THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 12, 1994 TAG: 9410120450
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN AND JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines
The line is almost a mantra for Navy leaders: At the first sign of international trouble, they say, the president invariably asks, ``Where is the nearest aircraft carrier?''
But as Iraqi troops and tanks edged away from the Kuwaiti border on Tuesday, the more relevant question seemed to be: ``Where was the nearest carrier before trouble started and why wasn't it in the Persian Gulf?''
The George Washington, a Norfolk-based flattop, visited the gulf in September. But it was in the Adriatic Sea near another trouble spot - Bosnia - last week when Saddam Hussein mounted his latest threat to Kuwait. The Washington now is steaming back to the gulf; its 60-plus jets are in range of Iraq but the ship probably will not be off its coast until Thursday.
``It just happened not to be there,`` Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday of the Washington. He declined to speculate on whether the presence of a carrier in the gulf might have deterred Saddam from his apparent preparations for an attack.
Such deterrence is among the Navy's prime missions. But Shalikashvili reminded reporters that the Pentagon can't keep a carrier at every potential trouble spot every day.
Still, the absence of a carrier at the outset of the latest Iraqi crisis may rekindle debate over the force levels the Clinton administration set in its ``Bottom Up Review'' of the military last year. Republicans across the country, including Virginia U.S. Senate hopeful Oliver L. North, are campaigning this fall in part on the theme that the administration has cut the military too sharply.
Some in the services voice the same concern. ``As we try to work our way through this downsizing and this shrinking fleet, we very quickly come to the realization that it is shrinking too much,'' Adm. Jeremy Michael Boorda, the chief of naval operations, said last week in a speech in Norfolk.
He is working on ``an idea for a Navy that is perhaps slightly larger than the one someone envisioned and is certainly more capable,'' Boorda said.
The Bottom Up Review led the administration to conclude the Navy needs 11 active carriers, plus one in reserve. The study said that is enough to show American muscle around the world and, if necessary, fight two major regional wars simultaneously.
But at that level, a senior Navy official said Tuesday, there must be gaps of several weeks or months in carrier patrols even in such persistent trouble spots as the gulf. ``As soon as you come down to fewer than 15 or 16, you start to make tradeoffs,'' he said.
During peacetime operations, only about half of the Navy's carriers are deployed on a particular day. The others are receiving maintenance or involved in training and readiness exercises. In an attempt to retain its best sailors and pilots, the service tries to limit deployments to six months.
``Now that Korea is a front burner issue, we keep two carriers in that area. We are gapping the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf a great deal of time,'' Adm. Henry H. Mauz Jr., commander of the Navy's Atlantic Fleet, said as he retired from active duty last week. ``That is OK for a while but you can't do that long term without hurting your national interests.''
Mauz argued that the nation needs 13 active carriers, along with more submarines, amphibious ships, cruisers and destroyers, to protect its interests. The 330-ship Navy now being fashioned should be ``in the middle to upper 300s,'' he said.
But other critics, including some who aggressively promote a strong defense, argue that the value of carriers and naval presence generally is overblown.
``Saddam Hussein doesn't care about the carrier,'' said Robert A. Gaskin, a retired Air Force officer who was a Pentagon planner during the Bush administration.
Gaskin said the American resolve and willingness to fight that carrier patrols projected to the Soviet Union during the Cold War seem lost on Saddam, the Bosnian Serbs and other U.S. antagonists.
Gaskin is an analyst for Business Executives for National Security, which lobbies for a stronger military. He argued that the Pentagon has put resources into carriers at the expense of the Army and Air Force, rendering those services unable to meet its goal of being able to fight two regional wars at once.
Gaskin said the military really needs only seven carriers and should sharply cut deployment of Marine Corps amphibious ready groups. The Marines have 12 such groups, each with about 2,000 troops, which generally operate in conjunction with carriers.
Each carrier and the ships that go with it cost more than $3 billion annually to operate, Gaskin said. And the 12 Marine amphibious groups cost a total of $19 billion per year. Cutting some carriers and reconfiguring the Marines into a quick reaction force deployed largely by air would generate savings for additional mechanized Army divisions and Air Force fighter wings, Gaskin said.
``You've gotta make choices like that, and those aren't being made,'' he said.
KEYWORDS: MILITARY DOWNSIZING AIRCRAFT CARRIERS by CNB