Debate Intensifies on How to Revamp Defense Budget : Congress: Success of high-tech weapons fuels both sides’ arguments over ‘Star Wars,’ other programs.

After less than two weeks of U.S. military action in Iraq, the nation’s political leaders are already drawing some firm conclusions about how Congress should revamp the defense budget to capitalize on the success of America’s high-tech weaponry.

The problem is that all of them are different.

Vice President Dan Quayle says the war so far demonstrates the continued need for the Strategic Defense Initiative, known informally as “Star Wars.” Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) thinks it makes a case for the B-2 bomber. And to California Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae), it proves that the United States already has enough high-tech weaponry for the foreseeable future.

Not surprisingly, all three held similar views before war broke out.

No one doubts that the lessons being learned in the war with Iraq will shape decision making about defense spending for years to come. “We will frame our defense policy for the late 1990s based on what’s happened here,” Warren L. Nelson, an analyst for the House Armed Services Committee, declares.

But Nelson and other arms experts fear that, rather than clarifying the debate over defense spending in the future, the war with Iraq may only intensify existing disagreements in Congress about what weapons the Pentagon needs to buy. “The only thing that you can count on,” he adds, “is that everybody is going to use the war to justify what they wanted before it started.”

Indeed, the war has even revived a partisan debate about President Ronald Reagan’s $3-trillion military buildup. Republicans claim that Reagan deserves credit for buying the new weapons that have given U.S. forces an edge in Iraq. But Democrats point out that many of those programs originated under President Jimmy Carter.

In essence, the initial success in the Persian Gulf has divided the politicians into two camps: Some see it as evidence that Congress should fully fund the next generation of high-tech weapons. Others feel that the weapons systems have proven so successful that they will require only incremental improvements as new technology becomes available.

To be sure, after years of political wrangling over U.S. military procurement policy, it may not be surprising that members of Congress who supported spending for weapons such as the Tomahawk cruise missile, the Stealth fighter and the Patriot air-defense missile are feeling a sense of pride that these systems have proven valuable to U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) is encouraged by the success of these “smart” weapons. “Now we are very, very good at electronic warfare,” he boasts.

To Nunn, the experience of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf reinforces his long-held view that the United States should continue to move toward a “lighter, more lethal” military force that is capable of intervening in world trouble spots on short notice.

But Nunn and others have been reluctant to draw strong conclusions about future U.S. military procurement needs based solely on the first week of a war that is likely to last much longer. As Rep. Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, cautions: “There are a lot of lessons to be learned from this war, but it’s a long way from being over.”

That doesn’t seem to be preventing the Pentagon from moving to take advantage of its new successes in the Persian Gulf. The Defense Department already has revised some of its budget requests for fiscal 1992 based on what strategists have learned during the early stages of deployment.

Among other things, the Administration is expected to seek improvements in U.S. airlift and sea-lift capability, which proved to be deficient in deploying American troops. And Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams says that the department will continue to revise its spending plan as the war continues--even after the budget is sent to Congress next Monday.

“Desert Storm is going to be analyzed for months and months after it, and there will be lots of lessons learned and lots of changes made in future budgets,” Williams says. “If something very important and critical comes up that begs to be changed in the budget, that’s what we can work out with Congress in the months that it takes to pass the budget.”

But even before the Administration’s new defense budget is unveiled, Quayle and other “Star Wars” proponents are already arguing that the success of the Patriot missile in shooting down Iraqi Scud missiles is evidence that the United States needs a missile defense system.

Until it began intercepting Iraqi Scuds, the Patriot had never been fired in a combat situation. Developed in the 1970s as the SAM-D antiaircraft missile, the Patriot was reconfigured about the time it was first deployed in Europe in the mid-1980s to enable it to intercept incoming missiles.

“This ballistic missile defense system’s success will change the way we think about and fight wars,” Quayle says. “I think everybody sees the utility and the effectiveness of ballistic missile defenses.”

In fact, the vice president’s admirers note that Quayle was an ardent advocate of the Patriot during the mid-1980s, when he was a senator from Indiana. Both Quayle and then-Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) urged deployment of an anti-tactical ballistic missile such as the Patriot as a first step toward the development of a space-based missile system.

The Bush Administration supports development of a space-based system, which would be designed to destroy intercontinental ballistic missiles shortly after they are launched. But in recent years, Congress has scaled back research on a space-based interceptor, investing instead in research aimed at developing a more modest, ground-based system.

Sen. Richard C. Shelby (D-Ala.) says the success of the Patriot is likely to stimulate political support for a ground-based system of missile interceptors, not a space-based system. The 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty would permit deployment of 100 such interceptors in the United States.

Since the wartime debut of the Patriot, Shelby says, he has been approached by several senators who are reconsidering their opposition to his proposal put forth last year to direct Strategic Defense Initiative funds into the development of such a system.

Proponents of a ground-based SDI claim that the Patriot has discredited arguments that a missile defense system cannot work.

California Rep. Duncan L. Hunter (R-Coronado) says Patriots are using technology developed through the SDI program. “Patriot is a piece of SDI,” he asserts. “Patriots are demonstrating that you can stop missiles with missiles. We now live in an age of missiles, and we’re going to have to be able to stop missiles with missiles. It’s going to take an increasingly more sophisticated missile defense.”

But “Star Wars” critics argue that Patriot and “Star Wars” are two distinctly different programs and say that the Patriot never would have been funded if Administration supporters such as Quayle had not been restrained from developing a space-based system.

“This system competed against ‘Star Wars’ for funding,” says Boxer. “This is a ground-based, conventional system--not a nuclear, space-based defense initiative.”

Similarly, proponents of the B-2 see the success of the F-117 Stealth fighter as evidence that the United States also needs a Stealth bomber that can evade radar.

“The fact that you’ve got the F-117 with Stealth technology was a great advantage,” says Dicks. “It’s a demonstration that our investment in advanced technology has paid off. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, the President could have (ordered) a B-2 bomber in there and with one refueling, we could have put a lot of hurt on the Republican Guards.”

Still, funding for the B-2 will be at risk in fiscal 1992 as a result of a growing concern in Congress that each plane, being developed by Northrop Corp., will cost $1 billion.

Dicks, a longtime advocate of the Stealth bomber, notes that the Patriot missile was once nearly killed by Congress in the early 1970s as a result of criticism similar to that which is now being directed at the B-2. He argues that it demonstrates that the B-2 program should be fixed, not canceled.

But B-2 opponents are not likely to be persuaded by Dicks’ argument. Boxer, for one, says the success of existing aircraft proves that the United States does not need the B-2.

Another defense debate likely to be rekindled by the war is the question of whether the United States should modernize its aging nuclear production facilities. Before attacking Iraq, President Bush ruled out using nuclear weapons.

Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-Colo.) notes that the Energy Department is expected to make recommendations for modernizing the facilities. “People are going to ask: ‘Why are we modernizing our nuclear facilities if these weapons are clearly so dangerous that the world shrinks from using them?’ ” she said.

Also, Schroeder declares, Congress must determine how the government, already running a big deficit, is going to pay to resupply the military with existing weapons after the war.