Rep. FLOYD SPENCE (R-SC) (22 February '95, House National Security Committee: "The future readiness of the force is unquestionably in jeopardy."

GEN JOHN SHALIKASHVILI, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (before Senate Armed Services Committee, 9 February '95): "Today, the department, the Joint Chiefs, the CINCs and I are watching readiness more closely and in more ways than at anytime that I can remember."

Rep. RON DELLUMS (D-CA) (from 2 March '95 interview): "The bottom line of what I'm saying is there is no short term readiness problem."

ADM JEREMY BOORDA, Chief of Naval Operations (22 February '95, before House National Security Committee): "Ready for what? I think that's pretty important. Ready for what?"

NARRATOR: Today, "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" looks at military readiness. What is it? How is it measured? Maintained? And, most importantly, what is the US military getting ready for?

ADM JOHN SHANAHAN: I'm Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, director of the Center for Defense Information. Frequently I'm asked the question, 'Are you ready?' And I respond, "Ready for what?" Or, "Ready to go where?" In Washington, any number of our politicians on both sides of the aisle are questioning the readiness of our armed forces. So, I again ask the question, "Ready for what?" Or, "Ready to go where?"

Our program today examines military readiness issues.

NARRATOR: For months our media has been filled with reports of Navy crews worn out from extended deployments, Army divisions reporting below par readiness ratings, cancelled training exercises, and tactical aviation units grounding aircraft. Critics of the Clinton administration have charged that American military forces are increasingly unready to meet our nation's military policy goals.

One of these critics if Senator John McCain of Arizona, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and leading Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Senator McCain charges that the US military is on the verge of returning to the so-called "hollow forces" of the 1970s.

Senator JOHN McCAIN: I hear other stories from unit commanders in all branches of the service who talk about how their readiness is deteriorating. The service chiefs and the CINCs continue to testify that unless something changes, that they are going to be near the edge of serious problems in readiness.

NARRATOR: Such criticisms have had an impact. Late last year, President Clinton announced that he was adding $25 billion to the military budget through Fiscal Year 2001 in order to improve quality of life and readiness for the military. Senator McCain, however, thinks there is less there than meets the eye.

Sen. McCAIN: Very little has changed except for the president before the election talked about $2 1/2 billion additional, I believe it was, and then after the election, committed to an additional 25 billion over five years. That's the good news. Unfortunately, 15 of that $25 billion will not be allocated until the next century; a little bit of sleight of hand there in my view.

NARRATOR: More recently, the administration requested a $2.6 billion supplemental appropriation to pay for unbudgeted operations which the US military participated in last year, such as Haiti, Rwanda, and the Persian Gulf. The House increased that to $3.2 billion. These added funds far exceed the shortfall the Pentagon experienced last year when it responded to these unanticipated contingencies.

GEN SHALIKASHVILI (before Senate Armed Services Committee): "If I can put it in perspective, last year we saw the readiness problems resulting from approximately $400 million underfunding because of these contingencies."

NARRATOR: Yet a report released by the Congressional Budget Office in March 1994 found that "overall, the readiness of deployable units is high now relative to historical levels." Secretary of Defense William Perry recently affirmed that judgment in congressional testimony.

Secretary WILLIAM PERRY (before Senate Armed Services Committee): "The forces which are forward deployed overseas or are standing in readiness for early deployment are at historical high rates of readiness. And that history goes back more than ten years and it is staying at essentially a constant and a very high level."

NARRATOR: In June 1994, the Pentagon's Defense Science Board, chaired by retired Army GEN Edward Meyer, who coined the term "hollow forces," released a study on military readiness. That study found, "The general readiness posture of today's conventional and unconventional forces is acceptable in most measurable areas."

What, if anything, has happened since then to make the world's most powerful military, which overwhelmed Iraq just four years ago, unready for primetime combat?

The logical place to start is to define "readiness." After all, you can't fix a problem if you don't know what it is. Surprisingly, there is no commonly accepted definition of military readiness.

Dr. RICHARD BETTS: Well, that's a matter of a lot of controversy because at different times people, both in the military and in the Pentagon, have defined it to include almost anything related to military capability.

NARRATOR: Dr. Richard Betts is a political science professor at Columbia University. He is author of the just published book, Military Readiness: Concept, Choices, Consequences.

Dr. BETTS: The problem is if you are worried about what your readiness will be a month or a year down the road rather than tomorrow morning, that means that you would emphasize different things than those. So, as a result, at different times, people have included almost everything in readiness.

NARRATOR: The Department of Defense's official definition is "the capability of a unit/formation, ship, weapon system or equipment to perform the missions or functions for which it is organized or designed."

