>From Wash (DC) Times
}}>Begin
The Washington Times
www.washtimes.com
Readiness is not improving
Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published 8/28/00
U.S. military combat readiness, a hot debate in the presidential elections,
continues to suffer two years after the Pentagon acknowledged shortfalls.
The Navy is short on sailors and ships at sea. The Air Force lacks 1,200 pilots
and continues a downward trend in readiness. Army soldiers complain of reduced
training time and morale.
But the services have plugged holes in recruiting and retention of some
critically needed personnel after Congress and the White House increased pay
and benefits.
The root of the problem, analysts and soldiers say, stems from President
Clinton's decision in 1993 to double five-year Pentagon cuts, to $128 billion,
that had been put in place by President Bush and his defense secretary, Richard
B. Cheney. The post-Cold War reductions were followed by Mr. Clinton sending
troops on a record number of peacetime deployments in the 1990s, including
major conflicts against Iraq and Serbia.
Equipment wore out. Spare parts dried up. And personnel, weary of months
overseas, quit.
"You cut the force by more than a third, you cut the budget by 40 percent and
then you raise the number of deployments by 300 percent and that's a situation
that is going to make trouble inside the military," said retired Army Col.
Joseph Collins. Col. Collins spearheaded an expansive study by the Center for
Strategic and International Studies that concluded in January that morale and
readiness were down across the military.
Col. Collins said morale has been boosted by pay increases and better
retirement benefits, but the problem still exists.
"You have had the strange situation of a decline in perceived readiness
affecting morale," he said. "Everywhere we went we had people tell us we are
tired of doing more with less."
The two major presidential candidates made their cases last week in speeches
before the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Republican George W. Bush and his running mate, Mr. Cheney, charge that the
Clinton-Gore administration let readiness slip to dangerously low levels.
"There is an enormous amount of evidence out there . . . that the question in
terms of readiness and morale, the problems with recruiting, problems with
retention, that the military is in trouble today," Mr. Cheney said yesterday on
NBC. "They've cut too far. They've cut too deep. They've also added
commitments. A big part of the difficulty . . . is the force is spread too
thin."
On ABC's "This Week," the former defense secretary said: "There are serious
problems out there in respect to the overall quality of the force. There's no
question that we've got a great military today, but it's headed in the wrong
direction."
Based on his discussions with military people, he said, "either Al Gore doesn't
know what's going on in the U.S. military, or he's chosen not to tell the truth
about it."
Vice President Al Gore and Democrats counter that the problem is more complex
than Mr. Cheney presents and the U.S. military is the world's finest, proving
itself once again in the 1999 air war over Serbia.
Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who followed Mr. Cheney on NBC, said: "Dick
Cheney is flat wrong, and George Bush is flat wrong, about questions of
preparedness." He blamed the booming civilian economy for problems with
military recruiting and retention but said the Clinton administration is
working to change that with pay increases and other personnel moves.
Still, he said, "We have the best trained, most extraordinary military in the
history of humankind."
Both are right, analysts say, so the issue may settle on which man can make the
stronger case. The armed forces are less combat ready than eight years ago, but
still are top dog among all the world's armies.
Mr. Cheney acknowledged as much: "If you match our forces today up against any
others around the world, we've got the best force. The problem is it's in
decline, and this administration has done very little to reverse that decline."
Personnel in the field told The Washington Times their units are still hampered
by spare-parts shortages, old equipment, condensed training hours and, in some
cases, poorly trained technicians in a rapid turnover of personnel.
In addition to these soldiers' testimonies, other sources report similar
problems:
� The bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee budget report this May states:
"Aging equipment, spare parts shortfalls, manning and experience gaps continue
to manifest themselves in terms of declining mission capable rates and
decreasing unit readiness ratings. . . . Most troubling are indications that
problems are emerging in the readiness of forward-deployed and first-to-fight
units."
� The Army has set up a special panel to figure out why it is losing so many
captains � its future field commanders. Two recent surveys showed the captains
are disenchanted with peacekeeping missions and Army leadership.
� The Navy is short on seamen. It puts the at-sea shortfall on any given day at
"less than 10,000." It's fleet has shrunk from 443 ships in 1993 to 316, a
figure even below Mr. Clinton's target of 346. The shortage means ships and
sailors are at sea more often to cover the Navy's worldwide commitments.
� The Air Force needs 13,424 active-duty pilots, but remains about 1,200 short.
The gap has stabilized, however. The mission-capable rate of major weapon
systems such as fighters and bombers sits at 73 percent, a 10 percent decline
since 1991, and a further erosion the past two years.
An Air Force statement to The Times says, "Ten-year trend shows a steady
decline in readiness as measured in percent of top two readiness categories.
Though steps have been taken to arrest the decline, overall readiness (combat
and non-combat forces) continues to decrease from 92 percent in 1990 to 78
percent today."
