
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 28, 1990                   TAG: 9003280527
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/6   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

EX-SECRETARY WOULD SHIFT MUCH OF NAVY TO RESERVE STATUS

The Navy should respond to the diminishing Soviet threat by shifting much of its fleet to reserve status, a former Navy secretary says.

John Lehman, a proponent of the 600-ship Navy during his tenure in the Reagan administration, said the Pentagon no longer needs to operate as if the nation is in a wartime mode.

"Regardless of the size of the Soviet fleet they're not about to attack tomorrow, or the next day, or the next year," Lehman told the House Armed Services Committee's defense policy panel Tuesday.

However, Lehman said the size of the Navy is not affected by the rapid push toward democracy in Eastern Europe.

Determining the number of ships in the fleet are the five oceanic regions where the United States has vital concerns and the continued modernization of the Soviet fleet, including production of submarines.

In the fiscal 1991 defense budget, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney has proposed mothballing two of the four U.S. battleships - the USS Iowa and the USS New Jersey.

Retired Air Force Gen. Russell Dougherty, former commander of the Strategic Air Command, agreed with Lehman that the likelihood of confrontation was slim.

"The tinderbox character . . . in Europe is changed, maybe even gone and the changed political situation in the Warsaw Pact and Eastern Europe has dramatically changed the confrontation," Dougherty told the committee.

But both Lehman and Dougherty stressed the need for development of the B-2 stealth bomber. Its cost of more than $70 billion for 132 planes has drawn criticism in Congress.

"Keeping the long-range bomber leg makes eminent sense," Lehman said.

But he questioned continued spending on land-based nuclear missiles to make them survivable in the event of a Soviet attack. Bush administration plans call for moving the multiple-warhead, MX missile from hardened silos to railroad cars and developing the smaller Midgetman missile.

"Throwing more money after the land-based leg of the ICBM is really on the wrong end of the ledger of business," said Lehman, managing director of Paine Webber Inc. "The amount of money that you have to spend to make ICBM survivable in this kind of environment just doesn't make any sense to me."

Questioned further about his position on land-based missiles, Lehman said he favored keeping the MX missile but that officials should "accept the fact it's vulnerable to a first strike."

by CNB