Even Admiral Rickover used to give a lot of things to DLA to run so he could focus his attention on what he thought were the really critical areas.

Mr. KASICH. Could the services, though, Dr. Korb, be giving these responsibilities to DLA thinking, "here, take it, I'll use my people somewhere else?" That's what the proponents of abolishing it would argue.

Mr. KORB. I think there was a certain amount of the approach that what they gave to DLA was not, in their view, as critical as the things that they kept, and they knew by giving it to DLA they could use the limited number of people they had on what they felt were more important things and, in effect, could save money.

Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, we started our hearings a couple of years ago and things have gotten much better over there than they were. I am nervous about making any changes at this point in time. I share the chairman's concern.

Mr. NICHOLS. I would just say to the gentleman from Ohio that they had a lot of room to get better. [Laughter.]

Mr. Lally.

Mr. LALLY. I have only one question, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Secretary, would the military departments have the required numbers of experienced civilian personnel to assume the procurement and contract audit functions which Mr. Courter's bill would assign to the departments without permitting them to increase their civilian personnel level?

Mr. KORB. I don't see how, without an increase in civilian personnel, they could handle that. In my experience, every year the services would always ask for more people than either the Office of the Secretary of Defense or OMB was willing to give them. So how they could take on all these additional responsibilities with no increase in people, I do not know. I have never seen any analysis that would demonstrate it. I think you would simply overwhelm the people that you had.

Mr. LALLY. A personal opinion. Do you think that four activities buying uniforms could do a better job than one activity, as is currently done?

Mr. KORB. No; I think the one activity can do it better.

Mr. LALLY. Or other products such as that?

Mr. KORB. That's right.

Mr. NICHOLS. Mr. Carney, do you have questions, sir?

Mr. CARNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I apologize, Mr. Korb. There are always 14 different meetings going on at one place or another. I just got an emergency call to go back over to the Floor again.

But I want to ask you the question I asked the general. Since you do bring a great background with you as the Assistant Secretary for Manpower, Reserve Affairs and Logistics, what do you think about the ratio between the field grade officers and general officers compared to people who are serving in occupations in the military that are of a combat nature?

Mr. KORB. I think General Vessey mentioned the right figures in his testimony. Being in charge of manpower, I was often asked this question before Congress. We did a study and we found out that the only nation in the world that has a lower ratio is West Germa

ny, and they're pretty close to us. But we have a better ratio than just about everybody else today.

You have got to remember that lots of the flag and general officers in DOD are involved in international bodies, things that didn't exist before World War II. For example, we have a couple of general officers at NATO headquarters. We have flag and general officers in the CIA, for example, which didn't exist before World War II. We have military officers serving at NASA, as you have seen because of the recent tragic events. We have military officers on the National Security Council.

So what's happened is you have a greater demand for officers for organizations that did not exist before World War II. The United Nations is another organization to which we assign military officers. I think that is really not a serious problem, at least in terms of the manpower that I saw.

I think you do have one problem; that is, sometimes people stay too long in Washington without getting out into the field. I think General Vessey and Secretary Orr took the leadership in getting people back out into the field.

Mr. CARNEY. What I am perplexed with is the fact that when we have so many people in the officers corps, they are not getting an opportunity to take the types of command that make them good officers. I mean, their business is war, basically. If the unfortunate situation occurs where we have to have people in combat situations, most of the leaders will have been educated and trained in pushing pencils and that type of thing.

How do you ensure that an infantry officer, an armored officer, a Marine Corps officer, will be able to carry out those functions?

Mr. KORB. I think the officers of the line, the combat officers, do get the experience. Many people who point out the extra number of higher ranking officers are usually referring to people, for example, who were logistics specialists, people who are procurement specialists. I mean, you take the Navy Supply Corps, for example, which is not a combat arm. They are the business managers of the Navy. So what happens is that one group stays pretty much in combat positions, and another group begins to specialize in things like management information systems. Again, if you look at the nature of warfare, what we would call direct combat is a very, very small percentage of the force compared to what it was years ago. So my problem is

Mr. CARNEY. A lot of people argue that's precisely the reason why we had such a poor performance, particularly in Vietnam. I mean, for every combat soldier you had 45 guys in Saigon.

