Rear Admiral Gene LaRocque (USN, Ret.)
Director, Center for Defense Information
HOST:
Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, Jr. (USN,Ret.)
Director, Center for Defense Information
DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH:
David T. Johnson
DIRECTOR of TELEVISION:
Mark Sugg
SENIOR PRODUCER & NARRATOR:
Ira Shorr
PRODUCERS:
Marguerite Arnold
Glenn Baker
Daniel Sagalyn
Stephen Sapienza
PRINCIPAL ANALYST & SCRIPTWRITER:
Daniel Sagalyn
SEGMENT PRODUCER:
Daniel Sagalyn
VIDEO GRAPHICS:
Adam Luther
ORIGINATION:
Washington, D.C.
PROGRAM NO.:
805
INITIAL BROADCAST:
16 October 1994
CONDITION OF USE: Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR"
(Center for Defense Information).
(C) Copyright 1994, Center for Defense Information. All Rights Reserved.
Videotapes also available.
Senator DALE BUMPERS, (D-AR)
Senate Appropriations Committee
JOSEPH CIRINCIONE
Henry L. Stimson Center
RICK DISDAD
Auto Technician
Senator CHARLES GRASSLEY, (R-IA)
Senate Budget Committee
ELAINE GROSSMAN
Editor in chief, Inside the Air Force
LOREN THOMPSON
Alexis de Tocqueville Institution
AMERICA'S ARMS RACE WITH ITSELF
JOHN DEUTCH, Undersecretary of Defense (before Senate Armed Service Committee, 20 September '94): "What we're asked to discuss here today is one of the most serious questions, most serious responsibilities in the department."
NARRATOR: Pentagon officials realize they have a problem.
Secretary DEUTCH (same hearing): "Does the Department of Defense have enough money to fulfill its missions it has been assigned both in the short run and in the long run?"
NARRATOR: The Pentagon is planning to buy new airplanes, ships, submarines, helicopters, and many other kinds of weapons. The trouble is they don't have enough money to buy everything they want.
Secretary DEUTCH (same hearing): "There is another solution to this problem, and that is to have more money for defense."
NARRATOR: Some Pentagon watchers say the military already spends too much.
Senator DALE BUMPERS (D-AR): People should never forget that we spend more on defense than the entire rest of the world combined. You think of that.
NARRATOR: The Soviet Union is history. Russia now our ally. With no comparable enemy to compete with, why does the Defense Department still plan on buying scores of new weapons? Is America in an arms race with itself?
["AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" program introduction.]
SHIP CHRISTENING CEREMONY: "In the name of the United States of America, I christen thee 'Woodrow Wilson.'"
NARRATOR: During the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union were in an ever escalating arms race. Each country sought to build newer and better weapons to counter the other. Now that the Cold War is over, Russia's military is in shambles and no other countries are building weapons that come close to matching the quality and quantity of America's armaments.
LES ASPIN, former Secretary of Defense: "The Clinton administration defense program that we are going to talk about today is based upon tomorrow's requirements."
NARRATOR: The Pentagon's blueprint for the future does call for reducing the number of Army divisions, Navy ships and submarines, and Air Force wings. But the Pentagon is still planning to buy scores of new, very expensive weapons.
Secretary PERRY (DoD press conference, 7 February '94): "Let me now go to the modernization program."
NARRATOR: Every service has a shopping list: ...The Army wants to buy about 2000 new Comanche helicopters....The Navy wants a new aircraft carrier, 1000 F/A-18E/F airplanes, 28 Arlie Burke destroyers, and other Seawolf attack submarine and an undetermined number of follow-on attack subs....The Marines want to buy 425 F-22 tilt rotor aircraft....And the Air Force wants 442 F-22 fighters and 120 C-17 cargo planes.
Over the next five years, Defense Department officials are planning to spend $1.3 trillion, or around $13,000 for every household in America, to support US forces ready to fight two Desert Storm-size wars at the same time anywhere in the world and without the help of allies. The trouble is even $1.3 trillion may not be enough to buy all the things the military wants to be ready for two wars.
Last year the General Accounting Office, Congress's investigative arm, estimated that the Pentagon had grossly underestimated how much it would cost to do all the things the Pentagon was planning. In a stinging report, the GAO revealed that if current Defense Department plans are carried out, it will cost an additional 150 billion dollars.
