The Kindest Pentagon Cut

The Pentagon’s budget ax fell on a phantom army in Van Nuys this week.

The negative news from the Defense Department was that one of the units to be eliminated as the military slims down in the aftermath of the Cold War was a 342-member combat support hospital, an Army Reserve unit based in the San Fernando Valley.

The other side of the story: The unit doesn’t exist.

The support hospital had been established on paper and was to be provided with members at some undetermined future date. But now the Pentagon can remove it from the plans and consider it a staff reduction, said Sgt. Ted Bartimus, spokesman for the 63rd U.S. Army Reserve Command in Los Alamitos.

“The unit does not now exist, and under the proposal, it never will,” Bartimus said.

Another Army Reserve unit based in Van Nuys--the 419th Quartermaster Battalion with 51 members--is not on the Defense Department’s list of proposed cuts, Bartimus said.

Proposed cuts, however, would affect National Guard units in the 40th Division, which has armories in Palmdale, Sylmar, Burbank, Van Nuys and Glendale, according to Staff Sgt. Phil Jordan, a California National Guard spokesman.

Jordan said the 40th Division’s full strength is 15,500 soldiers, but it currently has only 14,000 throughout the state. The 1992 defense budget requires a cut of 1,300 positions to reduce the force to 12,700.

Jordan said it is not clear what positions would be eliminated, but that it is likely they would be taken from all units rather than by eliminating units.

The National Guard--a state force in peacetime but supported largely by federal funds--differs from the reserves, which fall directly under the Defense Department.

A spokesman for Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale) said the congressman plans to oppose the cuts by arguing to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney that they are too drastic and would harm the state’s economy.

Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) said he is leaning toward support for the cuts. “Unless there is a justification for national security, then as miserable as it would be, as unsettling, we have a $400-billion deficit and we are all going to have to make tough decisions,” Berman said.