THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 2, 1996 TAG: 9603020241
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORT
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 107 lines
Military personnel around the world will get a 3 percent pay raise next year, but expected increases in weapons spending will be delayed under a $243 billion defense spending plan President Clinton is to unveil on Monday.
Documents obtained by The Associated Press indicate the administration also wants annual raises of 3.1 percent for service personnel in subsequent years and continued emphasis on combat readiness and improvements in the quality of life for troops.
The budget proposal includes a number of programs of particular interest to local shipbuilders and military personnel, including almost $800 million for continued development of a new generation of attack submarines. At least two of those ships, the second and fourth of the line, are to be built at Newport News Shipbuilding.
Missing from the proposal is an expected first dose of funds for a new Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, which also would be built at Newport News. Adm. Mike Boorda, chief of naval operations, had indicated in October that the Navy would seek preliminary funding for the ship in 1997, but sources said Friday that an appropriation this year was never part of the Navy's plans.
Sources said the $4.5 billion carrier remains part of the Navy's long-range plans, and a spokeswoman for Newport News Shipbuilding said the yard is unconcerned by its omission from the 1997 budget.
The administration also wants $2.6 billion for 12 Navy F-18E ``Super Hornet'' fighters, $1.1 billion for four V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft for the Marine Corps and $3.4 billion for four DDG-51 Aegis-class destroyers.
Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach is to be the principal East Coast base for the Super Hornet, the first of which began test flights last month at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station near Washington. The service expects to buy up to 1,000 of the jets.
The documents obtained by the AP show two conflicting figures for defense spending for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1: $243.4 billion and $242.6 billion. That compares with $246 billion that Clinton requested for this year and $253 billion that Congress authorized.
Defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the lower figure is more accurate because it excludes some spending not traditionally counted as part of the defense budget.
Other major requests in the budget plan include $2.8 billion for ballistic missile defense, $2 billion for continued development of the Air Force's F-22 fighter, $600 million for continued development of a next generation fighter that would be used by the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, and $2.3 billion for eight C-17 Globemaster cargo planes.
In all, weapons system purchases contemplated by the budget would cost $38.9 billion, the lowest level since the Korean War. Arms purchases would increase in subsequent years however, reaching $60 billion in 2001 under the Clinton plan.
The overall defense budget for the fiscal year beginning next Oct. 1, calls for a combined force of 1.46 million, down 25,000 from 1996 levels. That leaves a cut of an additional 39,000 in future years to reach the planned floor of 1.42 million under the military's strategic blueprint.
Selected reserve strength would drop by 30,000 to 901,000. Department of Defense civilian employment would drop by 34,000 to 807,000. The documents indicate that long-planned military manpower reductions are all but complete. But the Pentagon plans to cut civilian employment by a further 79,000 after 1997.
In 1997, the budget will support 10 active-duty Army divisions, four Marine Corps divisions, 357 ships, and 20 Air Force fighter wings.
Clinton seeks $1.1 billion for ongoing military contingency operations, including $590 million for operations over northern and southern Iraq and $542 million for operations in and around Bosnia.
The 3 percent military pay raise Clinton is seeking would be the largest in recent memory. Service members received only a 2.4 percent increase in 1996. The budget also seeks money to build, replace or improve 6,400 family housing units and 42 barracks.
Reached Friday, Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Clinton appeared to be ignoring Congress, which added $7 billion to this year's defense budget. Thurmond predicted that Congress would add $14 billion to Clinton's 1997 plan.
``I am concerned that last year's defense budget gains, enacted by Congress, which restored and maintained the current and future readiness of our armed forces, have been traded off,'' Thurmond said.
Weapons spending would remain at a 45-year low, while research and development spending will decline through the end of the decade.
``Defense spending will continue to decline for the foreseeable future,'' predicted Andrew Krepinevich, director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington-based think tank that examines defense policy.
A fairly rapid decline in defense spending since the peak years of the Reagan buildup ``is beginning to bottom out, but not this year,'' he said.
Brookings Institution defense analyst and former Reagan administration official Lawrence Korb, who has criticized defense spending as excessive, said the $7 billion added to the 1996 defense budget by Congressional Republicans finances weapons that Clinton had planned to buy later.
As a result, Clinton can afford to ask for less in those years because the Republicans have provided it in advance.
But other observers predicted a crunch in future years, as the Pentagon tries to reconcile the slight increases projected by Clinton's spending plan with its need to maintain a force large enough and powerful enough to fight two nearly simultaneous regional wars.
``How do you keep the (two war) force level, keep readiness up while also increasing weapons procurement?'' Krepinevich asked.
``I suspect these guys are going to try to slide by the election,'' said Baker Spring, a defense budget analyst with the Heritage Foundation. ``Come the next budget presentation next year, it will be quietly pointed out that the (two war) force is toast.''
KEYWORDS: MILITARY BUDGET by CNB