Readiness, however, is only one part of military capability, which is defined as "the ability to win a specified wartime objective," meaning winning a war or destroying a target. The other major components are force structure, modernization of weapons, and sustainability. Richard Betts notes these different parts of military capability call for hard decisions.

Dr. BETTS: There's a trade off between the size of a force and how perfectly ready any part of it can be. And the problem is you can't afford to ignore either one, so there's always some tension in those goals.

NARRATOR: Still, Betts believes it is possible to define readiness in common sense terms.

Dr. BETTS: Normally professionals think of it as the things that make an existing force ready to fight at peak capability in the near future. So, that would mean the status of training, equipment, spare parts, fuel, and personnel in units, so that a unit can perform at its maximum potential.

NARRATOR: Defining readiness, however, is much easier than measuring it.

DAVID EVANS: The measurement of military readiness is very imprecise. I like to suggest that it's really a metaphysical swamp, the whole issue of military readiness.

NARRATOR: David Evans is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and is director of national defense programs at Business Executives for National Security, a nonprofit, public interest group in Washington, D.C. Evans doesn't believe there is an objective system for measuring readiness.

Mr. EVANS: The readiness rating system is not only subjective, it's highly capricious, even in the areas where you're using fairly hard metrics, such as the mission-capable rate, and so on. Mission-essential equipment, for example. You can change that list in terms of the kinds of mission-essential equipment you need in a unit, what's required to be on that list, and the readiness ratings can up and down.

NARRATOR: David Evans isn't the only one to believe there are problems in trying to measure readiness. In a report released last year, the General Accounting Office noted, "DoD's system for measuring readiness provides valuable data, but it is not comprehensive and it cannot signal an impending change in readiness."

A Congressional Budget Office analysis also found "the readiness indicators used within DoD are not well suited to identifying trends in readiness over time."

The debate over our nation's military readiness escalated last November when the Pentagon revealed that three of the Army's divisions had received C-3 ratings. C-ratings are readiness indicators based on comparing the resources that units have with the levels needed for wartime. The lower the number, the higher the state of readiness. C-3 means the unit has the "required resources and is trained to undertake many, but not all, wartime missions."

Later, it was revealed that two of these Army divisions were considered likely candidates for deactivation and were, thus, low on the priority list for funds, equipment, and troops. Historically, US forces designated to deploy and fight first have always had the highest priority call for personnel, training, new equipment, and spare parts. Units scheduled to deploy later strove to be fully ready, but the fact they wouldn't be called up early gave them additional time to bring their readiness levels up.

Dr. BETTS: The recent publicity about declines in readiness of certain units in Europe and elsewhere made it sound like this is awful and unprecedented. But actually, for most of the Cold War, it was quite typical for most of our forces to go up and down in levels of readiness from day to day, depending on changes in their training schedules and other things.

NARRATOR: This was confirmed in recent congressional testimony.

Senator SAM NUNN (D-GA) [Senate Armed Services Committee hearing]: "It's my understanding that the three later-deploying Army divisions that had the readiness problems last year and continue to, I suppose, now to some degree, two of them are going to be removed from the force this year. Is that right?"

GEN SHALIKASHVILI: "That's correct, Senator Nunn. Two of them have been -- are scheduled for inactivation. So, they are now going to what is termed a C-5 status, which is disestablishment. And the other one is, we believe, now around April will be back up to their original status."

Senator NUNN: "It's also my understanding that those-- they went to C-3, and the whole implication of all the coverage was it went from C-1 to C-3. But it's my understanding all three of those divisions were never supposed to be beyond C-2."

GEN SHALIKASHVILI: "That's correct." Senator NUNN: "C-2 readiness."

GEN SHALIKASHVILI: "That's correct."

Senator NUNN: "So, the drop was from C-2 to C-3, not from C-1 to C-3."

GEN SHALIKASHVILI: "That's correct, Senator."

NARRATOR: When this readiness controversy erupted, it was said this was the first time in twelve years that three divisions had received such low scores. But subsequently, it was revealed that as many as ten Army divisions had received the same rating or worse, some during the Reagan military buildup.

David Evans feels that for these divisions, lower readiness ratings were appropriate.

Mr. EVANS: The argument could be made that if they were on the verge of deactivation, maintaining them at the very high level of readiness required for immediate go-to-war capability, when you know, in fact, you're going home to demobilize the day after tomorrow, spending money to maintain them at a high level of readiness, you know, made no sense for a division on the verge of -- It's sort of like taking your car to the detail shop before you take it to the junkyard. You know, what is the point in spending the money?

