HEADLINE NEWS
Partisan Sniping Mars Readiness Debate
WASHINGTON Congress the Pentagon and are locked in a feud over the adequacy of U.S. military readiness, a dispute awash in politics and confused by conflicting government reports about whether U.S forces are in fighting trim. Determined to render its own judgment, Congress has ordered the Pentagon to cough up more information on combat readiness, which both sides agree is difficult to define and measure. Some measurements of readiness are easy, like tracking spare parts. Other factors are intangible, like morale and unit cohesion. The Pentagon says it is willing to provide more information in its quarterly readiness reports, which Congress ordered expanded in the Fiscal 1998 Defense Authorization Act. But high-ranking civilian defense and military officials claim Congress needlessly mandated some data it already receives. In other instances, lawmakers demanded data for which there is no reasonable or standardized measûrement, the services contend, But the growing readiness dispute on Capitol Hill involves more than the volume of information Congress receives or disagreements over the accuracy of various statistical and technical readiness measurements. Exasperated lawmakers, Republican and Democrat alike, protest what they claim are irreconcilable differences between official Pentagon readiness reviews and anecdotal field reports. The reports. Pentagon’s quarterly assessments generally rate combat readiness as acceptable if fragile. In stark contrast, field reports gathered by traveling senators and representatives show signs of skimpier training, heavier maintenance backlogs and larger spare parts shortages than Pentagon report cards seem to suggest (AW&STMar. 9, p. 72). The divide is politicizing the readiness issue, arousing suspicions on Capitol Hill that the Defense Dept.’s civilian leadership and military brass are towing the White House line and playing down deficiencies. Congressional Republicans accuse the Democratic White House of spending less on defense than it should, while at the same time embarking on too many military commitments overseas, draining readiness accounts that support training, maintenance and spare parts. A cadre of House and Senate Republicans and some conservative Democrats is trying to assemble a case, built on the pessimistic field reports, that the Administration’s shortchanging of defense will result in the same sort of “hollow force” that became a political liability helping to drive a previous Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, from office in 1980. In a series of recent hearings, both House and Senate military panels have received troubling reports of F-15 engine shortfalls, F-15 and F-16 spare parts shortages, limited aviation fuel supplies and strained aviation logistics, shrinking combat pilot ranks, avionics shortages, late installation of new technologies and deficient numbers of maintenance specialists (AWefSTMar. 9, p. 72, 74). Lawmakers also have been informed by the services of dwindling flight hours, diminished training and slipping “mission-capable” rates for major weapons like combat aircraft. "THE PRESIDENT IS EITHER UNAWARE of, or has chosen not to acknowledge, the seriousness of readiness, quality of life and modernization problems,” asserted Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), as this year’s congressional readiness review began. Many defense-oriented members of Congress, including Thurmond, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, regard readiness as the number one issue confronting the U.S. military. To date, however, congressional Republicans have been unable to produce evidence of a military-wide, comprehensive readiness decline. Ironically, they have undercut their own case to some extent by boasting that they have added tens of billions of dollars to the national defense budget in recent years. Thurmond noted that Congress has appended an extra $22 billion since 1995 to President Clinton’s military requests, bolstering Pentagon coffers across the board and alleviating the very pressures on readiness that Republicans decry. Clinton signed into law the additional money Congress appropriated, enabling him to claim that he and Congress together, in bipartisan concord, have kept readiness intact and the defense budget high, relative to much larger military spending reductions by other Western countries and Russia since the Cold War ended in 1991. Moreover, the Republicans are at odds with the judgment of some outside military experts, who assert that no U.S. readiness problems exist in any meaningful strategic sense. Even high-ranking defense officials from the Reagan era—which saw the biggest peacetime military buildup in U.S. history—scoff at the notion of another “hollow force” in the making. This complicates the Republican bid to reap partisan gain from the readiness issue. OVERALL C-RATING1 • C-1 = Capable of all wartime missions (MAE2 > 89%). • C-2 = Capable of most wartime missions (MAE = 80-89%). • C-3 = Capable of many, but not all wartime missions. Significant decrease in flexibility and increased vulnerability. (MAE = 70-79%). • C-4 = Unit requires additional resources or training to undertake its wartime missions, but may be directed to deploy (MAE = 50-69%). • C-5 = Unit undergoing organiza1A combat unit’s overall “C-rating" refers to its level of capability. The lower the number, the higher the capability. 