Building down smartly. Just a few more charts, Mr. Chairman. BASE FORCE SUMMARY The challenge that Mr. Cheney and I have and the Chiefs have and the service secretaries is how to build down smartly to the base force level. We are going from 28 Army divisions to 18. Of those, 18 used to be active. We are going to 12. We are keeping the same number of Marine expeditionary forces, although with a smaller number of marines. The carriers are going down, ships are going down, fighter wings are going down. We are going down from 2.043 to 1.6 million active-duty personnel, and Reserves from 1.15 million down to 921,000-a very, very tough management challenge to do this in a sensible way so it is not a demobilization like we have done so badly in the past. Next, please. How do we do that? By watching all dimensions of it, putting together a plan that deals with the sensible drawdown of the forces over time, sensible drawdown of materiel, bases, people. So we are going to reduce, we are going to restructure, we are going to reallocate forces and equipment. Next. MANAGING THE CUTS FORCES Over 450 Battalion / Squadron-sized Units 186 Ships Decommissioned Headquarters / Infrastructure Streamlined MATERIEL Procurement Program Reduced $100B 100+ Programs Cancelled Over 2000 Tanks and 4400 Aircraft Retired BASE FORCE DRAWDOWN Just to give you dimensions, Mr. Chairman. As part of the base force drawdown, over 450 battalion-sized organizations-that is 800 to 1,000 men in the Army, a little bit smaller in the Air Forcewill be deactivated, going out of the structure, 186 ships are being decommissioned, headquarters and infrastructures are being streamlined. VII Corps headquarters, as I illustrated earlier, will be going out of the structure. In terms of materiel, we have reduced procurement programs by $100 billion, 100 programs canceled. As Mr. Atwood and Mr. Cheney have explained to the Congress, we are going to get vicious with our procurement programs. If a procurement program is no longer justified on the basis of a threat that is out there that has to be met or an obsolescence problem or some other problem, it cannot go forward. We cannot afford it. We have to cut it, we have to reshape it, we have to put it back in research and development. Over 2,000 tanks and 4,400 aircraft are being retired, taken out of the structure, and if it is not needed in our Reserve component structure, put into warehouses, put out in the desert, but taken out of the structure—a massive management problem. Next. MANAGING THE CUTS BASES Over 600 Military Installations and Sites PEOPLE 1,000,000+ Fewer Men and Women 548,000 Active 231,000 Reserves 229,000 Civilians Nearly 50,000 Pink Slips in 1992 Alone If you look at bases being closed, 600 military installations stateside and worldwide. Of these bases and installations, 100 are in Conus as a result of the two recent base closure packages, 500 sites overseas-a total of 1 million fewer men and women. I am not an economist. My job is not to talk about the economy. But these are jobs that will no longer be provided by the military and, therefore, are going to have to be provided by the economy somewhere. This does not include the impact it is having on the defense industry around the country, the Northeast, southern California, many places a major management problem. A total of 50,000 pink slips, I talked about that earlier; 200,000 troops, their families and all their possessions returning from over seas. Next. I think the members of the committee are well aware of where most of these closures are taking place. This does not reflect 62 realignments where we are making bases a little bit smaller. These are actual closures, and for purposes of illustration we did not include 60 very, very small sites that are also closing. Left to my own devices and if politics did not affect this situation, I would like to close more. I wish we had another base closure process this year. That is not the case. The law says next year. But we can do more in terms of trimming down an infrastructure, trimming down our base structure, to deal with the base force and to deal with the new situation we find ourselves in. This next chart just illustrates what this people reduction looks like. |