Pentagon Report Calls For Base Closures Military Must Shed Some Fat To Get Down To Fighting Weight

In its biggest strategic review since the Cold War’s close, the Pentagon called Monday for new rounds of military base closing and elimination of 225,000 active duty, reserve and civilian support jobs to free funds for new weapons and troop readiness.

Despite expected fierce opposition from Congress, the long-awaited report said that only with new base cuts will the U.S. military be able to afford a superpower’s obligations to keep forces based near danger spots around the world while performing costly peacekeeping operations and other missions.

“We must shed more weight,” Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, who has called for new rounds of base closings in 1999 and 2001, said in introducing the report. “If you want to keep the bases, then you will not modernize.”

The report, six months in preparation, had been expected by some experts to make difficult choices between buying new weapons and maintaining a large force structure. When the work was completed, however, officials decided that the Pentagon needed almost all the new weapons and almost all the troops - and looked to politically unpalatable base closings to pay for them.

The Pentagon’s massive infrastructure - test ranges, weapons labs and military training centers strung across tens of thousands of square miles of the western United States - is a ripe target for Pentagon cutbacks. The General Accounting Office last year estimated that the Pentagon has 35 percent too much capacity in its labs and test ranges.

While acknowledging that base closings would be “unpleasant,” Cohen signaled that he intends to campaign hard for them, pointing out to Congress that there can be no new weapons without them.

If members of Congress ask pointed questions about the absence of weapons spending, he said, he would tell them that the money is tied up in warehouses, depots and other now-unnecessary property. And he said that beginning Tuesday he will tell Congress about “success stories” of base closings that have proved an economic boon for their communities.

The report’s call for relatively modest personnel cuts represents a victory for the military leadership’s view that the Pentagon cannot shave a lot of functions or planned weapons without shouldering major new risks.

The makeup of the job cuts also reflects the Pentagon’s targeting of infrastructure-related positions. Such support jobs account for almost half the cuts, and civilians hold 80,000 of those 109,000 positions. Of the remainder, 61,800 cuts will come from active-duty troops and 55,000 from the reserves.

The report follows in the pattern of earlier strategic reviews that have settled for incremental rather than sweeping change.

The report points out that the U.S. military already has shrunk substantially from Cold War days when it was supported by a $400 billion (inflation-adjusted) budget and a 2.1-million-troop active duty force. Today the active-duty head count is 1.44 million and the $250 billion budget is expected to remain flat for several years at least.

The new review also calls for:

Reductions in active-duty forces of 15,000 from the Army, 18,000 from the Navy, 27,000 from the Air Force and 1,800 from the Marines. That, coupled with previously planned reductions, would bring the active-duty force to 1.36 million by 2003, down 2.1 million from 1989.

Cutting the number of the Navy’s surface combat ships from 128 to 116, although it will keep 12 aircraft carriers and 12 battle groups. The Air Force cuts would be made in large part by paring the numbers of tactical aircraft used in continental air defense.

Paring expensive new tactical aircraft development programs, but not abandoning any of them - a substantial victory for defense contractors. The Air Force plans to buy 339 F-22s, down from 438. The Navy plans to get 548 F-18 E/F fighters, down from 1,000.

Cohen predicted that the report’s proposals to cut the National Guard and reserves “will be an area of great controversy.”