Pentagon Has Plenty of Hardware : There Was No ‘Decade of Neglect’ That Compels Frenzy Now

With his defense-spending plans facing almost certain reductions from a deficit-conscious Congress, and with public support for growing defense budgets substantially eroded, President Reagan went on television last week to lobby for more increases.

He invoked one of his favorite images: the supposed “decade of neglect” of U.S. defenses in the 1970s, which has been one of the primary justifications for his ambitious and expensive defense programs. This time, however, he provoked a sharp rebuke from former President Jimmy Carter, who charged that Reagan has “habitually misstated” the resources provided for defense in the 1970s, and claimed credit for programs actually begun under the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations.

Aside from the natural fascination that such a presidential quarrel provides, the condition of the forces that Reagan inherited is an important issue. Whether future restraint in defense spending is possible depends in part on whether the “decade of neglect” is fact or fiction.

There is no magic amount of money, no particular level of defense spending that will guarantee U.S. security. For one thing, what is bought is clearly more important than what is spent. Defense spending did decline during the early 1970s as the United States withdrew from Indochina, but that decline stopped under President Gerald R. Ford in fiscal 1976, and for the rest of the decade defense budgets grew in real terms (that is, adjusted for inflation). One can argue that more funds should have been provided, but that is different from the President’s charge of “years of declining defense spending.”

What those defense dollars bought is even more important. If hardware is one measure of adequate defense spending, then the 1970s stand up rather well in comparison with the current period. From fiscal 1974 through 1981, Congress funded nine Trident submarines and 456 submarine-launched ballistic missiles; 226 intercontinental ballistic missiles; 5,765 tanks and 8,111 other tracked vehicles; 3,267 combat aircraft and 1,175 helicopters; 120 ships for the Navy, including two aircraft carriers, and more than 300,000 tactical missiles.

With the exception of the resuscitated B-1 bomber that was canceled by the Carter Administration, every major weapon system cited by Reagan with such pride was begun under one of his Republican or Democratic predecessors. Even the new B-1 is simply an updated version of the earlier model.

Moreover, the Reagan Administration is currently buying at about the same rate as its predecessors in the supposedly infamous 1970s. Comparisons are difficult because the mix of equipment is different and the individual systems are generally more expensive. The military’s unshakable fascination with high-technology hardware has been thoroughly indulged by this Administration, with corresponding increases in price. The Pentagon is shopping at Saks, not at Sears, these days.

The era of rapidly rising defense budgets clearly is over. The best that the Administration probably could hope to wrest from Congress is funding at the fiscal 1986 levels, with an allowance for inflation. Over five years that would be $200 billion less than the Administration has requested. If Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger holds to his usual stance of spurning all efforts to reach a compromise, the specter of Gramm-Rudman and its far deeper and automatic across-the-board cuts looms next fall.

Adjusting to austerity will be difficult, but the good news is that the United States can afford to exercise restraint in its defense spending for the rest of the decade. Despite what Reagan wants to believe, U.S. forces were not gutted during the 1970s. The weapons acquired during that decade, added to those that this Administration has procured, have provided the United States with a modern defense capability. And as long as it is managed properly, there is now enough hardware on hand.

That management will not be easy politically. The area where the military has gained the most is readiness, but it also is the most immediately vulnerable. Spare parts, training and supplies simply have far fewer and far less powerful defenders than major weapon systems. Moreover, a whole new generation of high-tech conventional and nuclear weapons is being readied for procurement, even though much research and development on them remains to be done. If these systems are permitted to move into production as proposed, along with the continued acquisition of current systems, there is no way that the United States can exercise budgetary restraint and maintain forces fit to fight.

More is at stake, therefore, than Reagan’s fondness for images and anecdotes of dubious accuracy. Flogging the carcass of the “decade of neglect” is not just a deep disservice to the Presidents who preceded him. Blaming the past is no substitute for the rethinking of defense policies that budgetary restraint requires. Serious analysis and hard choices are what the public now has the right to demand.