deputy chairman. He said that the Chiefs themselves had studied the problem, and they were unable to agree upon a charter for the Office of Deputy Chairman.

In view of that comment from the Chairman, could you comment on those views of the former Chairman as to the necessity for a Deputy Chairman?

Mr. KOMER. Well, sir, you mentioned General Vessey, who was the last chairman before Admiral Crowe. I could mention General Jones, who was the chairman before him and who thought that he needed a deputy. I think you will find that views vary among present and past chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. By and large, I am much more of General Jones' persuasion than General Vessey's.

The point is, do you want to have a man who can replace the Chairman, with the Chairman's authority over the Chiefs, on those occasions when the Chairman is out of town or is incapacitated by illness or something like that? The job is big enough for two people to work it. There have been a number of proposals for other functions for the deputy. He could, in addition, serve as Director of the Joint Staff, although I don't think much of that idea.

I would suggest that General Vessey's expressed views were influenced by the context in which he operated.

Mr. LALLY. He did establish the rotation, the quarterly rotation of the other chiefs. And as I recall, his comment was that up until that time it had been the senior chief in town and that you did have this frequent change in a crisis period where maybe you had three or four different acting chairmen. He felt that the designation of one person for each quarter eliminated that possibility and gave the continuity which was required for an acting chairman.

Mr. KOMER. It was an improvement, I believe. I wasn't there at the time, so I can't speak to it from personal experience or observation.

But my experience has been that serving as a service chief, as Chief of Naval Operations or Chief of Staff of the Air Force or Army, does not give one much background or experience to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A service Chief wears two hats. He spends perhaps 95 percent of his time on his job as service chief and 5 percent of his time on his job as a member of the JCS. I don't see how he can have adequate experience of and knowledge of the kinds of problems that the Chairman needs to advise the President and the Secretary of Defense.

Mr. LALLY. Thank you, Mr. Komer.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. NICHOLS. Mr. Barrett.

Mr. BARRETT. Mr. Komer, what do you think of the idea of doing away with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and establishing some sort of general staff, perhaps along the lines that the Senate recommended, or as Representative Skelton or Gen. Maxwell Taylor have recommended in the past?

Mr. KOMER. I think that's a proposal that has a lot going for it. Generally, if I thought it were politically feasible, I would favor it over the past or the presently developing House bills.

I don't think the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a very effective organization. I think we need a more effective one. I think we, above all,

need to remove this conflict of interest, where the same man who is the chief uniformed advocate of his service's, inevitably rather parochial, policies proceeds to judge its military effectiveness by going downstairs into the tank and putting on his other hat as a member of the JCS. So, it does seem to me that separating the service chiefs from the people who provide the military strategic advice is a good technique.

I am most unimpressed with the criticisms against it. One criticism against it, as you know, is that the member of this military council-General Meyer proposed that back in 1982, I recall-that the member will be cut off from his service. Well, he will have served 35 or more years in his service. How does he get cut off from it? He is not the immediate superior; that's true. But as a result, he may be able to get more free-wheeling advice.

I think that strategy is a subject which has been utterly and adequately discussed, analyzed, decided upon in the U.S. Government and in the national security part of the U.S. Government in particular. You are never going to get adequate attention to preferred U.S. strategy without a very substantial military input. You are never going to get a very substantial military input unless you have people working on it full time and not devoting 5 percent of their time to it.

I was having lunch with a Chief of Staff, and it was the day on which they were going to have a JCS meeting at 2:00 or 2:30 in the afternoon. At about 2:15 he began to get nervous that he ought to get briefed for the JCS meeting. Well, I walked out at 2:20, and in the 10 minutes before the JCS meeting, probably while he was walking down from the second floor or the third floor to the first floor, the chief got briefed on the business for that afternoon. Now, I don't think that's an acceptable basis on which to operate.

Mr. BARRETT. But if you went in that direction, would it follow that you would create a general staff of officers? Would you take young officers at a certain age and train them in joint matters and create a cadre and have a separate joint promotion system-Mr. KOMER. I am glad to debate that

Mr. BARRETT. Give them some sort of badge of distinction and those sorts of things?