Mr. KORB. That had nothing to do with the number of officers that you had on active duty. Rather it had a lot to do with the way in which we conducted the war.

In Vietnam you took a military that went from something like 2.8 to 3.4 million, so you added a lot of people. It wasn't the fact that the force you had before the war was too large. Remember now, we're down to a very, very small force. We're down to 2.1 million people on active duty, which is smaller than we were in the period after the Korean war and before we went into Vietnam. I'm sure there are obviously some places where you have too many staffs, both civilian and military

Mr. CARNEY. If you play the numbers game, then my argument seems to bear out. We have the same amount of general officers and O-6's as we did at the end of World War II.

Mr. KORB. You do have that. But if you take a look at where they are, you will find out the need for them is specified by things that they do that they didn't do before World War II.

When I was in office, Senator Nunn asked for a study on how many flag and general officers we needed. We went through and we took that thing from top to bottom and justified every position. One of the things we recommended-and, unfortunately, that legislation got bogged down-was that you have people just for the services and then you have another pool for what I call these nonmilitary jobs that the Defense Department is asked to fill, and then you can add people for those.

We had a terrible time here dealing with some of the military people in the CIA because we had no room for those particular billets. Admiral Poindexter is at the NSC. If you take a look at all of those billets for which people demand flag and general officers, I think you will find that that's where your addition has come, rather than in the armed services itself.

Finally, we would hope that when we go to war, when we expand the forces, we won't bring in more generals and admirals, that we will simply have more troops for these flag officers to command.

Mr. CARNEY. I know you have been very patient, but let me ask you this. If we are creating all these additional jobs, is that part of the problem? I mean, are we creating the jobs to justify the billets? Mr. KORB. No, I would say it's the other way around. Everybody in this town wants a military officer, because they're good, they're hard working, and they're smart. Lots of agencies that have a tenuous connection to the Department of Defense want them.

Mr. CARNEY. Thank you.

Thank you for your courtesy, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. NICHOLS. Mr. Barrett.

Mr. BARRETT. Dr. Korb, the time is passing and I would appreciate brief answers so we can get you on the record in a couple of

areas.

First of all, you heard me describe to General Vessey the joint subspecialty and then the parallel proposal concerning the Chairman participating in promotions. Would you favor that? I know it was a very sketchy description.

Mr. KORB. I do. I favor that.

Mr. BARRETT. There is another area on defense agencies. They have been criticized, some of them, for not being sufficiently responsive to combat-related needs. There are five agencies including DLA, DIA, DCAA, with that sort of mission.

Without getting into whether they are sufficiently responsive, because people can disagree on that, the subcommittee is considering giving the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff responsibility for reviewing agency charters, reviewing agency war plans, ensuring that agencies participate fully in joint exercises, and developing a readiness reporting system for agencies, to ensure that they are responsive to combat-related needs.

Could you comment briefly on that?

Mr. KORB. I think the time has come to take a look at them because they have grown like Topsy and nobody seems to have gone back and taken a good look at it. I think that now would be a very, very good time to do that.

Mr. BARRETT. Then you heard the Chairman describe the study that is also being considered. I assume that means you would favor that sort of approach?

Mr. KORB. That's right.

Mr. BARRETT. Thank you, sir.

Mr. NICHOLS. Thank you very much, Dr. Korb. We appreciate your patience with us in waiting 2 hours. We appreciate very much your testimony.

Mr. KORB. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. NICHOLS. The next committee meeting will be at 9:30 in the morning, in room 2218, which is just down the hall from this room. At that time we will hear from the Honorable Harold Brown, former Secretary of Defense; General Meyer, U.S. Army, retired, former Army Chief of Staff; General Goodpaster, U.S. Army retired, former commander-in-chief of the U.S. European Command. I might add that at 2 o'clock tomorrow afternoon, in 2118, we will hear from Admiral Crowe, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff. The subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 4:35 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]