THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 9, 1996 TAG: 9609090029
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 145 lines
Gen. John J. Sheehan still looks every inch a Marine: 6 foot 4, square jaw, a veteran of 34 years of military service.
And as the nation's No. 1 joint force trainer as commander of the U.S. Atlantic Command, and NATO's No. 1 strategist in the Atlantic, he has a job befitting a lifetime warrior.
But when he talks lately, this 56-year-old often sounds more like a CEO in a business suit than a soldier in uniform. And he's saying things that run counter to convential military rhetoric.
Like:
There's too much fat within the military's headquarters.
There's a need to get a grip on the military's future now, while there is no international competitor to be concerned about.
The United States is an unsuspecting nation that really hasn't prepared itself for the years beyond the Cold War.
``The military is kind of like the auto industry in the '80s. We've taken out 36 percent of the combat structure of the U.S. military and have kept a lot of the overhead. Is that good business?''
Sheehan, who commands 80 percent of the nation's warriors, insists he's not trying to start an argument with such statements but is merely pushing an important debate the defense industry needs to confront.
Besides, he's felt the heat before.
Recently, about the time Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Charles C. Krulak was asking Congress to increase the number of Marine generals from 68 to 80, Sheehan was telling senators that headquarters should not be growing as the force shrinks. ``The growth in headquarters staff jobs is threatening war-fighting capability,'' he said.
Recently, in an interview at his Norfolk headquarters, Sheehan declined to be drawn into a discussion of Krulak's proposal.
``I am not going to take on specific services,'' he said. ``That is a debate between the commandant and the Senate.''
But overall, Sheehan is concerned about the possible imbalance between headquarters staffs and total force structure.
Sheehan has his own ``Parkinson's Law,'' named after C. Northcote Parkinson, a British historian. Parkinson has written of how the Royal Navy, in its heyday just before 1940, needed 37 people per ship on its admiralty staff to support a fleet of 308 ships. Thirty years later, the British had just 114 ships but 295 admiralty staff members per ship.
``My question is quite simple: Are we going in the same direction? I think statistically, we are.''
Today's U.S. Navy has 361 ships, about 300 flag officers, and a shore-based staff of 129,000.
Arguably, the complexity of today's Navy and Marine Corps - both of which have air, sea and ground troops with more specialized missions, bigger ships and more costly aircraft than ever before - may warrant more management.
But Sheehan's concern about bureaucracy isn't confined to the Navy.
In the Marine Corps infantry today, as well as the Army, there are so many upper-level billets that junior officers are being rushed forward to fill them, he suggested.
The average Army or Marine captain today has about 15 months of infantry skills under his belt, commanding company-sized units.
``A major does 21 months, and a lieutenant colonel does 21 months,'' Sheehan said. ``So you are getting colonels today with less than 60 months' operations experience'' out of a total of up to 25 years in uniform.
``So all of a sudden, he is your expert? That's not healthy,'' the general said.
In contrast, by the time Sheehan was a major in 1972, he had commanded three company-sized units - an anti-tank company, a rifle company, and a headquarters and service company.
``I had 30 months' command experience as a captain,'' he said.
His point is that as the nation's military shrinks, it would be better to reduce headquarters staffs - the desk jobs, as Sheehan calls them - to save some big-muscle items.
``If I am forced to give up force structure to buy the modernization, why don't I give up headquarters instead of combat structure? Why is it I am giving up ships, aircraft, armored cavalry regiments?
``The issue ultimately becomes that we are producing a military that over time will become inefficient because it won't know its trade,'' he said.
Critical to changing U.S. military structure, said Sheehan, will be a quadrennial review that Congress and the Pentagon will begin in January.
It will be a hard look, following the ``Bottom Up'' review of 1993 that set the force structure of today, he said - a force structure that may be too expensive for the nation to afford.
To some, the Bottom Up review is now ``like a ship steaming toward the rocks,'' said one of Sheehan's aides. ``If you don't turn the ship you will founder, because the replacement costs of the military today are not affordable.''
Sheehan agrees with that assessment.
The Pentagon has an inventory of more than $3 trillion in tanks, planes and ships. Those items eventually wear out and need to be replaced, currently at a cost of $109 billion a year. Yet the military has only $39 billion to spend annually. Sheehan and other top military brass, including Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, say the military should be spending at least $60 billion annually on weapons procurement - and hopefully closer to $109 billion.
Because they can't, they have tough choices in the future.
``You can use it less, keep it around longer, or take the force structure out,'' Sheehan said. ``What do you want to trade? Or, I can take my base structure and cut that to pieces, or do less maintenance and change the quality of life. Those are the issues.
``That's what this whole argument is about. That is why this discussion is going on in Washington about the quadrennial review.''
The review's main thrust will be to look for efficiencies.
``It's time to review the bidding,'' he said.
``We have 100,000 people (U.S. forces) in Europe. We had to put 20,000 people in Bosnia. They had to get 6,000 people from the U.S. to do it. What are the other 86,000 people in Europe doing?
``I am not making a value judgment. I'm just saying from a perspective from a country that now all of a sudden has a truly global commitment, because it is the only superpower, you cannot afford to be inefficient.''
The efficiencies will be found in studies between manned and unmanned vehicles, he said. ``Are there alternative ways to do business? Is it a requirement always to have a carrier in the Adriatic? Can you do it with land-based aviation, or cruise missile-firing ships?''
The Air Force is studying a proposal in which a large aircraft company would essentially lease engines to the service, guaranteeing flight performance on bombers, said Sheehan.
That would allow the Air Force to remove an entire echelon of maintenance workers from the system and have the work performed on a contract basis, he said.
``That is how this whole thought process is driving people,'' he said. ``The debate is not local.''
Sheehan said Hampton Roads would remain important and may even grow as a military center because of the presence of major commands such as his, the Air Force's Air Combat Command in Hampton and the Army's Training and Doctrine Command and Joint Warfighting Center at Fort Monroe.
``But it will become an issue if the system doesn't intellectually debate what the future strategy of the U.S. military is all about,'' he said.
The United States has an opportunity now for an honest debate about what the nation wants to be able to do with its military and whether it is willing to pay for it, he said.
``We have five to seven to 10 years where there just is not a peer competitor out there,'' he said. ``I think we have a great opportunity to do something and get it right. It will take hard work and leadership.'' ILLUSTRATION: What Gen. Sheehan says:
There's too much fat within the military's headquarters.
There's a need to get a grip on the military's future now, while
there is no international competitor to be concerned about.
The United States is an unsuspecting nation that really hasn't
prepared itself for the years beyond the Cold War.
``The military is kind of like the auto industry in the '80s.
We've taken out 36 percent of the combat structure of the U.S.
military and have kept a lot of the overhead. Is that good
business?''
KEYWORDS: INTERVIEW by CNB