Pentagon Faces a Struggle for Its Wish List

The Yugoslav conflict sharpened the Pentagon’s appetite for new weapons, yet congressional budget deliberations suggest that the military will have to struggle to get even the big-ticket items that it sought before the Kosovo campaign.

Though both political parties have said that they are committed to long-term increases in defense spending, many lawmakers and analysts now believe that there will not be nearly enough money available to pay for the array of ships, planes, helicopters and other weapons that the military wants to build.

This reality was brought home again Friday, when the House Appropriations Committee, voting on annual spending, decided against funding production of the Air Force’s most ardently desired new weapon, the F-22 Raptor fighter plane.

Accepting the recommendation of a subcommittee headed by Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), the panel instead shifted $3 billion in production funds to purchases of F-15 and F-16 fighter planes, tanker planes and incentives to keep pilots in the service. An additional $1.2 billion would be used for research and development, keeping the F-22 program alive.

The move reflects some issues unique to the F-22: At $185 million a copy, the Lockheed Martin aircraft would be the most expensive fighter ever built. Critics contend that its advanced technology is unnecessary in the absence of a Soviet threat.

Lewis argued that other military needs have become more urgent, including the need to find and keep personnel and to acquire more fuel tanker, cargo and reconnaissance planes.

Even so, the vote illustrated the challenge that the armed services face in carrying out a major weapon procurement campaign that they essentially have postponed for the last decade. The Pentagon spent $44 billion last year on procurement, the smallest amount in more than 10 years.

The largest ingredient in the procurement program, the proposal to buy three new fighter aircraft, may now be most at risk. Military leaders have proposed spending about $300 billion on the F-22, on a new version of the F/A-18 and on another plane called the Joint Strike Fighter.

Many analysts believe that Congress ultimately will not kill the F-22, which has strong support from the Air Force and from many lawmakers. But Congress easily could stretch the delivery schedule or shrink the order in any of the three programs.

Such a move could have implications for Southern California, where the state government has begun lobbying the Air Force to build the Joint Strike Fighter.

Also on the Pentagon’s weapon procurement list are the Army’s Comanche helicopter and Crusader mobile artillery system, the new Virginia class attack submarine, a new aircraft carrier and the Marines’ V-22 Osprey troop-carrying plane.

With an election year approaching, both parties have been eager to declare their commitment to continuing the defense spending increases, the first since Ronald Reagan was president. Last year President Clinton bumped up defense spending by $110 billion over the next six years.

Yet, immediate and long-term problems stand in the way.

Democrats contend that the GOP’s proposed tax cuts of as much as $864 billion threaten increased defense expenditures--an assertion that Republicans deny.

Under federal budget-balancing rules, added spending for defense must come out of domestic accounts this year--a fact that already is bringing howls of pain from some lawmakers.

Some analysts said that the recent debate over how to spend the budget surplus shows that, despite the talk, defense spending is really a secondary goal among legislators.

While “nobody wants to be soft on defense,” for most lawmakers “it’s not the highest priority on the list, either,” said Ivan Eland, a defense analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian Washington think tank.