Military Funding Requests Come With Mixed Message : Defense: Soviet threat is downplayed but 'enormous uncertainties' are cited by Cheney. Gulf War makes committed manpower cuts academic.

By JOHN M. BRODER

Feb. 5, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON —

The $278.3-billion defense budget that Defense Secretary Dick Cheney presented Monday for fiscal 1992 is in many respects a schizophrenic document:

It assumes that the Soviet Union will continue to pose little or no threat to the United States and its European allies. At the same time, Cheney said that ominous recent developments within the Soviet Union had created “enormous uncertainties” that might force the United States to halt or even reverse its planned long-term decline in defense spending.

The new budget demands military personnel cuts of nearly 200,000 men and women this year and next. But at the same time Cheney acknowledged that it will be impossible to meet that goal because of the manpower requirements of the Persian Gulf War.

And while next year’s budget request represents a 3.3% decline after inflation from current year spending of $273 billion, neither year’s figures include any of the costs of Operation Desert Storm.

That operation will add at least $15 billion to the 1992 fiscal year deficit, according to the Administration, assuming that the war is short and that allies contribute all they have promised. The Pentagon will send a supplemental appropriations request to Congress later this month to cover the cost of the Gulf War.

Cheney said that the budget is based on “good news” assumptions about Soviet intentions over the next several years.

“We are shifting from a force structure based on the assumption of having to prepare for a short-warning global conflict with the Soviets,” Cheney said. But he said that the Soviet crackdown in the Baltics and other events in recent months “give me some cause for concern. . . . The jury is still out on where the Soviet military is headed, long term.”

However, Cheney summarized, “the bottom line is that the reduction in real spending for defense . . . is very significant.”

He said that over the next five years, a total of $370 billion will be cut from previous projections for defense spending.

At the end of that period, Cheney said, defense spending will account for a 3.6% share of gross national product, the lowest figure since 1939. By contrast, the Pentagon consumed 12% of GNP in 1950, 9% during the Vietnam War and 6.3% at the peak of the defense buildup under former President Ronald Reagan.

However, defense analyst Joshua M. Epstein of the Brookings Institution in Washington noted: “The real defense budget isn’t the one presented today. We won’t know the real cost of defense until the bill for the Gulf War is presented in a supplemental (request).

“But in the long term, deep reductions will occur, in spite of the Persian Gulf.”

Gordon Adams of the Defense Budget Project said that the Pentagon’s 1992 spending plan sends conflicting signals.

“These are arrows pointing in several different directions at the same time. The force structure side looks pretty coherent, although there will be a ‘freeze frame’ for 1991 because of the Gulf War.

“But on hardware,” Adams continued, “the message seems ambiguous. A number of strategic programs have been cut to accommodate the end of the Cold War. But it’s not clear why they’re funding so much (other) hardware that’s designed for the Soviet threat.” He cited specifically high funding levels for the B-2 bomber and the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Yet the bulk of the reductions in defense effort would be taken from weapons and forces dedicated to fighting the now-unlikely global war against the Soviet Union.

By the end of 1995, overall military manpower is projected to decline by 521,000 people, to 1.6 million active-duty soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. The Army, which would have played the biggest role in a defense of Europe against a Soviet invasion, would shrink the most--from 28 total divisions today to 18. The equivalent of about 10 Army divisions is now serving in Saudi Arabia.

The Navy would lose nearly 100 ships, from 545 today to 451 at the end of 1995. And the Air Force would shrink from 36 tactical fighter wings to 26, a reduction of nearly 700 aircraft.

The Administration’s defense budget recommends killing several major weapons, including:

--The Army’s Bradley fighting vehicle, a tank-like tracked vehicle used to carry troops into battle, for a savings of $2.4 billion over the next six years.

--The Navy’s P-7A anti-submarine aircraft, for a savings of $6 billion.

--A program to rebuild existing Navy F-14D Tomcat fighters, saving $14.8 billion.

--The Navy’s next-generation carrier-based attack plane, the A-12, saving $22.2 billion. Cheney said that the program was behind schedule and over cost and he could not justify continuing it.

--Continued production of the Air Force’s F-16 Falcon, for a savings of $15.4 billion.

--The Air Force’s Tacit Rainbow missile, intended for use in knocking out Soviet radars, saving $2.5 billion.

The budget also recommends retiring the last two battleships in the U.S. fleet--the Wisconsin and the Missouri, which are both on station in the Persian Gulf. The Missouri has begun shelling the Kuwaiti coast in preparation for an expected amphibious landing of Marines.

But the Pentagon’s two big-ticket items--the B-2 Stealth bomber and the Strategic Defense Initiative or SDI, both designed chiefly to counter the Soviet threat--would continue to be robustly funded.

The Administration is asking Congress, which last fall narrowly voted to keep the program alive, for $4.8 billion to build four more B-2 bombers in fiscal 1992 and $4.6 billion for seven more in 1993.

Cheney said that the F-117 Stealth fighter, which uses much of the same technology as the B-2 bomber, had proven invaluable in the war against Iraq and that the new long-range bomber is needed as a future strategic deterrent against the Soviets.

But Rep. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio), a leading critic of the $860-million-a-copy bomber, said Monday that the B-2 “remains both unnecessary and unaffordable.”

“The Gulf War has proven the effectiveness of standoff (unmanned) weapons such as the Tomahawk cruise missile (which are) cheaper and more effective than the B-2,” the congressman said. “For the price of one B-2, we can purchase roughly 1,000 Tomahawk missiles.”

The Administration also wants $4.6 billion for the SDI anti-missile program next year, nearly twice the level approved by Congress last year. The figure would rise to nearly $5 billion in 1993.

“I can’t think of a better argument for the need to deal with the ballistic missile threat than watching the nightly missile attacks against Tel Aviv and Riyadh,” Cheney said, referring to Iraqi Scud missile attacks. “SDI is very important and remains a very high priority of the department and the Administration.”

The secretary said that the performance of the Patriot anti-missile missile had shown that SDI-inspired technology had immediate practical impact. Critics have assailed SDI as “Star Wars,” a fanciful futuristic shield against nuclear destruction.

Accordingly, Cheney said, much of the SDI research effort has been redirected toward improving systems like the Patriot for knocking down tactical ballistic missiles such as Iraq’s Scuds, rather than the intercontinental rockets possessed by the Soviet Union, China and a handful of other nations.

Rep. Leon E. Panetta (R-Carmel Valley), the House Budget Committee chairman, said that he had advised Cheney on Monday morning not to come to Congress with a supplemental appropriation request on the war until he can give a better idea of what the allies are contributing.

“I don’t think they have a good handle on the cost” of Desert Storm “or rock-solid commitments on what the allies will pick up,” Panetta said, after a breakfast meeting that Cheney and Powell hosted for the leaders of four key congressional committees.

“Right now this thing is going like a Jerry Lewis telethon. We’re getting an awful lot of pledges” but only $6 billion is in hand, he said, and part of that is in-kind contributions.”

Staff writer Paul Houston contributed to this story.

The Defense Budget: Down, Then Up Again

In billions of dollars per fiscal year.

‘80: $134.0

‘81: $157.5

‘82: $185.3

‘83: $209.9

‘84: $227.4

‘85: $252.7

‘86: $273.4

‘87: $282.0

‘88: $285.4