Mr. KOMER. That is separable. I think you could have a separate Joint Chiefs of Staff or national military advisory council without going to a general staff system for the staff. I do believe, from historical analysis as well as my own experience, that a real general staff system would greatly improve our strategic and policy planning. Now, I would add that, too, if I had my druthers. I would add the creation of a regular general staff system, multi-service, to the creation of a separate joint military council, or whatever you want to call it.

Mr. BARRETT. Let's back off just a little bit from those measures that you say are beyond the boundaries of the politically feasible at this point. Considering the JCS bill that we passed last year in the House and which has some prospects for being passed, you have said that the proposals that we sent you are too detailed. How would you protect service officers when they go into joint billets? Yesterday Admiral Train indicated that he himself had participated in intimidating officers who serve in joint assignments. He indi

cated that this happens all the time and that it will continue to happen. If we don't have some specific provisions that would attempt to take care of these officers, what should be done in order to have a true joint perspective by those who are serving in joint billets?

Mr. KOMER. I think you are correct. I wasn't saying don't specify in any detail at all. I think what I was seeking-and it was a rather hasty look at this paper-was some kind of a golden mean between not making any specifications whatsoever and making specifications at nis length.

Some of these rovisions, of course, will create complications. But to answer your substantive question, I think there's no doubt that, unless the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his people have a say on the promotability of officers serving on the Joint Staff, general staff, or whatever, they are not going to get their due. Otherwise, the people who are in the services doing service business will have the say over their promotion.

Now, you want them to have a partial say. The Germans, as I recall, created two separate promotion systems. Once a man was selected as a senior captain for the general staff, went to the general staff academy and got promoted, he then worked for a system headed up by the Chief of the general staff. The Army, or the Navy or the Air Force, I guess, had very little to do with the promotability of that officer. There was a quota for general staff officers. Promotions within that quota were the responsibility of the chief of the general staff, not the commander in chief of the forces.

Now, as I read your proposal, it goes halfway there and says that they both shall have a responsibility. I think that's probably better and probably more politically feasible. But I wouldn't mind going the whole way. I just don't think it's going to recommend itself to the Congress.

Mr. NICHOLS. If the gentleman will yield on that particular point, I might ask a followup question.

Would you favor putting into law a provision that an officer should have some joint staff duty before he could become a general officer?

Mr. KOMER. That's one of the most difficult questions, it seems to

me.

Mr. NICHOLS. That's why I asked it, Mr. Komer.

Mr. KOMER. I can envision circumstances in which it should not be required.

Mr. NICHOLS. Like what?

Mr. KOMER. Well, you have an outstanding officer. He's put_up by a service chief for duty as a general officer in a joint job. For various reasons, he has not been able to have joint staff duty before. Therefore, he's not eligible. It puts a great deal of emphasis on the original selection process for the joint staff. I would like to see a little more flexibility in there.

My experience in the Pentagon was that we passed regulations and issued policies that generally dealt with 80 percent of the cases but that we tended to neglect the 10 percent at one end and the 10 percent at the other. I don't know quite how one writes that into law-the necessary fle ility. I notice you did allow waivers. You said that a fellow who d a waiver had to have his first general

officer assignment in a joint job. Well, I have some reservations about that, too. If the Army is responsible for chemical warfare, I don't think a general who is promoted to head the chemical warfare department ought to be required to have had joint experience. But by and large, I guess one goes with the greater good while trying to leave a little flexibility at each end.

Mr. NICHOLS. Let's talk about CINC's a little bit. We've been told that the CINC's lack sufficient authority to discharge the awesome responsibilities that they have on a day-to-day basis in case of combat. What is your view on this? Is it important that we try to strengthen the CINC's? We are going to be talking to some CINC's later on. I intend to ask that question.

Mr. KOMER. I do, Mr. Chairman. It seems to me that there are few people in uniform who have more responsibility and less authority than the commanders in chief of our unified and specified commands. They have had, until fairly recently, almost no influence on the budget process. They go to their service chiefs or the various service chiefs, but they don't get much but the time of day. If we regard the missions of the CINC's as important, we should give them more authority to go along with the responsibility. And that particularly applies to-and I see it in your proposed bill, you do something about that—that particularly applies to giving them a handle on budgetary resources.

