DATE: Sunday, April 20, 1997                TAG: 9704180799

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, Staff writer 

DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:  179 lines

ROBB: WASHINGTON'S NEW DEFENSE GURU

He still has the clear, unblinking eyes and the purposeful stride of a Marine officer. The jet-black hair, flecked now with gray, might be a couple of centimeters longer than regs permit, but it's still perfectly trimmed.

Watching him greet the current Marine commandant, Gen. Charles C. Krulak, you almost expect Sen. Charles S. Robb to snap to attention. And at Senate hearings, as he questions uniformed and civilian Pentagon leaders about everything from troop readiness to the quality of base housing, Robb's affection and respect for the military are unmistakable.

The Virginia Democrat acknowledges that he was recruited for the Senate Armed Services Committee because military leaders figured his combat tour as a Marine in Vietnam and his 30 years of other active and reserve service would make him sympathetic to their point of view. And Robb has not disappointed.

Still, as Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and other Pentagon leaders work this spring on a ``quadrennial review'' of the military's structure and missions, Robb is writing magazine articles, making phone calls and organizing skull sessions that could mark him as a new kind of defense hawk.

The Virginian is casting himself as something of an agent provocateur, quietly pressing friends in uniform and on Capitol Hill to join him in some ``out-of-the-box'' thinking about the military's future.

``We need look beyond what's on the horizon today and create a military structure able to meet threats we can't see yet,'' Robb said in a recent interview. Now the world's only superpower, America ``has a window'' that will be open for a few years before any antagonist will be able to seriously challenge its forces, he argued. ``We ought to take advantage (of that window) to try to reposture ourselves to be able to fight and win in a different way.''

Robb's suggested way is a set of surprisingly unconventional ideas. While he wants the U.S. to stick to its strategy of maintaining sufficient force for two ``nearly simultaneous'' regional wars, he argues that the military should be radically restructured to meet that strategy.

In place of the five unified regional commands, like the Norfolk-based U.S. Atlantic Command, to plan and execute joint warfighting by the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force, Robb suggests Congress create two ``theatre commands,'' each with worldwide responsibility.

The ``first theatre command'' would handle America's involvement in an initial regional war, coordinating the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine forces necessary to respond.

The ``second theatre command,'' generally maintained at a lower state of readiness - a Navy carrier battle group just back from deployment overseas, for example - would gear up once an initial conflict arose and be ready within 90 days to fight a second war should one break out.

Robb says the commands would rotate every six months or so. Each would be assigned six aircraft carrier groups, six Air Force fighter wings, four active and six reserve Army divisions and one Marine Division. There would be frequent overseas deployments but they would be kept brief, and almost all U.S. forces would be based on American soil.

To assure that reservists and active forces would mesh smoothly, Robb said, each reserve division would be ``on'' - in full operational status - for one month during the command's rotation.

``With fewer total months in a highly ready mission-capable status, and fewer months of training, there may be notable savings without undue risk to the nation,'' Robb writes in a soon-to-be-published article in ``Joint Forces Quarterly,'' a military journal.

Robb also wants to combine the U.S. Space Command and U.S. Strategic Command, which now have equal rank to the regional commands, into a new Strategic Defense Command, responsible for military operations in space, long-range nuclear missiles and national missile defense. And he would downgrade the U.S. Transportation Command, responsible for moving U.S. troops and equipment around the world, making it subordinate to the first- and second-theatre commands.

Finally, Robb would preserve the current Special Operations Command, for support of U.S. allies in low-intensity conflicts, and create a new ``Stability Enhancement Command'' for peacekeeping and humanitarian missions. The enhancement force would be assigned two active and one reserve Army divisions and one active and one reserve Marine division.

While Republican defense hawks argue that the Clinton administration's use of the military for nation-building and peacekeeping operations is sapping the morale of American troops and spending dollars that should be invested in new weapons, Robb argues that such missions are a smart investment of U.S. resources.

Peacekeeping operations have added less than 2 percent to the defense budget in recent years, he said, saving thousands of lives in the countries involved, and arguably keeping America and its allies out of what might have become regional wars.

