THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 8, 1994 TAG: 9408080047
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 228 lines
Adm. Henry H. ``Hank'' Mauz Jr., commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet, is planning to retire later this month after a 35-year naval career.
As he prepares to step aside, the 55-year-old Lynchburg native reflects on what he perceives as sharp cuts being made in defense, and he laments other money woes that are tying up ships in port.
He also joins Defense Secretary William J. Perry in appealing for additional funds to make up for unexpected expenditures for operations off the coast of Haiti, in Bosnia and in other trouble spots.
And Mauz, a ``destroyerman's admiral,'' according to his former shipmates, is in the middle of a widening feud between the Air Force and the Navy over which service is more important as a forward deployed presence in the world.
In his last weeks before turning over the helm of half the Navy to his replacement, newly promoted Adm. William J. Flanagan Jr., Mauz finds himself in a bit of limbo as the Senate Armed Services Committee weighs complaints against him.
A female lieutenant has asked that he not be allowed to retire at his four-star rank, alleging that he mishandled her sexual-harassment complaint. A senior chief petty officer claims Mauz had him arrested in retaliation for blowing the whistle on alleged improprieties at the Bermuda Naval Station.
Mauz has been stunned by the allegations, calling the complaints totally untrue.
``These are just two people I think who are misguided and misinformed or who are doing it for some personal act or gain,'' he said in an interview last week. ``I can't imagine what the reason is for it. The Senate is working through that, sorting out what is right and wrong, and it will be resolved pretty soon.''
Meanwhile, Mauz and his wife, Peggy, plan on moving to California, where their four children live. One of their daughters is expecting triplets soon, ``so California will be our headquarters for a while,'' he said.
The following excerpts are from an interview with the admiral on Thursday.
Q. You have said U.S. military force structure is declining to the point where forward presence may become too thin to be credible and that further reductions will seriously limit the nation's ability to stay engaged overseas. Would you elaborate?
A. You have to maintain forward deployed forces, which are seen by potential adversaries as a valid deterrent, whether we aretalking about potential adversaries in the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf or western Pacific.
With 12 carriers, we don't have enough to maintain presence all the time in the Mediterranean and Pacific commands. So you will have gaps. You will have increased risks. We now keep more carriers off Korea. That takes away from carriers elsewhere in the Pacific and in the Med.
So if you are not there, you are not going to be as credible and you are not going to be able to respond quickly. And things do happen quickly in these Third World crises that we face.
Q. Do you see a solution to it, or is there one?
A. I think we need to have enough force structure. I believe 330 ships (recommended as the size of the fleet by 1999) is too few. I think the bottom-up review called for 346. I think that number is achievable. We don't have to build any more ships, just hold on to the ones we have and not decommission them quite as early as projected.
I think we need to look at our force requirements again. Even since the bottom-up review, we have had a pretty substantial change in the world situation. The bottom-up review made it clear the force levels called for had to be buttressed by technological improvements in weapons and sensors. And secondly, it said that if the world situation changed, the force levels would be reviewed.
I think they have changed, Korea being the prime example, along with Haiti.
Q. Will 12 aircraft carriers be enough to get the job done?
A. Twelve carriers seem to be a given. It depends on how much risk you want to accept. If you want to have better coverage, I think our figures are like 14 carriers.
We no longer have a training command carrier in Pensacola (Fla.). So carrier qualification for student (aviators) is done by fleet carriers, which are working harder and making more frequent deployments.
We are still living within our guidelines (of 6 months deployed and 12 months at home), but it is getting closer. When not deployed, they are spending time out there doing carrier qualifications.
We are sending fewer ships with carriers, probably not quite enough.
That means the 12 carriers we have left will have to work harder.
And when other situations arise, like Haiti, the time we spend away from home port, preparing for underway, or going from home port, increases dramatically. We have lots of ships right now facing a negative (personnel) tempo for some time to come.
Q. There have been suggestions by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill A. McPeak that B-1 and B-2 bombers based in the United States could perform the forward presence requirement currently done by the Navy. In the past you have called that nonsense. Is it?
A. Absolutely. Our job in peacetime is to work with our allies, maintain access to ports and airfields and ensure overseas petroleum shipping. We lay the groundwork for future coalitions. We do logistics preparations. We have arrangements with regional support if needed. All this is laying the groundwork for the future. That aspect of our forward presence mission cannot be accomplished by an aircraft at 30,000 feet.
Q. Then why is this debate continuing? I thought the rivalry between the services was over in this new era of joint service operations. Is Gen. McPeak lobbying for more money before Congress?
A. I suspect that is it.
Q. So, what is he trying to say?
A. I don't know. But I am nervous.
We are not picking the fight. We are just doing our job. We admire the Air Force. They do a tremendous job and their bombers have a real important role to play in certain scenarios at the upper end of the crisis spectrum. The crisis spectrum begins with a happy, quiet world and goes all the way through global war. At the upper end of that spectrum, bombers play an important role. But in most of that spectrum, they are in the background.
