THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 28, 1997 TAG: 9701280265
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 72 lines
Preserving money for modern weapons by cutting back on the Navy's readiness to go to war is a dangerous budget-cutting idea, the service's top admiral said Monday.
Instead, the Navy will get smaller, pare back a number of ships and try to wring at least $1.3 billion in savings each year from cutbacks in its infrastructure, Adm. Jay Johnson said in an interview with The Associated Press.
``I'm not going to compromise the readiness of the force. I don't think we can do that. It's dangerous,'' said Johnson, who became chief of naval operations last August following the suicide of Adm. Jeremy ``Mike'' Boorda.
And despite some critics' assertions that the Navy can't support its $63 billion price tag, Johnson said he was ``very much committed'' to the Navy's F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet fighter-attack aircraft. Its precision-guided weaponry and all-weather capability are required to maintain operational superiority in the missions of the next century, he said.
The Navy has 409,000 active-duty men and women, and expects to cut that to 390,000 over the next several years. Its 352-ship fleet will drop to roughly 340 ships, Johnson said.
But efforts to balance the budget are expected to put even more pressure on the Pentagon's budget, which was $265 billion for fiscal 1997. The Navy and Marine Corps' share was $75 billion.
Following Republican criticism that President Clinton was weakening the military, the Pentagon in recent years has cut back on payments for new weapons in order to maintain its combat readiness by keeping ships at sea, troops in the field and planes in the air.
The services now face big bills in the coming years as they attempt to modernize or replace aging aircraft and other weaponry. For the Navy, that means buying an upgraded F/A-18 E/F fighter for its carriers; the V-22 tilt rotor aircraft for the Marine Corps; and the Joint Strike Fighter, which is still on the drawing boards.
Johnson, who was interviewed in his Pentagon office overlooking the Potomac and the capital city beyond, said he can't do with any fewer than the 12 aircraft carriers now in service. At the same time, he said he can't add many more missions or lengthen the six-month deployments for sailors without harming his all-volunteer force.
``Right now, we are in balance,'' he said. If the Navy is forced to increase operations or reduce its force structure, the four-star admiral said, ``I'm off balance and the alarms will go off.''
Johnson said one of his biggest challenges ``will be to balance the near-term readiness requirement with the . . . modernization requirement for the long term, the need to invest for tomorrow.''
Johnson said that an additional round of base closures ``downstream . . . may be a requirement'' but that he wants to look for savings first.
``We need to very aggressively look at ourselves and see where we can save some money on infrastructure,'' he said. ``We're putting all our cards on the table to see what makes sense.''
On other issues:
Boorda's suicide had a ``tremendous impact'' on the Navy, but the service offered intensive counseling to help people cope. ``We tried very hard to do our grieving up front,'' and then move on, as Boorda would have wanted them to do. ``He'll be with us forever,'' Johnson said.
The integration of women onto combat ships is about half complete, given the time it is taking to rebuild some of the older vessels to accommodate them.
Johnson said he does not like to say that the Tailhook sex abuse scandal is behind the service, ``because we are accused of forgetting about it. . . . That's not true. . . . Some very serious lessons were learned and we have applied them. We have put Tailhook in perspective.'' ILLUSTRATION: Adm. Jay Johnson said it's a fiscal challenge to
balance maintaining readiness and paying for costly weaponry.
KEYWORDS: INTERVIEW