PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Rebuilding the U.S. Military

The initial steps taken by President George W. Bush to rebuild U.S. naval and military strength should be reassuring not only to Americans but to all peace-loving people throughout the world. The nation's new commander in chief has made it clear, by both words and actions, that he will provide the funding needed not only for military pay and current combat readiness but also for the advanced technology and additional procurement needed to ensure that U.S. forces will be even more combat-ready in the foreseeable future.

He also has taken the necessary first political and diplomatic steps toward the building of a national missile defense (NMD) system and--in the way he handled the Hainan incident and approved new arms sales to Taiwan--sent two important messages: The United States will not apologize for taking whatever peaceful legal steps are necessary to protect its own political and economic interests throughout the world; but it will stand by its allies when their interests are threatened.

I respectfully suggest that the next step in what will necessarily be a long-term restoration and recapitalization process should be a public commitment to rebuild the U.S. Navy to an active fleet of approximately 370 ships, which numerous studies have determined is what the Navy needs to carry out all of the missions assigned to it by the national command authorities and the regional commanders in chief (CINCs). Included in that total should be 15 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers (CVNs), the number consistently validated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the minimum required to maintain a carrier presence in the most likely areas of potential international crisis.

In recent years, with only 12 carriers in the active fleet, the Navy has had to rely on a dangerous and militarily imprudent "gapping" policy that leaves one or more of those crisis areas without a carrier for sometimes months at a time. President Bush should formally renounce the gapping policy in favor of a common-sense policy that matches resources to requirements. Congress--which has its own Constitutional responsibility to "provide for the common defense"--can, and should, support this effort by authorizing, this year, the construction of two more CVNs. Such authorization would serve as immediate legislative ratification of the president's defense policy and, not incidentally, save hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in long-term shipbuilding costs.

The rebuilding of the U.S. military will require additional funding for the procurement and RDT&E (research, development, test, & evaluation) accounts of all of the nation's armed services, and that funding should be authorized under a "total systems" approach that provides for the acquisition not only of major platforms (ships and aircraft) but also the weapons, sensors, and electronics and avionics systems that will be the key to combat success on the integrated network-centric battlefields of the future.

Carriers should be the first priority, though, for three reasons. First, they take longest to build, so an early start is imperative. Second, the Navy's forward-deployed carrier battle groups are now, in many areas of the world, the only fully combat-ready forces immediately available to the national command authorities and warfighting CINCs in times of international crisis. Third, they represent the best investment of taxpayer dollars. Today's carriers are built to last 50 years. They are extremely fast and extremely mobile, and can operate in any area of the world. Finally, except for submarines, the U.S. Navy's aircraft carriers are the least vulnerable and most highly survivable naval/military assets possessed by any nation in the world.

Also of critical importance is the imperative to recapitalize naval aviation's rapidly aging force of fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft. Navy and Marine Corps aircraft are, on average, older than at any earlier time in the 90-year history of naval aviation. Increased funding for aircraft procurement is absolutely essential if the services are to balance the ongoing modernization of today's naval air force with the acquisition of tomorrow's.

The primary purpose of this long-term recapitalization, it should be emphasized, would be to deter war, to "give peace a chance," as the saying goes. But if war were to break out, by accident or because of an enemy's miscalculation, a modernized U.S. military would be able to make the war as short as possible and to keep the casualties on both sides to a minimum.

When Ronald Reagan took office as president two decades ago one of his principal goals also was to "rebuild the military," which in the late 1970s had become what many described as "a hollow force." He achieved that goal, and the direct result, less than a decade later, was the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Like his illustrious predecessor, President Bush has inherited a defense establishment that is long on commitments and responsibilities but short on resources. The result of his rebuilding efforts will be a naval/military force, combat-ready in all respects, that is capable not only of protecting U.S. interests throughout the world but also of preserving global peace and stability for perhaps decades to come.

No leader of any nation could leave a more noble or more lasting legacy.