the Minuteman II's. The reason I make this point is that the base force is not locked in concrete, unchangeable.

In the case of strategic forces, we have changed a lot just in the last 6 months and, as conditions change which make it comfortable for us to change the mix within the base force concept, we are quite willing to do it.

Let me illustrate just how significantly we have changed the strategic nuclear forces just in the last year and a half.

Total nuclear warheads 12 years ago in our operational forces, 21,000. We had 13,000 strategic nuclear warheads. We had another 8,000 tactical nuclear warheads, for a total of 21,000.

As a result of the START agreement, as a result of the President's September initiative, we were able to bring that total number down to about 11,000, of which 9,500 were strategic, another 1,600 were of a tactical nature. This was after we got rid of all the artillery-fired weapons and we took nuclear weapons off our ships at sea and destroyed some of them. We brought that down to 11,000.

If the Soviets-if I can call them that for the moment-respond positively to the President's recent nuclear initiative, we can bring this number down even lower, the 1,600 tactical, mostly dual-capable aircraft and some Tomahawk missiles for the Navy in storage and other bombs, and bring the strategic number down to 4,700. So just in the last year and a half, we have moved far enough in our thinking, in our comfort level with what is happening in the Soviet Union, with our arms control initiatives, to bring this number from 21,000 total nuclear warheads down to 6,300-a historic change, and I use it to illustrate the dynamic nature of the base force and the willingness of the Pentagon.

I want to get rid of every single system that is costing the American taxpayers money, but no longer has a real need with respect to protecting the Nation. We are not reluctant to do this. We are anxious to do this.

Let me show you the strategic part of this.

Let me show you how the triad has changed. These are the 13,000 nuclear weapons that you saw in the lower part of the previous histograms. SLBM's, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, we had 6,500; 2,500 ICBM's, 4,500 weapons aboard bombers for that 13,000 total. This is the START level, of which 6,000 are countable under START procedures because, you know, within the bomber fleet there is a discount.

We are going down to 3,600 countable START weapons in the total number of 4,700. The Soviets have said, hey, let us take it down to 2,500. We are willing to discuss that, consider it, but we do not want to move too rapidly at this point because we think it is still important to keep the three legs of our triad, and you do not want to get so low that you start to have an imbalance between the advantages of a land-based leg, the advantages of a bomber leg, and the advantage of our sea-based leg.

So we can look at this number and discuss it with the Soviets, but we are not ready to leap on down to 2,500 at this time.

This is what we are doing with our strategic forces: massive change. Bottom-up analysis: We are satisfied. The Chiefs have ana

lyzed this. This is a good war-fighting force to have. It is a force which will deter any attack against the Nation.

But we are not at 4,700 yet. We have got a long way to go to get rid of these 13,000 nuclear weapons or the 21,000 you saw on the previous chart. It will take us years to decommission and break apart all of these weapons.

Bottom up and top down. Next, please.

Atlantic forces, the most controversial part of the base force plan, I would guess. We believe that

[Buzzer.]

General POWELL. Is that the time you have to break, Mr. Chairman? This would be a good time to break. This is the longest sec

tion.

Senator INOUYE. Do you want to go to vote?

Senator HOLLINGS. Yes; might as well.

Senator INOUYE. We will be right back.

[A brief recess was taken.]

Senator INOUYE. General.

Senator STEVENS. I noticed the new dress for real battle, so I will join you.

ATLANTIC FORCES

Senator INOUYE. He just destroyed his jacket.

General POWELL. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, before we broke for the vote, I was about to start my discussion of Atlantic forces. It is not a single force. It is just a conceptual way of looking at what I believe, what the Joint Chiefs believe, are our needs for potential crises across the Atlantic.

It is more than just crises across the Atlantic. It has to do with our requirements for forward presence, our international obliga

tions, the alliances of which we are a part. It has to do with the most important regions in the world for the United States-Europe, the Middle East, the oil of Southwest Asia.

So the Atlantic force conceptual package we put together is designed for the purpose of underwriting stability and protecting our vital interests in Europe, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia. It reflects our commitment to our alliances, especially our commitment to the NATO alliance. NATO is not dead. NATO is alive and well.

If anything, people want to join NATO, not get out of NATO. It is one of the problems we are having, how to accommodate the new nations in central and Eastern Europe who are looking for that western security guarantee within the NATO framework.

