Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military From: budden@trout.nosc.mil (Rex A. Buddenberg) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Defense cuts Message-ID: <12854@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 6 Jan 90 02:19:38 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Organization: USCG Headquarters, Washington DC Lines: 53 Approved: military@att.att.com From: budden@trout.nosc.mil (Rex A. Buddenberg) Upon returning from a month's leave, I see there has been some discussion of how to implement what the politicians are currently calling the peace dividend. My backlog only goes back a few days, so I'm without any discussion that took place in December, forgive any repeats. 60% of the DoD (and the Coast Guard's portion of the DoT) budget goes to people, not hardware or hardware development. This 60% includes paychecks, chow, pensions, training and education, ... Therefore, if you need to tighten a budget, cutting obsolescent or obsolete hardware is really only incidental to cutting the people costs. So, to use one of the mentioned examples, aircraft carriers are expesnive because they carry 5-6000 people fully loaded. The steel is cheap by comparison, and that cost is sunk anyway. Further, carriers come in battle group sized packages so when you cut a carrier, you also cut a cruiser or two, a desron and a logistics ship or two (except that log ships and destroyers are chronically in short supply anyway). Each of these other ships in the battle group has a crew that costs the same per person as the CV. Same logic applies to the battleship battle groups. The argument runs out of steam when you try to apply the same economics to the shoreside support structure -- a school tends to cost about the same to keep operating whether it is running two classes a year or two dozen. A shipyard that builds CVs will require essentially the same national investment to keep intact whether or not it is fully employed. The third component of the logistics/training part of the picture is whether or not you can cutt ALL of a particular item. The training and logistics structures to support carriers must remain in place whether we operate one, 17 or 33 (what the Navy really wanted) flattops. Put in a real scenario: when the INF treaty was going to leave us with 100 Pershings, we were not going to get the (side effect) logistic cost avoidances, but when we cut all of them in the final treaty, we cut the requirement for a Pershing missile repair and maintenance school entirely. Meat axe budget cutting is bad. Deliberate economic changes need to be done with a couple points in mind: - it appears that our containment policy, and ensuing force structure that has endured from 1947 is indeed up for major revision. We can't work out the right force structure until we understand the next generation of policy and strategy. - a deterrent requirement still remains. You have potentially desparate men in the Kremlin, a real possibility that their intra-USSR empire will come down around their ears, and those folks still have the keys to enough firepower to blow us all away. Like to hear some more thoughtful discussion.... Rex Buddenberg [usual disclaimer]