Compress. House Comm [H.A.S.C. No. 97-6] HEARINGS ON MILITARY POSTURE AND H.R. 2970 DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES FIRST SESSION Part 2 of 6 Parts PROCUREMENT OF AIRCRAFT, MISSILES, HEARINGS HELD MARCH 11, 12, 16, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 31, APRIL 9, AND 29, 1981 81-202 O U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON: 1981 FISCAL YEAR 1982 DEFENSE BUDGET HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, PROCUREMENT AND MILITARY NUCLEAR SYSTEMS SUBCOMMITTEE, Washington, D.C., Wednesday, March 11, 1981. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:30 a.m., room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Samuel S. Stratton (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Mr. STRATTON. The subcommittee will come to order. Yesterday, the Armed Services Committee was briefed by Secretary Weinberger on the broad, general outlines of the amended fiscal year 1982 budget which I consider, as I am sure virtually all of the members of the committee do, to represent a watershed in terms of commitment to our national defense. Secretary Weinberger's call for the revitalization of our defense capabilities does represent a vindication of this committee which has warned for several years that our capabilities were eroding at an accelerating rate while those of the Soviet Union were increasing out of all proportion to their legitimate defense needs. As a followup to Secretary Weinberger's presentation, I have asked the Chiefs of Staff to appear individually before the subcommittee today and tomorrow to place the 1982 budget into perspective as regards their own service. Specifically, I have asked the Chiefs to speak to the requirements, as they see them, for each of their services over the next 5 years, and give us their personal views as to what the new budget does and does not do. I am particularly concerned that the American people may get the impression that this major shift in national priorities will cure all of our defense ills. In other words, that we have before us a getwell budget which meets all of the services' needs and may, in fact, contain more than is actually needed. In the next few months, I believe there will be concerted attacks on the defense budget, both on the grounds that the Department of Defense cannot efficiently absorb all of this massive infusion of resources, as well as on the grounds that if the civilian sector of the budget is going to suffer so painfully, then defense, too, ought to be cut back. So I think that this subcommittee is going to have to build a solid record to show that even this new budget leaves unfunded requirements and that all of the program increases which are authorized herein are, in fact, able to be executed. Our witness this morning is Gen. Edward C. Meyer, the Chief of Staff of the Army, who will give us his view of what the Army needs today to get well, and indicate how these new budget increases will contribute to that end. General, we are happy to welcome you to the subcommittee and we look forward to your presentation. STATEMENT OF GEN. EDWARD C. MEYER, CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE ARMY General MEYER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. If I might, I would like to have my statement entered into the record, and then I'd like to briefly review for you and respond to the challenges which you outlined, the perspective and requirements and personal views on what this budget does and does not do. Mr. STRATTON. Without objection, that statement will be included, and you may proceed as you see fit. General MEYER. Thank you very much. I think you articulated exactly where I believe we are as far as the Armed Forces today are concerned. That is, we are at a watershed; we are at a very critical juncture in history in which we, the uniformed military, and our civilian leaders in the administration, and in the Congress, must jointly decide what kind of Armed Forces we want for this decade ahead. What you decide on your Procurement Subcommittee, what you decide on the House Armed Services Committee, what's decided by the House and the Senate, is going to be the type and kind and makeup of Armed Forces that we're going to have out to the 21st Century. So we truly are at a very critical juncture in history. We have a responsibility together to insure that the dollars we spend are the dollars that are needed to have the kind of Armed Forces we need to respond to that broad challenge. In this morning's Washington Post, there was an article by General Taylor that I would commend to your reading. It outlines the need at this point to take a look at exactly what we want our Armed Forces to do. I also think it's important that we do that at this point in time as well, as we begin to spend the resources that we intend to, because otherwise, we could end up with the wrong military force in the wrong decade prepared for the wrong war. I would like to outline what I believe is necessary at this point, as far as the Army is concerned. One is, we need an Army that can respond in different geographical areas: in central Europe, southwest Asia, northeast Asia, and in Latin America. We need an Army that can respond across the full spectrum of warfare, from counterterrorism through conventional, through tactical nuclear, and to play a role in the strategic nuclear with the ballistic missile defense in whatever role it plays in the strategic nuclear equation. That Army, which you very properly point out, and Congress has pointed out, this committee particularly, is one which has serious flaws today; one which I called, perhaps ill advisedly, but I thought pointedly, in this conference room last year, a hollow Armybecause it lacked the manpower, the equipment, and the sustainability, necessary to ensure that we have an Army that's capable of going to war and carrying out the missions which we are assigned when we're committed. So from the Army's point of view, what we need to look at is the manning of the Army, its training, its modernizing and equipping, how we sustain it and how we deploy it. I have laid out for you, but I am not going to go into, as I did in my statement, what I consider to be the Army's strengths today, because you indicated you thought it was more important that we look at what this current budget does and does not do. On page 4 of my statement, I displayed a matrix which outlines what I believe the budget that was presented by the Carter administration in 1981 and 1982 does and does not do. When we presented our fixes to the does not column of that budget adequacy matrix, I indicated-as I've indicated in the past-that I thought it would take about $50 billion additional over the 5-year period in order to be able to begin to fix the problems that we have in manning, training, equipping, sustaining, and deploying the force. I put the additional requirements in those contexts because I think that just looking at equipment, or just looking at any one of those factors, doesn't give us the horizontal look which we must take. You have to say: If we give the Defense Department x-number of dollars, can they, in fact, carry out the contingency plan necessary which has been outlined for Central Europe, for Southwest Asia, for Northeast Asia, for Latin America or wherever else it might be that we're called upon to commit force? So I have outlined here essentially what I believe we do not do with the current budget. We do not fill up our Guard and Reserve to the degree that they must be if they're to be a part of the total force in the manning side. We have an inadequate amount of combat support and combat service support. An area on which we are focusing with the additional resources is in improving our training base so that we're turning out bettertrained, better-disciplined soldiers. We've been cut back continually in the training base to the point where we are not providing soldiers to the unit who have had sufficient time to be soldierized. In 7 weeks you can't turn an individual from society into a disciplined, trained soldier. We need more time and we are putting dollars in to do that, but we need to do even more. We also need to modernize, but it's more than that-the term "modernizing" is continually used as it relates to the Army. I would merely tell you that it isn't just modernizing, it's equipping. We currently have units, both in the Active and the Reserve that don't have the equipment, so we are not just going through a tradeout of new equipment for old equipment. We are, in fact, providing equipment, some of it new, to units which today do not have that equipment. I think that needs to be taken into account. We have been forced in the past to buy at less than economic rates and, to me, that has driven up the cost of individual weapons systems, and has very properly caused criticism of the way in which we go about doing our contracting business. There are other failures there, our own, in the way in which we go about insuring the contracts are carried out effectively and holding the contractor to quality in what he produces. In the sustaining part of the business, this committee overall has focused on readiness and it needs to, because on the sustaining side of the house, we have to improve our capability to go to war and keep our equipment running once we get there. For the Air Force and for the Navy, they can go to war and continue to sustain themselves because they have the aircraft and |