi Arabia has led to recognition that the Navy, which spent massively on warships in the 1980s, overlooked transport craft and now needs cargo ships. In fact, says a defense expert, “what is needed is a renewal of our Merchant Marine”--which dwindled from 2,000 ships to 400 in the ‘80s.

The need for air transport ensures support in Congress for McDonnell Douglas’ C-17 cargo plane program, says investment analyst George Shapiro of Salomon Bros. On the other hand, a big bomber program such as Northrop’s B-2 will be allowed only to “limp along” if Congress doesn’t kill it outright.

And that suggests a pattern for the new environment. Sophisticated weapons systems, designed to counter equally sophisticated Soviet technology, are likely to be put on hold. (Research won’t be cut too sharply, because the Soviet Union is continuing its military R&D.; But the military is no longer first priority for the Soviets, or for the Americans either.) U.S. weapons that will be favored are those that can be deployed quickly and confidently.

So the highly sophisticated Advanced Tactical Fighter program--now in the prototype stage--will be delayed indefinitely, say experts. But there will be several years of additional orders for tried and true fighter planes, such as McDonnell Douglas’ F-15 and General Dynamics’ F-16.

The Army doesn’t need more tanks, but it wants artillery pieces that can be dropped by parachute and set up anywhere.

Behind the search for “flexibility,” however, lies the hard reality of tighter defense budgets. With fewer new planes needed, fewer defense contractors will be needed. So there will be a wave of mergers similar to the 1950s and ‘60s, when Martin Aircraft merged with Marietta, North American merged with Rockwell, and Douglas merged with McDonnell.

The armed services will cope with tight budgets by making more use of reserves, in much the way businesses use contract labor. The military uses reserves now, of course, and has called up many in the Iraq crisis. In the future, more personnel will be kept in reserve, backing up slimmed-down regular forces that will number about 1 million--half today’s total--and be organized in smaller units for speed and flexibility of action.

In no way, however, will the reduced Army or Navy be what the military was between World Wars I and II or after the Civil War, a force of diminished capacity and respect. “The U.S. can’t go back into isolation,” says Lawrence Korb. “At the end of the 20th Century, it has to take the lead to keep the world economic system working.”

In other words, post-Cold War means more demanding missions for the armed services and defense industry. May slimming-down keep them in fighting trim.