Senator CHARLES GRASSLEY (R-IA): They have overprogrammed for what's in the budget. There's no real relationship between their five-year defense plan and what they have programmed.
NARRATOR: Senator Charles Grassley commissioned the GAO study and has been a leader in calling for military spending reform.
Senator GRASSLEY: And it's just a case of there's got to be more effort on the part of the Defense Department to come down with their programming so it fits into the budget.
NARRATOR: History has shown that when the Pentagon spends too much on new weapons, it often skimps on money for spare parts and maintenance. While the multi-billion dollar weapons and vehicles that the military uses may seem very foreign to your everyday existence, they run on the very same principle as your own automobile. That is, they need consistent upkeep to perform adequately.
We thought we'd ask auto technician Rick Disdad about the importance of maintaining machines.
INTERVIEWER: Rick, what impact does regular maintenance have on the life of an automobile?
Mr. DISDAD: It has a large impact on the way that you maintain your vehicle. If, for example, you don't change your oil at proper intervals, you'll destroy the engine, which could be very, very costly.
INTERVIEWER: Why do you think people are so quick to get new cars when they don't really need them?
Mr. DISDAD: Some people just like to have the newest thing there is. They like to keep up with their neighbors. They got the new minivan, they got to have the new one, too.
NARRATOR: "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" asked Senator Dale Bumpers why the Pentagon was so quick to get new machines.
Senator BUMPERS: We simply have had a succession of secretaries and assistant secretaries who just get coopted by the Defense Department. And oftentimes, the generals and admirals --we have to have them and I love them and all that -- but they want the latest, best trinket they can buy, and they get it. And the civilian authorities in the Defense Department are just simply no match for them, or at least they haven't been in the past.
ELAINE GROSSMAN: The way the defense bureaucracy works tends to discourage the maintenance of older systems and encourage the development of newer systems.
NARRATOR: Elaine Grossman is editor-in-chief of Inside the Air Force, an independent investigative weekly publication that reports on Air Force plans and policies.
Ms. GROSSMAN: So many military officials have said to me something to the effect of no officer gets promoted on the basis of having spent operations and maintenance funds efficiently. Or, no military official gets promoted because he saved the taxpayer money. In fact, military officials get promoted because they have contributed toward fielding successful development programs, successful weapon systems.
NARRATOR: The C-141 cargo plane is a good example of the Air Force placing too much emphasis on buying something new at the expense of maintaining a system it already has.
The Air Force began buying C-141 aircraft in the early 1960s. In the late 1970s, the Air Force decided to make these planes longer so they could carry more cargo. This film shows how a C-141 was cut in half and a new 13-foot extension installed.
NARRATOR: "First, the nose section is separated and then pulled forward from the stationary center fuselage section to open the area for the 160-inch forward plug."
NARRATOR: The Air Force also modified these cargo planes so they could be refueled while flying in the air. While these improvements significantly enhanced the C-141's capabilities, it also meant subjecting these planes to more stress. C-141s would now carry heavier loads over longer distances, and be exposed to the exhaust and turbulence created by tankers providing fuel to them.
When the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, or SAB, made its initial recommendations that these improvements be made to the C-141, it emphasized that the Air Force had to conduct a vigorous inspection and maintenance program in order to guard against the additional wear and tear the C-141 was expected to encounter.
Yet according to numerous sources we spoke to, the Air Force failed to provide an adequate maintenance program for the C-141. Over the past few years, numerous flight restrictions have been placed on the C-141 fleet because it has sustained too much damage, especially to its wings.
According to Elaine Grossman, the Air Force has admitted that they had not done a good job maintaining the C-141s.
Ms. GROSSMAN: In February of 1994, General Ronald Fogelman, who at that time was the commander of the Air Force's Air Mobility Command and commander of the US Transportation Command, acknowledged that the wing problems that the C-141 was having could have been foreseen and could have been prevented had the Air Force carried out some of that preventative maintenance that the SAB had earlier recommended.
NARRATOR: According to the General Accounting Office, "The Air Force did not begin...[the] aggressive inspection and modification program until 1984, when structural problems began to appear...due to a lack of funding and higher priority projects."
When the Air Force came to Congress asking for money for the C-17, a new cargo plane, officials pointed to the deteriorating condition of the C-141s as a reason to purchase the C-17.
General MERRILL McPEAK, Air Force Chief of Staff (before Senate Armed Services Committee, 19 March '91): "So, we've used a lot of C-141 life and we simply need to get on with the lift replacement aircraft, the C-17."