Rep. DELLUMS: I feel that the testimony that we're receiving underscores and backs up the assertion that I'm making: That this whole notion of a big readiness problem is not real.

NARRATOR: Congressman Ron Dellums is a former chair of the House Armed Services Committee, renamed the National Security Committee this year. Dellums believes the readiness debate is driven by pure politics.

Rep. DELLUMS: This is the "readiness dance," where everybody's trying to out-ready the other person. Because if that's the political issue on the table, one side says 'readiness,' the other side says 'more readiness,' and so it's like armament escalation, so that everybody wants to pour more money in.

I think a number of my colleagues perceive President Clinton to be, A, vulnerable politically, particularly in the area of, quote, "defense and military expenditures" and the issue of downsizing the military budget which, incidentally, began before the Clinton administration. This is a place where the partisan political battles tragically are being waged.

In 1985, ten years ago, readiness was approximately 25, 26 percent of the total budget. As we sit today, readiness is now 35 percent of the budget. So, readiness is on its way up.

NARRATOR: At a recent congressional hearing, Congressman Dellums questioned the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the readiness issue.

Rep. DELLUMS: [at House National Security Committee hearing]"How should we look at such reports of unreadiness? Are they real? Are they systemic? Is this blown out of proportion? Is this right on target? Are these driven by budgetary implications at the end of the year or is this what you're dealing with on a daily basis?

"Here is the mother of all readiness questions: For the record, will you give us your assessment of the current readiness of our forces to execute the national strategy?"

GEN CARL MUNDY (USMC): "The issues of readiness, at least those that have pertained to the Marine Corps that have been highlighted in the news, are not in my view, as a one-time occurrence, a war-stopper."

GEN RONALD FOGLEMAN (USAF): "In the near term, I think that the anecdotal types of things that you're making reference to, as GEN Mundy has said, are not war-stoppers."

GEN GORDON SULLIVAN (USA): "The short answer to your question, the Army is ready."

NARRATOR: Readiness usually refers to "operational" or "short-term readiness," meaning the ability to keep ships steaming, planes flying, and troops training on the ground. This ability is funded through the operations and maintenance, or O & M accounts of the military budget.

According to a December 1994 analysis by the Congressional Research Service, the Clinton administration expects to reduce operations and maintenance funding by only $2.8 billion over six years compared to the funding plans of the Bush administration. However, the Bush "Base Force" had 115,000 more active duty forces planned than the forces called for by the Clinton Bottom-Up Review.

Recently, the Congressional Budget Office found that in 1994 "DoD's total spending on O & M divided by the number of active-duty personnel will be approximately $48,000. Even after adjusting for inflation, this is above the peak levels reached in the 1980s." Another controversial issue in the readiness debate is whether US participation in operations other than war hurts combat readiness. Some say participation in non-traditional missions, such as the operation in Haiti, prevents troops from training for traditional combat missions. But not everyone agrees.

Dr. BETTS: If the Air Force is flying in medical supplies, food, things of that sort to these areas, they're doing much the same thing they'd be doing in wartime. And, in that sense, they're practicing, getting training in operations, and it helps their readiness.

Mr. EVANS: If you talk to the commander of the Marine battalion commander down at Guantanamo Bay who is containing the riots and all that, you know, he wrote a recent article, saying, 'Look, the kind of training that I've just done, containing the riots at Guantanamo Bay, have just been fantastic in terms of developing this unit's capabilities to deal with low-intensive conflict.'

NARRATOR: Congressman Dellums believes these are the sort of operations the US military is most likely to find itself doing in the future.

Rep. DELLUMS: I think the Bosnias, the Somalias, the Haitis and the Rwandas of the world are the realities of the post-Cold War world and we might as well face up to it, and America needs to play that role.

NARRATOR: One of the little discussed aspects of the military readiness issue is the question, "Ready to do what?" The United States no longer has the same opponent it did during the Cold War.

Dr. BETTS: The worst we have to worry about at present are countries like North Korea, Iran, or Iraq. Now those are not trivial problems, but they're a far cry from facing a very large, rich, highly developed great power like the old Soviet Union was.

GEN SHALIKASHVILI: "We need to maintain the ability to respond to two -- two nearly simultaneous major regional contingencies."

NARRATOR: The us military strategy now calls for having forces ready to win two major conflicts, similar in scope to the 1991 war against Iraq, nearly simultaneously, without the help of allies, as well a maintaining substantial military forces overseas.

Mr. EVANS: And I think the whole two-war scenario is really a stretch. It may be a self-serving artifice that conjures up an enormous demand for a large standing peacetime army that has to have the equivalent levels of readiness that we sustained during the Cold War.