The Air Force believes that Navy air is in competition with them. We don't see it that way. Or that we are competing for funds with them. We don't see it that way either. We are complementary forces, not redundant.
Q. Has force structure declined too rapidly?
A. I believe so. Things have changed. We ought to think more carefully about future shipbuilding needs. We are only building three to five ships (annually) now. If a ship lasts 40 years and we build five a year, that still is only a 200-ship Navy. We are OK for a while because a lot of new ships were built in the '80s. But at some point in time, we will have to build a hell of a lot more ships to even maintain 346 ships in our Navy.
To the extent that we can build more ships now, we will save the industrial base and decrease the bow wave in the future, which may be unaffordable.
The problem is we have a fixed budget level. What do you give up to build more ships? I don't know what else you can give up. The operating funds are cut to the core. The base maintenance funds are cut to core. The number of ships in our inventory are cut below the core. What else is there to give up? Not much.
The bottom line in all of that is that some fairly large increase in Navy budget authority would make a big difference for the better.
Q. You say you don't know what else to give up. But won't you have to find something?
A. We spend money on training. We have targets, drones. They are expensive. We have less opportunity to shoot. We cut back to the minimum number of firings for certifications. We don't do anything more than that. We spend as much time in port training to save fuel at sea.
Ships in home waters are operating less because ships overseas are operating so much. In the Med they are under way almost all the time. The (carrier) Theodore Roosevelt went to the Med and down into the Red Sea and came back. She was gone 182 days and was under way 164 days.
Over the long term, that is not good for people or machines. When the ship comes back, it is tired. We've got to put more money into maintenance.
And while that ship is operating and steaming and flying more, I have got to take it out of this side of the ocean for operations to fund for increased tempo over there.
Q. Who pays for ships operating off Haiti?
A. We do; $20 million a month just for steaming. We are getting reimbursement to some extent for those costs. But we see a liability at the end of this fiscal year of up to $40 million that will have to come out of maintenance or other fleet activities to pay for the Haitian cost. There is reprogramming going on (and) we're talking about a supplemental (appropriation from Congress). . . . But there is a chance we will not get completely reimbursed.
Q. Are you busier now than before Desert Storm and the end of the Cold War?
A. Yes, we are. We have four to five times as many ships in the Persian Gulf area than we did before Desert Storm. We are still imposing sanctions against Iraq in the Red Sea, and I don't know when that is going to end. Haiti will go away one day, but there will be another crisis.
Cuba also is potentially a concern from the point of view of the Cuban economy and in the number of Cuban asylum seekers coming out of Cuba.
Q. Have those numbers increased?
A. Dramatically. We had a very large increase in the last two years, particularly of the number of Cubans walking through minefields, or swimming for up to 10 hours to get to our base at Guantanamo. Last year there were 800. The year before only 200.
Combine those with the number who go across to the Straits of Florida in inner tubes or small boats, and we have 12,000 to 14,000 Cuban asylum seekers.
Q. What is your annual operating budget?
A. $4.7 billion. That includes funds for 27 bases, all the support for my sailors: child-development centers, enlisted quarters, tugboats, 224 ships, fuel, spare parts, flying hours, maintenance for all 1,400 Marine and Navy aircraft this side of the ocean. That is half the Navy.
(The figure does not include salaries, which is another $4.8 billion, appropriated out of Washington and including 12,000 officers and 125,000 enlisted).
Q. Do you ever bounce checks?
A. No. We don't run out of money. We stop spending. We tie ships up. We tie airplanes up. We are doing that now. We have ships and aircraft returning from deployment and we are parking them. We are not operating them until Oct. 1 (the beginning of the new fiscal year) in order to save money for the forces that must operate.
Q. Has that happened before?
A. It is not unusual. But I think this year is probably the worst I have seen because of increased operational tempo, plus the increased cost of doing business. As you get smaller, the individual maintenance costs are more.
Q. Are your ships and personnel ready for their missions?
A. We are ready out there. The ships are combat ready. It has not always been this way. I've seen a hollow force a couple of times in my career. The last time was in the late '70s. But we built this force today brick by brick, and it took a decade to do it. Our challenge is to keep it.
Q. Can it come tumbling down?
A. Oh yes. It can come down a lot faster than it took to build it up.
Q. Do you see any warning signs out there that it is coming down?
A. Not yet. But you look at projected numbers of dollars available for basing and for spare parts and for our operating tempo, which continues to increase as our force structure goes down. Yet the numbers of things required to do by higher authority have gone up. So at some point in time there is a crossover and we need to be aware of that.
Q. Will there come a time when you tell higher authority that you can't do a mission?
A. If it comes to that point, I will not be bashful about saying so. ILLUSTRATION: Staff color photo by LAWRENCE JACKSON
Adm. Henry H. ``Hank'' Mauz Jr. is retiring as commander in chief of
the Atlantic Fleet.
KEYWORDS: INTERVIEW MILITARY BUDGET DEFENSE BUDGET
U.S. NAVY U.S. AIR FORCE
by CNB