NARRATOR: Very often the Pentagon is faced with a decision of whether to upgrade an existing weapon or buy something completely new.
LOREN THOMPSON: My gut feeling is that there's a tradeoff between upgrades to the existing system and buying new systems. We simply can't afford to do both.
NARRATOR: Loren Thompson is a senior fellow at the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, a bipartisan, non-profit educational research foundation, and he is a consultant to the Defense Department and various military contractors.
Mr. THOMPSON: Many of these so-called modifications, in fact, cost billions of dollars. We're going to have to make a choice.
NARRATOR: What happens when the Pentagon is faced with a choice between upgrading an existing weapon versus buying a totally new one?
During the late 1970s the Air Force could have upgraded the B-52 bomber fleet, making it more effective and extending its life. But, according to Senator Dale Bumpers, the Air Force resisted upgrading the B-52s because it would have made its new B-1 bomber unnecessary.
Senator BUMPERS: The GAO said we could re-engine the
B-52s and make certain other modifications to them and they could have a life extended to the year 2020 to 2030. That was back before we voted for the B-1 and the B-2.
And we could have upgraded them for about $30 million each, but instead we embarked on the B-1 and the B-2 at unbelievable staggering cost because we did not want to upgrade, we wanted to replace, we wanted to spend billions.
NARRATOR: Under Ronald Reagan, during the early 1980s, military spending shot up by 50 percent and the B-1 bomber program, which had been cancelled by President Carter, was resurrected. Suddenly the Air Force had enough money to buy B-1 bombers and upgrade B-52s.
During the 1980s, a number of B-52s were retired, but a large number of them received upgrades and many B-52s remain in the fleet today.
Loren Thompson believes that because the B-52s can be easily detected by radar, they should all be retired.
Mr. THOMPSON: In the case of the B-52, we're dealing with a bomber that is now older than the people who are flying it and has a radar cross-section comparable to Iron Mountain. It's just a matter of time before that aircraft is not survivable against even relatively unimposing air defenses.
JOSEPH CIRINCIONE: I believe the DoD does understate the capabilities of existing weapons; here's a good example.
NARRATOR: For ten years, Joseph Cirincione worked for congressional committees which oversaw the Defense Department. Today he's a defense analyst at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington.
Mr. CIRINCIONE: It's often said that B-52 bombers are heavy bombers, are strategic bombers and conventional bombers, are older than the crews that fly them. Well, in some cases, that's actually true. They were originally built, but they've been revamped many times over. They have new wings, they have new avionics, they have new sections of the fuselage put in. These things are kept pretty up to date.
NARRATOR: In fact, some of the most up-to-date B-52s were used in the war against Iraq to fire air-launch cruise missiles while they remained outside of the range of Iraqi anti-air defense missiles.
While the Pentagon resists upgrading weapons to help their chances of getting new ones, they also count on retiring weapons early to help ease the way for new programs.
Senator BUMPERS: We never -- we very seldom ever use up the life of what we have before we start building something new. And once we get something new built, then we start retiring something long before its life expectancy was over, even though it's unparalleled in the world's arsenals.
NARRATOR: Let's look at the Navy's plan to buy new attack submarines. The United States currently has the most advanced attack submarine fleet in the world. Since 1971 the Navy has spent about $28 billion buying 62 Los Angeles class submarines. In fact, two are still under construction. These submarines were bought to fight a war against a big Soviet navy which is now nearly defunct.
In the early 1980s the Navy began planning for a new attack submarine, the Seawolf, to follow the Los Angeles sub. According to the Pentagon, the Seawolf was also needed to counter the next generation of Soviet submarines.
Two Seawolfs have been bought so far; a third one will be bought this year. On top of this, the Navy is proposing a follow-on submarine to the Seawolf, not to meet a current threat, but because, according to the secretary of defense, we might need them in the future.
Secretary PERRY (DoD press conference, 7 February '94): "We are funding the Seawolf in this budget, and we have heard many arguments that we should spend the money in different ways. We are doing that because we know in the next decade, in the next century, we will need to be building nuclear attack submarines again. And we fear that if we stop building them for seven, or eight, or ten years, we will never be able to reconstruct that facility adequately."
NARRATOR: Yet in order to pay for the new submarines it wants, the Navy plans to begin retiring Los Angeles class submarines it recently bought.
