When you start redistributing power, people get a little touchy about it.

Your job, which I say I don't envy, is to separate good advice from emotional advice, separate the wheat from the chaff. It is a very tough job. I have been a little surprised at how fervent people hold views on this, but there are a lot of views. It's tough.

Again, I go back to the evolutionary principle, as opposed to revolutionary. I think there are things that should be done to improve our system. But I think we should go slowly and deliberately. I would much rather see the Congress make some changes and revisit this area frequently. I think that's one of the problems today. You really haven't revisited it in a long time, in a big way. Our technology, our bureaucratic arrangements, the complexity of what we are doing is changing every day.

I do not agree with the people who say the JCS system is broke. If you really understood the number of issues they deal with and what they have done over the last 10 or 20 years, I think they have performed very well. But what is happening is just more and more responsibility, more and more issues, more and more things are being thrust upon the whole bureaucracy. That means that some changes are in order. There are improvements that can be made. I know for a fact that the Chiefs agree with that. We think what you are doing is very important, Mr. Chairman. We are interested in improving our ability to carry out our responsibilities. We want to work with you in doing that.

I don't think any of the Chiefs of service or the Chairman himself would contend there are no changes that should be made; it's just not true. There are changes. But I think we should go slowly and deliberately and see how our changes work before we go too far.

Mr. KASICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. NICHOLS. Just let me respond to that. I haven't seen any great list of changes that have been recommended by the Chiefs. But I am still waiting for that, Admiral.

I am just kidding you a little bit.

Admiral CROWE. I understand what you are saying. I think some of the changes, though, if you come to me and ask for them, are ones you have already included in your bill. And I am hoping, Mr. Chairman, you are going to see some of this in our review of JCS Pub 2.

I am only one of five, so I better be careful what I am predicting. Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, if I could follow on to that, I didn't want to say it. Chairman Nichols has been here 22 years. He can say some things that I have to be careful about saying until I get a little more experience under my belt.

But I want to tell you, Admiral, that if we were to write a bill based on the recommendations of the Chiefs that were in here, we would have no bill. I mean, listen to the Chiefs. You would come to the clear conclusion that there is nothing wrong and that all the problems that we had in the past, including resources available to the CINC's, budget-planning across service lines, had all really been pretty much corrected. What we heard from people who are not active has been, to a large degree, different, including the testimony that we received this morning. That bothers me because I

worry that I am not getting square answers to the questions, unless their point of view is so dramatically different than everybody else's and it's not a question of them trying to protect their particular turf. They took issuance with the quotes that I made that came from you about a lack of resources. And so did the heads of the Services themselves, the civilian heads. I'll tell you, it gives me a lot of concern about who to believe and when-when we face decisions beyond this, like Lebanon, when I have to listen to what they say when they come up on the Hill.

As a young person, who I hope is going to be here for a while, I have to figure out who to listen to and who is legitimate in terms of what they are saying so I can make darn good decisions in my role. And I am doing it for honestly legitimate, deep-down concerns about my country.

Admiral CROWE. Mr. Kasich, I really don't like to recommend my own stuff, although I write very well, but in the statement I made before the Senate Armed Services Committee, I laid out a few philosophical principles, not speaking to specific issues. In that, I said the reason this-and I believe this with all my heart-the reason this is such a tough question is that the issues we deal with are tough. There is no organizational system you are going to devise, no organizational system that is going to make those issues easy. They are tough today, and they are going to be tough tomorrow, no matter what the organizational lines on the diagram look like. Now, certain organizations are better than others, and I agree with that. I think all of these people are testifying from their own lights, their own experience, their own vested interests. I do believe that a lot of people are testifying on the basis of experience they had a few years ago which is not directly relevant today. There have been some changes and improvements made in the last 2 years that are low key but nevertheless substantial, to make our way of doing business easier.

In fact, in every one of these areas that we have discussed, something has been done. If it is any comfort to you-I am not so sure it is-but if it is any comfort to you, the very fact that you are examining this and are serious in your work has had a great impact over in my business.

Mr. NICHOLS. Gentlemen, a member of the committee, Mr. McCurdy from Oklahoma, had a question that he wished to be asked. Let me yield to Mr. Barrett to ask that question.

Mr. BARRETT. Sir, there are several subparts to the question. It deals with net assessment.

As you know, many on the Armed Services Committee have been interested in seeing service program justifications expressed in strategic terms, backed up by thorough and high quality net assessment.

The first question is, should the Chairman of the JCS have a net assessment office, as the House-passed bill recommends?