NARRATOR: David Evans notes that today's international political climate allows for far greater warning time.

Mr. EVANS: We now know that instead of the problem of a Soviet attack into the West is not only markedly reduced, dramatically reduced to the point of not being something that you really consider. Sort of like, you know, getting a flood in your basement on the top of Pike's Peak. We're not looking at that as a major problem.

NARRATOR: Such an increase in warning time has enormous implications for military readiness.

Mr. EVANS: In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, one defense expert said that there should be about a billion-dollar reduction for each additional day's warning time that we were assuming in our grand strategic plan. So that not only should we have seen a peace dividend out of the end of the Cold War, we should have seen a readiness dividend.

Sen. McCAIN: The second thing we need to do is spend our funds on weapons systems that are appropriate for the post-Cold War era. In my view, the Seawolf submarine and the B-2 bomber are not the weapons that we need to address our national security threats in the post-Cold War era.

Rep. DELLUMS: I think the B-2 continues to be a Cold War weapon. Maybe some of our fighter planes continue to be Cold War weapons. I'm not sure, for example, that we need a twelve aircraft carrier task force in the context of a post-Cold War world.

NARRATOR: Another reason we don't see a readiness dividend is due to the increasing technological complexity of the military.

Mr. EVANS: I like to say that we have inexorably raised the basal metabolism of the force. You know, it takes more fuel, more training, more bucks to simply stay where you are. What we could call the "technological bloat factor," you know, is in large measure why, although our force is a third smaller today than when it was, say five or six years ago, we are spending around 80 to 90 percent of what we were spending during the Cold War to maintain roughly the same level of readiness as we currently measure it.

NARRATOR: Congressman Dellums thinks that spending more money on military readiness is unwise.

Rep. DELLUMS: The United States' total military budget is almost equal to the entire military budget of every other nation in the world combined. The second closest nation to the United States in terms of this military expenditure spends four times less than the United States. If you add in America's military budget with our European allies and our Asian allies and combine -- those are our friends -- combine those budgets, that's over 80 percent of the world's military budget.

So, in the worst possible scenario, our potential enemies are spending less than 20 percent of the world's budget on military. So, where is the great fear that some kind of way this incredible military force called the United States military force, the number one, only superpower standing on the face of the earth at this point, is not ready to do whatever it needs to do? It's an extreme argument.

NARRATOR: It is often said that one can never be too rich, but it may be that one can spend too much money on readiness. The nation's top military officials say they can do whatever the nation's leaders ask of them.

ADM BOORDA: "The answer is the Navy could have met the CINCs' timelines for two major regional contingencies on time, with ready forces."

NARRATOR: There are, to be sure, legitimate concerns about future military capability.

Sen. McCAIN: The service chiefs and others keep telling us that they're just on the edge and if there are further cuts in defense spending, which are contemplated in this year's budget, then they will suffer serious problems.

Dr. BETTS: The problem I think is the focus on force structure for the two regional contingencies limits what you can invest either in the optimal readiness of a smaller number of units at present or in the research, development, testing and mobilization problems we would want to focus on if we're worried about dealing with a much bigger threat later.

NARRATOR: But in emphasizing force structure and weapons systems, what's often overlooked is the quality of life for people in the armed services.

Rep. DELLUMS: If there's a near-term readiness problem, it deals with barracks, and housing, and childcare. Over half of the American military are married people. So, it's also about --it's not just about taking care of a particular military person, it's taking care of a family, and that's quite real. So, that's housing, that's quality of life.

If you're going to have people out there serving, then they ought to serve with dignity and respect. And if they're going to be serving the United States, then their quality of life ought to be commensurate with their responsibilities.

NARRATOR: For Congressman Dellums, there are equally important non-military concerns.

Rep. DELLUMS: I frankly think we're spending much to much money on the military budget and on our defense. We ought to be spending more money trying to enhance the quality of life not only of our American troops, but our civilian people who are homeless, and helpless, and hungry, and inadequately clothed and educated, and etc. And I think that that's a more substantial way to spend billions of these dollars that we want to pour down this so-called readiness rat hole.

ADM SHANAHAN: Our legislators are on the wrong track. Instead of playing political one-upsmanship with this phantom readiness gap, they should be examining the underlying, unrealistic strategy which calls for our armed forces to be prepared to fight two major regional enemies almost simultaneously without any help from our friends.

Our war-fighting strategy needs to be adjusted in order to counter existing and foreseeable external threats to our security. Do that and the readiness gap disappears, as did the bomber and missile gaps of previous years.

For "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I'm Jack Shanahan.