But having said that, that I agree with the proposition that the CINC's need more authority and more money, I would point out to you that the dichotomy, the difference in outlook between the Chiefs, between the CINC's and the service chiefs, is a more fundamental problem. The Chief, who is concerned with whether we go to war on his watch, has a short-range concern. He is very concerned about readiness, because it's his forces which will fight. He is somewhat concerned about sustainability. He is not all that concerned about modernization of equipment because, if we start putting R&D money into a new tank, it won't be along for another 5, 10, or, in the case of the last tank, 20 years.

The determination of the proper balance between readiness, sustainability, modernization and force structure is a very difficult job. I was involved in it, working for the Secretary. And I do not believe that we can afford, given resource constraints, to give various CINC's all the resources they deem are required for readiness, or sustainability, for that matter. If we were much closer to the point of war than I believe we are, then it seems to me readiness and sustainability ought to get progressively higher priority. But in a situation we've got today, you've got to balance; and I would not put the balance exclusively in the hands of the CINC's any more than I would put the balance exclusively in the hands of the JCS. It's a tough decision. And you have to make it on the merits in, you know, a thousand different cases.

So, what I am saying is, I would give some more authority to the CINC's; but I would not give them too much authority, or we're going to have a big split right down the middle of the Defense Department.

Mr. NICHOLS. A companion question to the one I just asked you about service on the Joint Staff in order to be a general officer: Would you support putting into law that, before a man could be a

service chief, he should have served in a CINC capacity at some time?

Mr. KOMER. That's a tough one, Mr. Chairman. By and large, I think I would not. And the reason once again is

Mr. NICHOLS. Do you agree it's desirable?

Mr. KOMER. I think it's desirable, but I would hate to make it mandatory.

Mr. NICHOLS. It narrows your field.

Mr. KOMER. Yes, sir. I think one might get an outstanding officer who had never been a CINC. And that man is au matically barred, if that's in the law. If you provide a provision í vaiver or something like that, well, that takes away some of the problem. But for, let's say, 9 out of 10 candidates for service ch, I think that would be desirable.

Mr. NICHOLS. I have no further questions.

Mr. LALLY. I have no further questions, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BARRETT. I would like to follow up on a couple of things. The chiefs appeared before us last week. On this question of balance, the chiefs indicated that this is their job with regard to the CINC's. That is, an Air Force chief has to balance where he puts his F-15's, in the Pacific or Europe or wherever; and the Army chief similarly. In other words, they spoke for the system, as I understood them, that they have now-that they determine the balance. Also, they are the providers. So they're sort of-they're competitors in this as well as balancers. Are you saying that you think that the joint side should have a focus, and the balancing should be in the Office of the Secretary of Defense? Or should the chiefs, as chiefs, be the balancers, deciding between modernization and readiness? Or how do you think it should work?

Mr. KOMER. I think that the JCS should recommend the balance that they think optimum. And they should do so on the basis, in part, of the views of the CINC's, which would be fortified and provided with a mode of expression through your bill by having them report to the Chairman and the CINC council. But I think that the Secretary of Defense under the law must retain final responsibility for issues like the balance in the Defense program. He is the one who has to defend it to the President and the Congress. So, yes, I would like to make the CINC's major inputers on this. But I would hate to see them given final responsibility at the expense of the Secretary of Defense.

Mr. NICHOLS. Thank you very much, Mr. Komer.

Mr. KOMER. My pleasure.

Mr. NICHOLS. Our next witness is Dr. Edward Luttwak, who is the author of "The Pentagon and the Art of War."

Do you have a statement, Mr. Luttwak?

Mr. LUTTWAK. I have a very brief statement. I don't know how useful it would be. Ambassador Komer and I have, essentially, a large coincidence of views. Perhaps I should focus narrowly on those additional questions.

Mr. NICHOLS. You may proceed.