Space

Our goal should not be to make some simple set of program tradeoffs but to find ways we can simultaneously reduce the risk of conflict, first strikes, and total force cost. It may well be possible to reduce such costs of strategic forces by 10 percent more per year if we are successful in working with Russia to reduce the capabilities on both sides. However, we must not take risks with strategic offensive forces.

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A BIPARTISAN APPROACH TO ZERO-BASING OUR THEATER AND STRATEGIC DEFENSE FORCES

As for strategic defenses, our program should not be budget or ideology driven, or tied rigidly to the current interpretation of the ABM Treaty. We need to break out of the partisan impasse of the last 5 years, and restructure the entire SDI Program on the basis of a comprehensive reassessment of the need for theater and strategic defenses. The best way to approach this would be a bipartisan commission, similar to the Scowcroft Commission, that examined all the options involved.

This commission should also look beyond the narrow mandate of ballistic missile defense. It should examine our combined need for ballistic missile, cruise missile, and air defenses. It should examine theater threats, the problem of proliferation, the risk of accidental launch, and options for further deterring any risk of a strategic exchange. It should examine what models of technical and cost risk should drive plans and schedules, and tie the program to a realistic reassessment of potential threats. It should reexamine all our assumptions about space and land based systems, deployment versus R&D activity, and the role each service should play in theater and strategic defense.

It should specifically examine options for cooperation with Russia, rather than treat it as an opponent, and it should examine time frames for the deployment of given types of defenses and the need for continuing research where deployment is not yet indicated. It should examine sea- as well as land-based theater defense options, and it should integrate the analysis of ballistic missile defense options with the analysis of cruise missile and air defenses.

Such an approach might allow us to make substantial near term reductions in the Bush spending plan for SDI. It is unlikely, however, that such reductions would come close to the Draconian, budget-driven cuts proposed by President Clinton. In any case, our program should be based on a zero-based review, founded on the best analysis available, and not on partisan ideology.

STRATETIC CHANGE IN THE POST COLD WAR ERA: RESTRUCTURING OUR SUPPORTING FORCES PACKAGE

One of the critical flaws in the way the United States now tries to manage strategic change is that it tends to focusing on making tradeoffs among its most useful forces--its combat ready and forward deployed forces--while it ignores the need to reduce the vast mix of support capabilities it maintains in the United States.

It is a strategic fact of life that cutting active and reserve combat and combat support forces threatens our security, but cutting unnecessary overhead, headquarters, support, military bases, and other facilities in the United States does not.

These support capabilities have been reduced as a result of the actions of the Base Realignment and Closing Commission, management review efforts by the Department of Defense, and actions by the individual military services. Many, however, are still vestiges of prior wars or are sized to meet the very different requirements of the cold war era. As Secretary Aspin has admitted in his testimony to the Base Closing Commission, the sum total of our base closings and realignments to date--including every aspect of the 1993 efforts now under examination by the Commission--will close only 15 percent of our domestic bases. This compares with plans to cut or forces by 30-40 percent and to reduce defense spending by 42 percent.

It is almost impossible to believe that we cannot make major further cuts in non-strategic defense activities in the United States if we restructure our current base closing and management efforts to make a comprehensive effort to reduce them by the same share as we reduce our combat forces and defense spending. Such an effort could produce tens of billions in additional savings, and it is important to note that such savings would generally not mean a net loss of jobs or income for most states.