Senator BUMPERS: Take the case of the Los Angeles attack submarine. That submarine is built for a 30-year life. They're going to be discarding that submarine after 10, 15, 20 years. We're going to be losing anywhere from 10 to 20 years of life left in those submarines in order to build the Seawolf and a new attack submarine. And to start building new ones right now to replace it is nonsense.
Mr. CIRINCIONE: It turns out study after study has shown that the Los Angeles class submarine could be improved to provide almost as much capability as the Seawolf itself. Now that the Cold War is over and we no longer face a Soviet threat, presumably you could go with an improved Los Angeles class submarine. But, no, the Navy wants to build an even newer submarine.
NARRATOR: Once a program to develop a new weapon systems gets started, it's very hard to stop. Pressures within the Pentagon bureaucracy create a momentum of their own.
Mr. CIRINCIONE: But inside the Pentagon itself, there's about, oh, ten, 20,000 procurement bureaucrats, people whose whole careers are devoted to advancing the purchase of weapons systems for their service. And they're graded on how successful they are in pushing those programs through.
That dynamic, that pressure, that career pressure, that financial pressure, the pressure from the contractors to sell weapons to the Pentagon, all that inevitably drives every administration to buy more and more expensive weapons than the country can really afford.
NARRATOR: In an unusual move during the Bush administration, civilian leaders in the Pentagon overrode the Navy and proposed cancelling the Seawolf. But the Congress, seeking to maintain jobs for constituents, decided to buy another Seawolf anyway.
Senator BUMPERS: So many of the weapons systems we build around here are pure jobs programs. And if you've got enough contracts on a particular weapon system in enough states, you know, all you have to have is 51 senators to get a weapon system. And all you have to have is 26 states with contracts to get 51 senators. And that's the way so many things are bought needlessly in this country.
NARRATOR: Next to the C-17, which we looked at earlier, the Air Force's number one priority is to buy a new fleet of F-22 fighters, originally designed during the Cold War to counter two new expected Soviet planes.
DICK CHENEY, then-Secretary of Defense (before congressional committee, 26 April '90): "If we look to the future in terms of the kind of Soviet aircraft developments we anticipate in the years ahead, the general kinds of conclusions that we based our work on in connection with this review included the following: A general prediction that the Soviets will field two new fighter aircraft designs around the turn of the century, early 2000 timeframe."
NARRATOR: Today the Air Force says it needs the F-22 primarily to counter the Russian Multi-Role Fighter Interceptor, which it expects will begin flying around the year 2015. However, a report by the Rand Corporation casts doubt on whether the Russians will ever finance the new fighter.
In the meantime, Pentagon officials say the F-22 will help the United States when fighting against Third World countries.
Secretary PERRY (DoD press conference, 7 February '94): "We continue to make a very heavy investment to get to the next generation fighter aircraft. One of the single most important lessons of Desert Storm, among the many lessons cited, is that air supremacy is good, but air dominance is better."
NARRATOR: Where do many Third World nations get their fighter aircraft the Air Force is so concerned about?
Senator BUMPERS: I was in Iran in 1975 and I went out to one of the air bases, and they're buying F-14s from us. They've got these shelters built to house the F-14. The Shah told us that that was going to be their mainline fighter and they'd already bought so many, were going to buy so many more, and the Defense Department was loving it. They love to sell them because they say it reduces our cost per copy.
But, you know, you have to ask yourself what is the purpose of us building a superior weapon and then turning around and giving it away?
NARRATOR: For Senator Bumpers, America's weapons exports create potential dangers that are then used as a reason to buy even more weapons.
Senator BUMPERS: So, in the F-14, that really led essentially to today's building of the F-22. It is an incredible thing that we arm the world and then turn around and come to Congress and say, look at all these weapons out there, they're almost superior to ours, they're comparable to ours. Well, of course, they are. They're ours, we sold them to them.
NARRATOR: American military contractors often point to weapons sold by the United States to allies as reasons why the US must buy newer weapons. Today's allies may be tomorrow's enemies.
Mr. CIRINCIONE: Here's a fighter system that was originally built to fight the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union collapsed, and now it's being marketed to fight the so-called Third World threat. And they accompany their glossy brochure with a map of all the high-technology fighters that exist in the world. Most of these fighters that exist in other countries in the world were built by the United States. They're the F-15, the F-16. These that were built by McDonnell Douglas, by Lockheed, are now cited by the builders of the F-22 as the main justification for why the United States has to buy a more capable, more expensive fighter.