Rather than shun such missions, the military should create a command tailored to handle them, Robb said. And, as another money-saver, its troops need not be trained in many traditional warfighting skills, he said.

``You would have units designated for purposes that were not warfighting,'' he said, and the president would be able to tell the international community, `` `Here's what I've got set aside, but that's it.' . . . We can't take a maintenance squadron or an artillery battalion (as today's military sometimes does) and expect them to do the same job.''

Discussions about the structure of any major institution tend to be brain-numbing, particularly so when the institution is as massive as the U.S. military. But precisely because the military is so big, it may be possible to save billions of dollars without losing any real strength, some analysts suggest.

The bottom line on Robb's proposal is a leaner, less bureaucratic military with five unified commands, rather than the current nine. And all Robb's commands would be organized by their job functions, ending the current mix of some commands organized by functions and others by geography.

Robb said that while most U.S. troops would be based inside the country, activities of the stability command and training exercises by the theatre commands would demonstrate America's continuing determination to remain engaged around the world.

Robb suggests that today's military is bureaucratically obese, with too many overlapping commands soaking up resources that ought to be spent on warriors. In an enterprise as complex as warfighting, some redundancy is desirable, he said, but in today's Pentagon ``there is a lot of waste and duplication to be cut.''

``There is a constant battle between tooth and tail'' in the military, he said. And American forces are ``far heavier in the tail than in the tooth right now.''

While his organizational proposal aims at the military's bureaucracy, Robb says the services also could use another cut in infrastructure - in other words, another painful round of base closings.

``You find very few of the policy people in the Defense Department who won't agree that if they've got to do more with less, that what they ought to start with less of is infrastructure,'' he said. And if the military is going to increase weapons procurement, as leaders insist it must do to replace today's aging guns, tanks, planes and ships, ``the dollars have got to come from someplace.''

Since last year, Robb has been quietly pitching these ideas, and some others, to an assortment of civilian and uniformed defense leaders and thinkers in Washington. He's gone around the world during congressional recesses to visit with the four-star generals and admirals who head the nine current unified commands and other senior military officials.

Some of the brass have been quietly supportive, Robb said, but there is a lot of resistance to change as well. ``No one wants to give away a big piece of their own base,'' he said.

And Robb admits there are some legitimate concerns. Regional commands like those now in place give the U.S. generals and admirals in those jobs a chance to become experts in their particular areas and to work closely with their counterparts in area countries.

``I'm a true believer in the worth of that kind of diplomacy,'' Robb said. But he suggested that it ought to be possible for the first- and second-theatre commanders he envisions to maintain needed ties with U.S. allies in such areas as the Middle East and the Korean peninsula, where conflicts are most likely.

From the start of the quadrennial review, which is being managed by the Pentagon and is to produce a report by May 15, there has been a concern that turf consciousness among service leaders might keep them from going far enough to restructure the force, Robb said.

News leaks about early drafts of the report have reinforced those notions, as they indicate that the document might recommend trimming some military forces - at least one of the Army's 12 divisions is considered particularly vulnerable - but not to any radical degree.

That would suit many - probably most - in Congress just fine. But Robb said that with pressure on the balance the federal budget, there is a strong bipartisan sense that military spending may have to fall more while the nation maintains, or even expands it's military strength.

With the retirement this year of Georgia's Sam Nunn, and the retirement next year of Ohio's John Glenn, the Senate will have lost two of its most skilled military thinkers. Robb is unusually well-positioned to maintain the Democratic side of the Senate's bipartisanship on defense issues by countering the more dovish impulses of some of his colleagues.

``It is my hope actually that we can generate a good deal of concern,'' Robb said of his current effort to advance new ideas, ``because that is the only way that we can have an honest discussion of where we are and what we need.

``And, of course, the toughest part of the equation is how we get from here to there. I can redesign the world, and I can accurately describe where we are today, but figuring out the transition plan . . . that's the tough part.'' MEMO: Dale Eisman covers military and political affairs in Washington,

D.C., for The Virginian-Pilot. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

JIM WALKER/The Virginian-Pilot

Virginians Charles S. Robb, right, and John W. Warner pack a

powerful military punch in the Senate.

Photo KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY U.S. SENATE

U.S. MILITARY

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