Pentagon Makes Plans for Deep Cuts in Budget

Anticipating heavy congressional pressure for deeper cuts in defense spending, Pentagon planners are exploring ways to reduce the military budget well beyond the 12% reduction now planned for the next six years, officials said Sunday.

In an ongoing series of closely held budget meetings in recent weeks, senior officials at the Pentagon have been plotting the direction the U.S. military would take if Congress were to demand further cuts of as much as $50 billion by the latter half of the 1990s.

The results of their efforts could come as early as January, when the Pentagon presents its 1993 budget proposal, officials said.

While cautioning that planning at this stage is for a “worst-case scenario,” officials acknowledged that such a huge reduction could only come through layoffs of large numbers of military personnel, the closure of dozens more military bases in the United States and large reductions in the National Guard and reserve forces.

In what has been described, in part, as an effort to head off defense budget-cutting by Congress and maintain control of defense planning, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney--who opposes further reductions--is said to be looking at several cost-cutting approaches. One would stress personnel reductions, while another would stress reductions in investments, such as weapons or research and development.

By preparing a worst-case scenario budget for presentation to Congress, Pentagon leaders hope to convince lawmakers that the nation’s armed forces, as well as the legislators’ home districts, would suffer too much if deeper cuts are made.

Although the Pentagon and Congress agreed last year to provide $290.8 billion for defense spending in 1993, some lawmakers have been agitating to reopen the budget agreement. With a disintegrated Soviet Union no longer a threat to the United States and its allies, money that had been earmarked for defense spending could be rechanneled toward domestic social and economic programs, they reason.

It is that sentiment that has led Pentagon leaders to believe they may be ordered to find more savings. If that happens, said one official, many of the proposals now being drawn up could be put into effect by the turn of the century.

A senior defense official added, however, that part of the Pentagon planning strategy also is to discourage lawmakers from pursuing such deep cuts.

“We’re looking ahead, planning ahead to consider what are the implications of deeper cuts,” said the senior official. “It isn’t because we think we can have bigger, deeper cuts. But we need to be able to explain what those cuts do and what they would do to a future commander’s options. They have to live with the decisions we make now.”

Some lawmakers, notably Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, have vowed to draft a new, pared-down defense budget that they say would better reflect defense needs in a profoundly changed world.

“Cheney wants to get out in front,” one knowledgeable Pentagon source said. “He’s worked (Capitol) Hill, and he understands the way this process works. He’d rather put the debate on his terms by devising his own initiative than allow the cuts to be dictated by Aspin and (Sen. Sam) Nunn,” the Georgia Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The current budget blueprint was drawn up after communist governments fell in Eastern Europe and those countries broke away from the Soviet Union. At that point, the Pentagon devised a six-year budget plan that would reduce military spending by about 12% of its 1990 level and shrink the armed forces by 25% by 1996.

Although that plan was drafted before the virtual dissolution of the Soviet Union, Cheney has said the cuts he accepted already assumed major changes in that country that would eliminate it as a major threat to the United States or Western Europe.

But many in Congress maintain that the Pentagon’s plan, which would peg annual defense spending at $298 billion by 1996, remains a “Cold War budget” geared to dealing with a threatening Soviet Union.

Such deep reductions as those under discussion--between $30 billion and $50 billion--would have profound effects on every branch of the armed forces.

The Army, which already has borne the brunt of personnel cuts, would have to reduce the number of active and reserve divisions it maintains. While the Army already has planned to pare 18 such divisions down to 12, further budget cuts could bring the number to 10, an official said.

The Air Force almost certainly would be required either to terminate or greatly scale back the B-2 bomber program, which has been the centerpiece of its strategic modernization efforts. The Air Force, like the Navy, would also be forced to lay off large numbers of people.

In addition, an official said, any scenario cutting $30 billion or more from future defense spending also would force the Navy to accelerate the retirement of several more aircraft carriers, potentially leaving a force of fewer than 10 such ships in the U.S. arsenal. Such reductions would force massive layoffs in the Navy, which until now has said it can meet reduction targets without handing out pink slips.

Consideration of deeper cuts in military personnel comes at a time when the Pentagon has been stressing the need to maintain force levels in the face of military dangers throughout the Third World. Last week, for example, Cheney and his counterpart at the South Korean Ministry of Defense agreed not to proceed with planned reductions of U.S. personnel stationed in South Korea, citing a continuing threat from North Korea.

Such Third World threats also have begun to drive up Pentagon spending plans for the Strategic Defense Initiative, the missile-defense program also known as “Star Wars.” The proliferation of missiles and nuclear technology throughout the Third World will require about $41 billion for a worldwide system of missile defenses, the Pentagon says.