THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 26, 1994 TAG: 9410260447
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 150 lines
To a corps of admirers, he has been the American military's resident visionary, a man with a clear, reasoned view of how the nation can get the simplest and most reliable defense for decades to come.
But to legions of detractors, Gen. Merrill A. McPeak has been a dour ``contrarian,'' bent on building up the Air Force he has headed since 1990 at the expense of valuable Army, Navy and Marine forces.
The 58-year-old ``Tony'' McPeak, who retired Tuesday as Air Force chief of staff, emerged this year as the pivotal figure in a fierce Pentagon debate over the future roles of all the services.
His repeated and blunt calls for dramatic change - the transfer of Marine Corps air wings to Navy control, for example - have sparked something close to a war in the military's top echelon. The public break in those ranks comes even as troops and field commanders are demonstrating in Haiti a new ability to sacrifice interservice rivalries and blend their talents.
For the Navy and Marines, the tall, almost gaunt McPeak has been a particularly troubling figure. Leaders of those services tout their combined sea, air and land power as a kind of national expeditionary force, projecting American muscle worldwide.
``We're not big war winners,'' Adm. Jeremy Michael Boorda, the chief of naval operations, said last week. ``We're there early with a lot of combat power and our bigger brothers (in the Army and Air Force) show up as soon as they can.''
But McPeak argues that much of the Navy's punch can be delivered more quickly, safely and cheaply by the Air Force's long-range ``stealth'' bombers and precision-guided weapons.
McPeak ``had the personal courage to risk his reputation and collegiality with the other services,'' by pushing such views, Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall said during Tuesday's retirement ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base. ``We can all learn from his example and his dedication.''
McPeak himself was conciliatory, and drily humorous, in parting. His troops have ``stolen every good idea we could from the Army, the Navy, the Coast Guard - even the Marines,'' he cracked. ``I should say especially the Marines.''
Standing in front of an array of Air Force fighters and bombers parked on the Andrews tarmac, McPeak said he thought his responsibility as service chief was to think about the future, ``the Air Force we dream of, the Air Force we ought to be.''
``Part of every duty day,'' he said in another speech last month, ``includes a challenge to business as usual. . . We simply must resist the downward pull of habit and routine.''
Even critics acknowledge that in four years roughly equally divided between Republican and Democratic administrations, McPeak was true to that maxim.
His first days set a tone as the Air Force shifted to simpler, airline-style uniforms that still are resented by much of the rank and file. Then McPeak tackled the bureaucracy, eliminating layers of command structure to ``organize the service the way it fights,'' said Martin Faga, a former assistant secretary of the Air Force.
That meant killing off the Strategic Air Command (SAC) and Tactical Air Command (TAC), the bomber and fighter prongs of Air Force power during the Cold War, and replacing them with an Air Combat Command in which bomber and fighter pilots and crews live, train and operate together. By making the change as the service also reduced its overall strength for the post-Cold War era, McPeak reduced the Air Force from 200 air wings to 90.
The idea, McPeak explained in an interview last summer with Air Force magazine, was to create command structures that ``are very simple, which means they are very rugged and will stand up to stress... The Air Force is now designed for the toughest kind of pressure that can be put on it.''
``He has thought long term. He has thought about what makes an Air Force for 2000 and beyond,'' Faga said.
Again with the value of simplicity in mind, McPeak has called for changing the roles of the Air Force and the other military branches. He would surrender the Air Force's role in providing close air support for ground troops - letting Army attack helicopters and Marine harrier ``jump'' jets do that job - but he has urged that the Air Force control all space operations.
``Space is a place, not a mission,'' Army staff chief Gen. Gordon Sullivan has said in reply.
``I don't think we can get to one air force,'' McPeak said in the Air Force magazine interview. ``I think we're stuck with some number bigger than one. If we were starting with a clean sheet of paper, there should be only one air force, but we don't start with a clean sheet. We start with the history of how we got here.''
McPeak has disavowed any interest in putting Air Force bombers and fighters on Navy carriers and has said the flattops are vital to national defense. But he has also wondered aloud about the need for more carriers, noting repeatedly that U.S-based bombers, not carriers on station in the Persian Gulf, delivered the first blows of Operation Desert Storm.
With stealth technology to hide its planes from enemies and precision-guidance systems to take weapons to their targets, the Air Force now has the maneuverability and mass sought by generations of military commanders, McPeak argues.
And by showing in Desert Storm that it can bring those qualities to bear, with devastating results, anywhere in the world, the Air Force sent a message to potential foes everywhere, he adds. Even when no American carrier or air base is nearby, those foes now know there is an American presence just a few hours away, he reasons.
Not surprisingly, the analysis rankles Navy leaders and fans of naval power.
Norman Polmar, a civilian analyst who's written extensively on naval issues, argued in an interview that much of the world is beyond at least the convenient reach of U.S.-based bombers. Those planes may need to be refueled in the air several times while on a lengthy mission and even with precision weapons may not be able to hit their targets in bad weather. A nearby carrier hits quickly and whenever bad weather clears, he said.
McPeak is like many military leaders who ``want to leave a legacy'' when they retire, Polmar said. ``They figure, `Not only did I spend 30 years in an outstanding organization, I spent 30 years in an organization that ought to rule the world.' ''
Boorda, the chief of naval operations, reminded reporters last week that in each of the 216 times since World War II that the United States has responded to a foreign threat by using or threatening force, the Navy or Marine Corps has been involved. The Air Force has been called on in only 61 of those crises, he said.
``I don't mean this to be negative. . . '' Boorda quickly added. ``But we're forward and we're there and the national command authority can use us. Oftentimes the president can use us without sending a bigger political signal than he means to send.''
Boorda said that in order to place the firepower of a single carrier air wing at a friendly country's land base, the Air Force would need to fly 166 sorties of its giant C-5 transports from their bases in the United States. ``We (in the Navy) don't need any lift because the lift is inherent in the package,'' he said.
In contrast to McPeak's offer to give up some Air Force roles in exchange for similar sacrifices by the other services, the other chiefs generally have argued that their present jobs should be protected or expanded.
For example, in a presentation last month to a congressionally appointed commission studying the service roles, Boorda contended that the Navy should get additional responsibility for defending land forces against missile attacks.
The land-based Patriot missile batteries that now do that job require dozens of planes to carry them to overseas bases and the cooperation of governments in countries where those bases are located. A similar anti-missile weapon the Navy intends to test this winter would be part of the missile stocks of patrolling Aegis cruisers and always available, he said.
Without mentioning McPeak by name, Boorda said that a service chief who offers to sacrifice some of his mission in return for gaining functions done by other services, ``has stepped outside of the realm of what he is supposed to do.''
``I give good military advice,'' he said. ``I talk about what it is that we do, and do well. . . When you talk about what you are willing to give up, that sounds like a bazaar, and we're not at a bazaar. We're in the national defense business.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Gen. McPeak
KEYWORDS: STRATEGIC MISSION U.S. AIR FORCE by CNB