Arms reductions, troop increase eyed

WASHINGTON -- To meet a pressing need for more ground troops, the US armed forces have begun eyeing some of the most dramatic cuts in high-tech weapons since the end of the Cold War, according to defense officials and consultants.

The Iraq war's grinding toll has led to a vast reassessment across all the branches of the military as they prepare to undertake a top-to-bottom review of the Pentagon's priorities in 2005, according to interviews with Pentagon officials who asked not to be identified and private defense specialists.

One Army study described by Pentagon officials has concluded that the active-duty force of 500,000 needs to grow by as much as 30 percent. This year the Army was forced to borrow from the Navy and Air Force to pay its bills, according to officials.

The Navy and Air Force, facing their own financial pressures amid burgeoning federal budget deficits, are considering deep weapons cuts. The sea service is talking about cutting its fleet of aircraft carriers by a quarter, from 12 to nine, according to a Navy official who was briefed on internal planning for the review. Meanwhile, the Air Force is grappling with ways to slash its planned purchases of more than 2,500 fighter planes by up to a third, according to two accounts of a preliminary briefing.

Four years after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pledged to transform the military into a leaner, high-tech force, officers familiar with Pentagon planning say the defense chief's vision of smaller, more capable ground forces is being confounded by reality.

The Iraq war, combined with the war on terrorism, is requiring many more ground forces than anticipated. More than half of the active Army has been deployed overseas in the past three years, while 90,000 Army National Guard troops have been called to duty.

As a result, generals, admirals, and top defense officials are coming to grips with what they see as the need to dramatically ''rebalance" the military and refocus on manpower, which steadily declined after the fall of the Soviet Union, at the expense of some costly hardware.

''The department must develop a comprehensive divestiture strategy so that it can generate growth," Art Cebrowski, Rumsfeld's director of force transformation, wrote in a new paper this month. ''We have to be willing to shed some things."

Cebrowski's paper continued: ''As we have mastered the traditional battlefield challenges, enemies have moved to the edges. Irregular warfare. Catastrophic warfare. The realm of terrorists. In other words, we are incurring national security risks outside of the main focal point of our strategic capabilities. Therefore, we must rebalance the force" by adding troops.

If adopted, the internal studies underway in the Army, Air Force, and Navy, which oversees the Marine Corps budget, would dramatically reform the nation's fighting forces in President Bush's second term.

The changes would also signify a major setback for Rumsfeld, who has tried to transform the military into a leaner ground force more reliant on high-tech weapon systems flying overhead. He has placed a premium on constructing smaller, more flexible Army units, while investing in precision weapons such as high-tech aircraft and warships.

That vision has been increasingly under fire amid the Iraq war, in which Rumsfeld pushed commanders to rely on a relatively small ground force to topple Saddam Hussein, a decision that proved costly when the smaller force could not secure the country.

Thomas Donnelly, a defense specialist at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said in a paper this week that Rumsfeld's vision is misguided because it places too much emphasis on weapons first envisioned during the Cold War, including the Air Force's F-22 fighter jet and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, at the expense of ground forces.

The Rumsfeld vision, he said, ''perfectly fit the programs that the Air Force already had on the books, most importantly and expensively the tactical fighter programs like the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter," Donnelly wrote. ''And to pay for it, the green-eyeshade analysts at the Pentagon looked to cut Army force structure. Like all good captains of industry, they looked to substitute capital for labor."

But Donnelly said the nation needs a larger ground force to deal with the missions of today.

''Thus we have a defense secretary more concerned about the Army and the force he'd like to have -- the high-speed-low-drag transformed force of the future -- than the force with which he actually has to fight today's wars," Donnelly wrote.

The series of internal Pentagon studies are attempting to address this dilemma in preparation for the Quadrennial Defense Review, required every four years by Congress. The 2005 study would be the first fully conducted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. While the 2001 study, completed a few weeks after the terrorist attacks, reflected some of the requirements of the war on terrorism, it was largely produced to meet earlier priorities.

Officials emphasized that the current deliberations are preliminary and the formal review process has yet to get underway. They say that much more thinking needs to be done and that many more voices, from Rumsfeld's to that of President Bush, will have to weigh in before the review is completed next summer.

Still, the possibilities being discussed demonstrate the extent to which the military services are stretched, especially the Army.

Rumsfeld is moving to increase the size of the active-duty Army by about 30,000 by transferring more support jobs to civilians. To help pay for it, he has canceled two Cold War weapons: the Comanche helicopter and the Crusader artillery system.

But Pentagon officials predict those changes are far short of what is needed.

The Army study, which has been made available to select officials, estimated that as many as 650,000 troops will be needed in the coming years. The additional 150,000 troops would cost billions of dollars. Some say the service might be willing to put off, at least for now, a next-generation tank, known as the Future Combat System, to help defray the cost.

''The Army has been complaining for a generation" that it was not getting enough of the annual budget pie, which has historically been split three ways between the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, said a senior Pentagon adviser who asked not to be named.

''Everyone is facing the reality that the Army might have been right."

The Air Force and Navy, meanwhile, are also considering some tough belt-tightening measures, according to officials familiar with the discussions.

The Navy is considering significant cutbacks in the submarine force, as previously reported by the Globe, while trimming its force of F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets. Most significantly, it is considering cutting its aircraft carrier fleet -- perhaps the most expensive weapons system in the world, at $4 billion apiece -- from 12 to nine, according to the internal discussions.

The Air Force, meanwhile, has recommended cutting back its purchases of the F-35 from 1,100 to 800 over the next six years, Pentagon officials said, and is considering greater cuts in the coming years.

''There is a huge financial pressure across the board," said Jacques Gansler, former undersecretary of defense in the Clinton administration who was in charge of weapons acquisition. ''Clearly it is the result of the cost associated with Iraq and Afghanistan and increased operations. Every $100 billion matters. Where does that come from?"

Gansler said some of the costly weapons systems facing the ax serve as a hedge against the rise of another major world power that could threaten the United States in conventional military terms in the future, such as China. But he said there are more pressing needs.

''In the near term we are probably going to need more of the things we are using for Iraq or Afghanistan," he said.

''We're not going to blow the whistle tomorrow and say, 'Everyone come home.' "

Rumsfeld, asked in a news conference last month if he planned to make major cuts in big-ticket weapons, declined to make predictions. But he signaled that big decisions are coming: ''I'll let you know when I get there."

Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.