DATE: Thursday, March 6, 1997               TAG: 9703050449

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: MILITARY

COLUMN

SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   63 lines

JOHN LEHMAN HITS BULLS-EYE WITH IDEAS ABOUT NAVY

Whenever John Lehman spoke as secretary of the Navy back in the 1980s, he usually garnered a headline.

Those were the days when the Reagan administration was pumping up the military, following post-Vietnam War cutbacks. Lehman was pushing the Navy toward a 600-ship fleet, from the 480 it had at the time. Substantial pay raises were in the works. So were shorter overseas deployments and better standards of living for the sailors.

Lehman, always colorful, seldom bashful and usually on target, was what we in the news business loved. He made good copy.

Last week when he returned to Hampton Roads - actually he said ``Tidewater,'' but former Norfolk Mayor Vince Thomas rose to correct him on the more modern name - Lehman again talked about the stuff that could grab headlines.

The 330-plus ships the Navy will soon have is ``too small,'' he said. No one in the administration is ``backing off'' sending units overseas.

``We're beginning to head back down that road where we had a hemorrhage of talent,'' he said of today's Navy.

His remarks were made at the Breezy Point Officers Club during the first of a series of lectures sponsored by the Hampton Roads Naval Museum.

The active duty guests, as well as retired military and civilian supporters of the Navy, didn't even flinch.

But I hadn't heard that ``hemorrhage of talent'' quote since early in 1981 when then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Thomas B. Hayward came out with a frank assessment of the Navy's prowess, saying, in effect, it stunk.

The Navy was short 25,000 petty officers at that time, thus the hemorrhage of talent. Maintenance of its ships was behind schedule, readiness was at its worst, deployments were long and spare parts were hard to find. Frankly, when Lehman made that statement here last week, I initially overlooked it as coming from a former Navy expert who had been away so long that he forgot ``Tidewater'' changed its name.

But then some of the nation's top military officers, gathered at Langley Air Force Base on Monday to update a House subcommittee on readiness, started saying somewhat the same thing.

While his 18th Airborne Corps is well prepared, Lt. Gen. John Keane said he is challenged today with trying to maintain a volunteer Army when many soldiers are underpaid and must spend too much time away from their families.

Those long deployments and hours are the result of a shrinking, post-Cold War military that must do more with fewer people, Keane said.

At Fort Bragg, N.C., 80 percent of military families have to live off base, while many unmarried soldiers live in 1950s-era barracks with open bays for sleeping and communal latrines.

Lt. Gen. Charles Wilhelm, commanding general of the Marine Corps' Atlantic forces, noted that his Marines spend 177 days of the year deployed.

Adm. J. Paul Reason, commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet, and Air Force Gen. Richard Hawley, commander of Air Combat Command, expressed similar concerns.

Could it be that Lehman is again on target?

When he concluded his remarks, he acknowledged there's no need for a 600-ship Navy today; that what Reagan called ``the evil empire'' is certainly gone and that there is no other superpower to match that of the United States.

But he also acknowledged there's trouble ahead.

``So now, where do we go?'' he asked.

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