NARRATOR: Does the US need to spend an estimated $87 billion on the F-22 to confront countries armed with United States fighter jets?
Mr. CIRINCIONE: We simply don't need a modern combat superiority fighter such as the F-22, which was designed to fight an all-out war with the Warsaw Pact. We already have the best fighters in the world, the F-15 and the F-16. These can take out any conceivable threat for the next 20 years.
NARRATOR: Instead of rushing to sell weapons to foreign countries, could America and Russia and America's other allies negotiate treaties limiting the sale of weapons?
Senator Grassley thinks this would be a positive step toward ending America's arms race with itself and with other nations.
Senator GRASSLEY: But I think in the final analysis, we're going to have to have a worldwide treaty on the sale of arms if we're to accomplish anything, because -- quite frankly, as much as I don't like the basis for our doing it. If we don't do it, some other country might do it, and the arms race won't stop if France, or Belgium, or Czechoslovakia, or now the former Soviet Union, to keep their industrial base up for their military, is going to sell, that's why we need an international treaty to solve the arms race.
NARRATOR: There is a mismatch between the Pentagon's blue- print for new weapons and forces able to fight two wars at the same time and the amount of money currently budgeted for these plans. Top Pentagon officials would like to increase military spending. Top Pentagon officials realize military spending will have to be increased substantially in the future.
Secretary Perry (before the House National Security Committee 2/8/95): "Since I'm arguing that the modernization rate will require an increase, the question is where are the resources going to come from in the years beyond fiscal '96. We will have to have a growth in the budget in that period."
NARRATOR: Elaine Grossman thinks that scarce resources is forcing the military and the Pentagon to take a more serious look at upgrading weapons instead of buying new ones.
Ms. GROSSMAN: As the Defense Department is grappling with decreasing budgets, shrinking defense budgets, I think the services are beginning to look to rewarding officials for doing things like saving the taxpayer money, running a program more efficiently and more wisely, and running programs that are some- times upgrades to existing systems rather than fielding a new system.
NARRATOR: But what happens if the Pentagon continues with its plan of buying an array of new weapons for each service?
Mr. CIRINCIONE: There's a danger of a hollow military, so-called, now if the administration, if the Congress don't resist the pressures from contractors, from the services to buy brand new weapon systems that we simply don't need. We don't have enough money to afford both the size of the force that we're projecting, modernization of that force, and the intense training schedule that we've become accustomed to. You can't afford all three of those things, something has to give.
Senator GRASSLEY: But basically, it's this. In the real world, they either have to cut down and prioritize and build less, start fewer new programs, or else they have to have more money from Congress. But, you know, in this budget environment, they aren't going to get more money from Congress, so basically they have to bring down their programming.
NARRATOR: This year's budget debate will tell the story. If the Pentagon gets the weapons it wants, America will have to pay for being in an arms race with itself.
Admiral CARROLL: Everyone you heard today agreed that there is a serious mismatch between the weapons the Pentagon wants to buy for the next five years and the money available. Some suggested providing more money, others said reduce Pentagon spending for new weapons.
Perhaps the answer is to take better care of the huge arsenal of deadly weapons we already own. After all, they are the finest tanks, airplanes, missiles and submarines in the world and we should get our money's worth from them before we put them on the scrap heap. That is a much better idea than to go on spending money we don't have to buy weapons we don't need, to defeat enemies who don't exist.
Until the next time, for "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I'm Eugene Carroll.
[Over credits]
ELAINE GROSSMAN: The way the defense bureaucracy works tends to discourage the maintenance of older systems and encourage the development of newer systems.
So many military officials have said to me something to the effect of no officer gets promoted on the basis of having spent operations and maintenance funds efficiently. Or, no military official gets promoted because he saved the taxpayer money. In fact, military officials get promoted because they have contributed toward fielding successful development programs, successful weapon systems.
Senator DALE BUMPERS: We simply have had a succession of secretaries and
assistant secretaries who just get coopted by the Defense Department. And oftentimes, the
generals and admirals -- we have to have them and I love them and all that -- but they want the
latest, best trinket they can buy, and they get it. And the civilian authorities in the Defense
Department are just simply no match for them, or at least they haven't been in the past.
CONDITION OF USE: Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR"
(Center for Defense Information).
(C) Copyright 1994. Center for Defense Information. All Rights Reserved.