Two officers interviewed by The Times contended commanders submit
unrealistically rosy readiness reports up the chain of command to protect their
chances of promotion.
"It irks me to hear the chairman of the Joint Chiefs say that everything is
hunky-dory," an Army helicopter pilot said, referring to Army Gen. Henry H.
Shelton. "You see that so much in the leadership. A unit will have a training
exercise and the troops will note a huge number of deficiencies. When the final
'after action' report comes out, though, all the leadership is seeing who can
praise each other the most."
"Yes, Governor Bush is right," said an Army special operations officer who,
like other active-duty people, asked to remain anonymous. "I am in Special
Forces and no matter what, morale will be higher than in a normal unit. But it
is a wearing thing for us also. We do too many missions to too many places. We
do it with less money, less training time."
Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine, has
not injected himself into the presidential debate. But he does defend the state
of today's military � and in effect his own stewardship � when questioned by
reporters.
"We are ready. We are prepared," Mr. Cohen told reporters Aug. 18. "As a matter
of fact, I think morale is increasing. Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be
able to come to you and lay out exactly where we are on retention, recruitment
and what I see as an increase rather than a decrease in morale."
Many defense experts agree that the Ronald Reagan military buildup of the 1980s
produced the finest military ever fielded. The volunteer force developed an
unmatched esprit de corps, from aircraft maintenance workers and infantrymen to
sailors and combat pilots.
In fact, Mr. Cohen has repeatedly said that decade's modernization enabled the
force to carry out an array of missions in the 1990s.
Since Mr. Clinton took office, the military has operated under intense
operational and social pressures. Commanders have been embroiled in an endless
debate on homosexuals. Pentagon political appointees launched an unprecedented
campaign to wipe out sexual harassment, creating an array of sensitivity
sessions and urging people to file complaints.
The real rub occurred when Mr. Clinton began deploying forces around the world
on a record 48 peace enforcement and combat missions by 1999, costing $30
billion.
The Army, Navy and Air Force all missed recruiting goals for the first time
since the late 1970s.
The Navy could not afford necessary flying hours for pilots on shore between
carrier deployments. The result: Some units did not reach acceptable readiness
levels until their carrier actually arrived on station.
"Training readiness has been degraded among our non-deployed forces,
particularly among the aviation community," Adm. Jay Johnson, then chief of
naval operations, told a Senate committee in 1999.
A senior Senate defense staffer issued a report earlier this year that painted
a poor picture of Air Force-Navy pilot training.
"At our premier air combat training facilities, we have too few instructor
pilots, too few aircraft for them to fly; old, sometimes structurally failing
aircraft. . . ." said the report. "These aging aircraft are inadequately
supplied with spare parts and they routinely lack basic weapon system
components that student pilots will be required to use in combat."
During the Kosovo conflict last year, the Air Force Air Combat Command (ACC) in
Langley, Va., wrote a bluntly worded memo, obtained by The Times.
"Our operational units are suffering," it said. "Numerous ACC units have low
sortie ratings due to inadequate spares support. Few serviceable spare engines,
depleted wartime spare kits. Although the leading causes vary by unit,
inadequate funding in '96 and '97 was the underlying cause."
In the Army, two of 10 active divisions were not combat ready for a brief
period. It missed recruiting goals in 1998 and '99, forcing planners to lower
standards and offer huge increases in sign-up bonuses to meet this year's
quota.
At first, the Pentagon refused to acknowledge the problem. In fact, the Joint
Chiefs of Staff (with the exception of Marine Corps Gen. Charles Krulak) in
February 1998 told Congress' military committees that the state of the military
was good.
But congressional Republicans knew otherwise based on anecdotal information
reaching Washington. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican,
sent Mr. Clinton a letter saying the force needed an infusion of quick cash.
The president was noncommittal.
The Senate Armed Services Committee then held hearings to shed light on the
problem. Staffers worked behind the scenes to persuade the Joint Chiefs to
publicly admit the force was in trouble and to ask Mr. Clinton for more money.
The gambit worked. The chiefs reversed themselves in the fall of 1998, admitted
there were shortfalls and urged Mr. Clinton to offer up more money, which
Congress topped with extra cash.
Unwittingly, the Republicans' quick action may be helping Mr. Gore. Increased
defense budgets allowed the services to put more recruiters in the field and
increase inducements. Pilots received higher retention bonuses. Spare-parts
assembly lines started up again. Training hours increased. Retention improved.
"There are some structural problems that we have, particularly in our support
elements, that need to be corrected," Ret. Gen. George Joulwan, former supreme
commander of NATO, said on "Fox News Sunday."
"But we have, I think, a ready Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines to do the job
assigned."
� Joyce Howard Price contributed to this report.
Copyright � 2000 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Return to the article
End<{{
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[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
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