The NATO heads of state and government met in Rome last fall and recommitted themselves to the trans-Atlantic alliance, came up with a new strategy, a new strategy that went away from the Iron Curtain, went away from this wall between these two ideologies to a more flexible strategy, a strategy of forward presence, a strategy of multinational formations, a strategy requiring a lot less force than we have maintained in the past, but nevertheless force that is there to give meaning to the alliance.

We also have new responsibilities in Southwest Asia. Even though the Desert Storm operation is over, we still have a large troop presence in that region to keep stability in place in Southwest Asia.

The forces that we put in our structure for problems across the Atlantic are somewhat homogeneous. That is to say, the kinds of forces that we would need to fight a war or deal with a crisis in Europe are the same kinds of forces we would need to deal with a crisis in Southwest Asia. And in fact, Desert Storm's force you saw last year was nothing more than the European force being used in another region across the Atlantic that did not have hills, did not have trees, did not have mountains, did not have rain. But it was the same force, same training, same operational concepts.

You also need to be able to project power across the Atlanticsealift, airlift. So you can look at this whole area as a single very, very large theater, and you can put forces in that theater that can deal with any part of the theater, whether it is Europe, Southwest Asia, the Middle East, or the Mediterranean.

The bulk of our Reserve components-and I am sorry that Senator Hollings is not back to hear this part, but I can give him a private session on this part in due course and I hope I will have that opportunity. The bulk of our Reserve component force structure is in the force structure to deal with problems in this theater. The debate we are having-and I will get to this a little bit later on-is that if problems in this theater no longer loom as large as they once did, there is no reason to keep as large a Reserve force as we traditionally have done over the years. I will come back to that.

What we see also in the Atlantic force region is that wherever we put forces, whether they are in Europe or Southwest Asia, they are available to other parts of the world. Just as we used the VII Corps in Europe to go to the Persian Gulf, we can use the forces we have in Europe to go to other regions.

FORWARD PRESENCE

So forward presence is not only for the purpose of the problem at hand, for providing presence in the immediate subtheater at hand; it also gives you a force that is halfway to somewhere else if you need it, just as we needed the VII Corps in the Persian Gulf.

Going back to our fundamental strategy, deter, defend, and win if necessary. Start with forward presence. For Europe, we believe that the proper commitment of forces for the foreseeable future remains one Army corps. Now, I will discuss what a corps is in a moment or two, with two divisions within that corps.

One of those divisions will be with that American corps commander, and we will also have a German division within that American-commanded corps. The second division will be an American division in a German corps, with a German corps commander-part of the new NATO strategy of multinational formations.

We think it is appropriate to keep three plus Air Force tactical fighter wing equivalents active in Europe with that Army package. We also think it is appropriate to keep in place in Europe the communications, logistics, and command and control infrastructure needed in times of crisis or for reconstitution if we have guessed wrong and have to build back up.

We will keep POMCUS equipment, prepositioned unit sets of equipment, in Europe should we have to go back if we guessed wrong. I am not predicting we will guess wrong and we are not dreaming up scenarios. We are just doing prudent planning.

We will keep a carrier battle group and Marine presence in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean area, particularly the northern tier of Africa, still remains a rather interesting and unstable place, with Islamic fundamentalism, with Mr. Qaddafi still in place, and with the usual turmoil in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.

In Southwest Asia, in the post-Desert Storm environment, we expect to keep a carrier battle group and a Marine presence in the region. Joint exercises with our friends in the region are another way of showing forward presence. And prepositioned materiel [deleted] is another way of showing forward presence.

Crisis response forces will be needed if we have to reinforce the forward presence force. We believe it is appropriate to keep this level of force in the United States, ready to respond to problems across the Atlantic.

It includes Army divisions, three of them, active divisions, but at a lower state of readiness than the forward presence ones, a lower state of readiness that permits us to round out those active divisions with a National Guard brigade. We would not expect to call those two active brigade divisions up without also inserting a third brigade from the National Guard, because this is a reinforcing force and we will have other forces in Conus should it be more of a crisis. This is a more slowly evolving crisis response force.

We will keep two active fighter wing equivalents in the Air Force for crisis response across the Atlantic, four Navy carrier battle groups. In order to keep two deployed, you need two more working up, and then you still have to have the capability of having one go