Second, how can we improve the assessment?

Third, do the CINC's currently express their priorities in net assessment terms?

Fourth, should the CINC's have the capacity to task net assessment capabilities?

Finally, should they have capabilities to do their own net assessments?

Admiral CROWE. The CINC's?

Mr. BARRETT. CINC's, yes, sir.

Admiral CROWE. Mr. Barrett, I would like to speak to that, sort of in general terms, and then take it for the record, if I could.

In answer to your first question, should the JCS have the capability, I would say yes. And I think General Vessey had been trying during his tour to straighten that out in our own councils. The JCS does a lot of net assessment work on various questions. Whether it likes it or not, it does. To do it properly, we would need some increases in personnel. But my answer to the question is yes.

I believe all the military leadership in the country believes that we need some improvements in our ability to do net assessment. It's not easy. I mean, to say we are going to improve it now and then go out and translate that into improvement is difficult.

A number of initiatives have taken place in the last 2 years in what we call the modern aids to planning system, which is, to put it simply, a more sophisticated computer capability for individual CINC's in order to evaluate contingency responses and in order to do theater, joint theater, games, and analysis. We now have that capability coming in for every unified commander. It's already there for one or two. The bulk will go in this year. By early 1987 the entire system will be in. It permits a CINC, No. 1, to devise war plans against the entire data base of the United States. He can draw on data bases everywhere, all over the country. And also, to test his plans through gaming, et cetera. It allows the JCS to do a similar thing across theaters, across unified commands.

It is our hope that that will considerably enhance our ability to do the kind of thing you are talking about, to net assess in the theater mode. But we don't have it yet. We are just putting it in. The full return on our investment is not clear yet, but we hope it will be.

To give a net assessment capability per se to every CINC, it might be a little like horse meat: the more you chew on it, the bigger it gets. It might be more than we want there, I don't know. Mr. BARRETT. Thank you, sir.

Admiral CROWE. I will take the question for the record, if I could please.

[The following questions were submitted to be answered for the record:]

Question. How can we improve threat assessment?

Answer. The Defense Intelligence Agency provides data on enemy forces and assists the Joint Analysis Directorate of the OJCS in the conduct of threat assessments. There are intelligence gathering assets to provide information about all areas of the world, however, certain areas are covered in greater detail than others. An increase in intelligence assets across the board would enhance the gathering and analysis efforts and thereby provide a more complete data base to be used in an evaluation determination of the threat.

Question. Do the CINC's currently express their priorities in net assessment terms?

Answer. The CINC's do not have the resources to accomplish net assessments in the fullest sense of the term. However, a JCS initiative to provide added planning capability to the CINC's is underway. The CINC's currently develop their require ments primarily through subjective, qualitative analyses of the warfighting capability of their forces. These analyses aid in formulating degrees of military risk from

which priorities are developed. These priorities are then input to the CJCS for consideration in the Planning, Programming and Budgeting System.

Question. Should the CINC's have the capacity to task net assessment capability? Should they have capability to do their own net assessment?

Answer. Yes to both questions. There are currently two programs that support the CINC's requirements for analytic support and assessments capabilities: (1) The CINC's External Study Program, funded and administered by OJCS, provides a vehicle for conducting assessments and studies specifically requested by the CINC's. (2) The Modern Aids to Planning Program, currently under development, is a JCS initative to provide hardware and software directly to the CINC's to support their planning activities.

Question. Should the Chairman of the JCS have a net assessment office as H.R. 3622 recommends?

Answer. Yes, the OJCS currently conducts military net assessments in support of its responsibilities to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. To strengthen this capability, we would need some accretion in personnel. This enhancement would permit the JCS to provide even more comprehensive military advice to the Secretary of Defense concerning net assessments.

Mr. NICHOLS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for being with us this afternoon. Your testimony and responses to the questions have been very enlightening. We certainly appreciate your presence here.

The next meeting of the subcommittee will be on Tuesday, March 4, in room 2216 at 9:30 a.m. At that time we will hear from Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, U.S. Navy, retired, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Vice Adm. Eugene Grinstead, U.S. Navy, retired, and former Director of the Defense Logistics Agency. In the afternoon at 2 o'clock in the same room, 2216, the committee is scheduled to hear from Gen. Russell Dougherty, U.S. Air Force, retired, and former Commander in Chief of the Strategic Air Command; and Mr. John McLucas, former Secretary of the Air Force. If there is no further business, the subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 3:15 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]