THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 12, 1996 TAG: 9609120387
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOHN MINTZ, THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 69 lines
The U.S. Navy and the Air Force, and factions within each service, have jockeyed strenuously this week over who gets the anticipated assignment to attack Iraq from the air in response to the reported rebuilding of air defense sites and Wednesday's launch of a missile against U.S. F-16 jet fighters.
Military commanders keenly want to demonstrate their weapons systems' capabilities in an assault on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in order to protect their interests in a different sort of war - a bruising Pentagon review of all U.S. military programs next year that will demand that commanders justify their weapons and the funds allotted to them.
The most brutal struggles, as usual, pit the Air Force against the Navy, military officials said. In the first round of U.S. attacks, when 44 American cruise missiles were launched against 15 Iraqi sites on Sept. 3 and 4, the Navy was seen as winning hands down because its surface ships and a submarine in the Persian Gulf shot 31 of those missiles, while Air Force B-52s released only 13.
Now Navy officials are trying to persuade operations planners at the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the maritime service should again shoulder the main burden in a new assault. And several bureaucracies within the Navy itself - representing aircraft carriers, cruise missiles and submarines - are each lobbying like sidelined football players who plead, ``Coach, let me in the game.''
At the same time, the Air Force has won a key victory by securing an assignment for its F-117A stealth fighters, a squadron of which flew Wednesday from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico to Kuwait for the expected strikes against Iraq. Before this, the Air Force had been hobbled because Saudi Arabia and Turkey had forbidden U.S. jets based in their countries from taking part in assaults on Iraq.
``Who gets assigned to do what is important because we're on the eve of a quadrennial review of military programs that will substantially determine the military services' budgets for years to come,'' said Loren Thompson, a Pentagon and defense-industry consultant. ``Many people think the Air Force will take a hit (in the review) because of its inability to operate'' in the region, he said.
Meanwhile, Navy officials are crowing that their aircraft carriers, such as the Carl Vinson, based in the Persian Gulf, need not ask permission from allies in the area to fly their jets against Saddam.
``The Air Force has been castrated,'' a Navy official said. ``With an aircraft carrier, you get 4.5 acres of Americana with no diplomatic restrictions on when and what you can fly.''
The inter-service rivalry is intense now, military officials said, in part because the Clinton administration's military objectives in Iraq are so vague that constituencies representing every weapon system are developing scenarios for assaulting Iraq.
``We have a huge array of options, but they all depend on what the White House says the objective is,'' the official said. ``What's the objective - Avoiding loss of American lives? More serious bombing? It's been unclear, so the result is every weapon in the U.S. arsenal gets waved around, with somebody saying, `Here's an option.' ''
``It's an ugly little story, but there's a lot of money and perceived prestige at stake'' in having weapons deployed in battle, one military official said Wednesday. ``You never want to be the guy saying, `My boats can't go.' ''
But in a Pentagon culture that at least gives lip service to the concept of cooperative ``joint'' operations, one Pentagon official said, ``You don't want a reputation for being too parochial, as in `Johnny doesn't play well with the group.' ''
KEYWORDS: U.S NAVY U.S. AIRFORCE COMPETITION IRAQ
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