THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 22, 1994 TAG: 9408220075
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
The Pentagon's top leadership has ordered the military services to plan for the possible cancellation or delay of nearly every large new weapons system in the planning or development stages.
In a memorandum Thursday, Deputy Defense Secretary John M. Deutch asked the Army, Navy and Air Force to draw up specific alternatives for the major weapons programs planned by the services. The cost savings would pay for ``improvements in other areas.''
Deutch's memo alarmed the military services and defense contractors, who said such cuts or delays could weaken the nation's defenses.
The memo, obtained by The Washington Post, was intended by Deutch to be ``a huge wake-up call'' to the military services that they will have to delay or eliminate hardware programs or face deep cuts in other areas, a Pentagon official said Sunday.
Top Pentagon officials received the memo Friday and a number of military and industry officials expressed distress when they learned about it over the weekend. Several officials said that if the order were enacted as written, it would be one of the largest mass cutbacks of military programs in memory.
``This'll be a blow to the Navy . . . and it's scary,'' a Navy official said.
``You're going to hear a lot of screaming'' by Air Force officials over the proposed delay of up to four years in producing the F-22 jet fighter, an Air Force official said.
Deutch, with the support of Defense Secretary William J. Perry, is searching for budget cuts because the Pentagon lacks funds to carry out its missions. Last month the General Accounting Office said the Defense Department has underestimated its costs and exaggerated its savings, and will find it is $150 billion short over the next five years.
The memo doesn't say how much money Deutch wants to save, so it cannot be determined how many programs could be affected.
Congress' top priority, which is almost a mantra at the Pentagon, is troop ``readiness,'' so there's little chance of chopping much from training and operations budgets.
With budgets rising for such missions as helping Cuban and Rwandan refugees and fighting drug traffickers, defense officials are turning to big-ticket weapons purchases to find savings.
``It may not even be these programs that will be cut,'' the Pentagon official said, but some programs almost certainly will be cut or postponed.
Deutch spared no military branch, and his list includes some of the services' most treasured gems:
THE NAVY was told to submit plans for slowing the rate of production of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and new attack submarines, as well as for canceling the Marine Corps's embattled V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.
General Dynamics Corp. officials, whose Electric Boat shipyards in New England are to make the new submarine, said a one-year delay would be bearable but a longer one would be troubling.
The most vulnerable shipyards would be the Bath Iron Works in Maine and Litton Industries Inc.'s shipyard in Mississippi, which are desperate for work because they are the last two U.S. yards that make conventional Navy ships.
``I don't see any way to keep two yards open because it's so inefficient,'' a shipbuilding industry official said Sunday. ``One could be forced under.'' The Navy said it can't maintain its planned force of 330 ships by building only two destroyers a year, as Deutch recommended.
THE ARMY was ordered by Deutch to ``develop a program alternative that terminates'' the only new programs under development, such as the Comanche helicopter and the Advanced Field Artillery System. It means the Army will have to settle for only upgraded versions of the Apache helicopter and the Paladin artillery system.
THE AIR FORCE, Deutch said, should prepare for possible cancellation of the Tri-Service Standoff Attack Missile as well as for a four-year delay in the F-22 jet fighter and a seven-year delay in its Joint Primary Aircraft Training System.
THE MARINE CORPS said it needs the V-22 because the the decades-old CH-46 isn't big enough and requires four hours of repairs for every hour it is in operation.
KEYWORDS: PENTAGON MILITARY BUDGET DEFENSE BUDGET
by CNB