2MAE (Mission Accomplishment Estimate) is a commander’s personal assessment of his unit’s ability to execute that portion of his unit's wartime mission it would be expected to perform if alerted or committed within 72 hours. The MAE rating takes into account both quantifiable resources and intangible factors such as morale. Source: U.S. Army “Readiness spending per capita of military personnel is as high as it has ever been,” said Lawrence J. Korb, who was the readiness czar in the Reagan Pentagon from 1981-85. “Yes, the total U.S. defense budget has been going down since 1985, but so has the size of our military forces. And readiness demands have been vastly reduced because there’s a big difference between having to fight the Soviet empire and dealing with Bosnia. Bosnia doesn’t degrade readiness, it’s a training exercise that strengthens readiness.” ADDRESSING LAWMAKERS' and service officials’ warnings that the military is now too small to take on so many overseas commitments, Korb said, “No other country in the world trains or procures equipment at the rate we are. Every other country’s budget has gone down much more rapidly. The Chinese have increased their defense spending, but it was in net decline from 1979 to 1989. And how much are the Chinese spending—$12-23 billion [annually]? Let’s say it’s $50 billion. It doesn’t come close to our $270 billion.” Maj. Gen. John J. Maher, the Joint Staff’s vice director for operations, testified at a House National Security readiness subcommittee hearing this month: “Our armed forces remain capable, within an acceptable level of risk, of meeting the demands of our strategy.” To some committee members, that sounded suspiciously like hedging. At the same hearing, they heard from Lt. Gen. Patrick K. Gamble, Air Force deputy chief of staff, air and space operations, who cautioned that a high operations tempo, aging aircraft and the need to rotate forces through several forward-deployed locations is putting considerable strain on Air Force personnel “and their ability to maintain our force in a high state of readiness in forward and rear base areas.” According to Lt. Gen. Martin R. Steele, Marine Corps deputy chief of staff for plans, policies and operations, “Our aviation and ground equipment readiness rates are currently at acceptable levels, but our ability to maintain aging equipment is slowly slipping.” The greatest concern is “our continued ability to maintain aging equipment without overwhelming our personnel” with outsized workloads. GAMBLE ADDRESSED THE GAP between Pentagon readiness reports and anecdotal field evidence, arguing they can be reconciled. “My view is that both reports are true and generally consistent.” Official technical reports represent the chain of command’s best judgment “on whether specific unit capabilities meet the very specific demands” laid down in the plans of the theater combatant commanders [CINCS],” he said. “Field reports are much better indicators of the human cost of doing business. They tip the chain of command off to specific problems at specific bases that don’t show up in” technical or statistical indicators. “Field reports can convey the personal strain and professional frustration of our airmen.” Technical measures and field reports combined give headquarters a more wellrounded picture. “Our reporting systems tell us today that aerospace forces can meet the CINCs’ call across the full spectrum of military operations. We are voicing our concern at the growing level of effort it takes to meet that call.” Military officials cautioned lawmakers that readiness reports can easily be misunderstood, even using the simple scorecard system that rates combat readiness from C-1 (fully capable) to C-3 (capable of many, but not all wartime missions) to C-4 (50-69% capable). Vice Adm. James O. Ellis, Jr., deputy chief of naval operations, said, “For example, 274 of the 674 Navy units reporting during Fiscal 1998 first quarter were C-3 or below. This figure may come as a surprise, and some might assume your Navy is in trouble. But considering the rotational nature of our forces, this figure is anticipated and considered routine.” ©
By PAUL MANN
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April 61998
