National Affairs: The Squeeze

With a White House blessing, Defense Secretary Wilson last week ordered the armed forces to slash their current authorized manpower (2,800,000) by 100,000, thereby enabling the Pentagon to reduce its 1958 budget needs by almost $200 million. To reassure U.S. allies abroad, especially NATO, Wilson carefully pointed out that the cuts could be made “without materially affecting deployments of major combat units abroad, including those in Western Europe.”

Wilson’s latest cutbacks, putting U.S. military manpower at 22% under the 1953 Korean war peak, mostly reflected an increasingly painful Pentagon budget squeeze, in turn caused by the spiraling costs of missile research and development, of complex new electronic devices, of materials and labor generally. Early this spring, Defense spending flew embarrassingly out of hand, promised to exceed the

1957 budget goal of $36 billion by about $2.4 billion, was heading on toward an annual spending rate of $42 billion.

Shocked, W’ilson & Co. quickly reacted to hold down current expenses, keep fiscal

1958 (which began July 1) under a $38 billion ceiling. Production of the new B-52 jet bomber was “stretched out.” Defense plant overtime was curtailed. Thirty-three small Navy installations were ordered closed down. With the slow-flying intercontinental Snark missile on line and the rocket-powered intercontinental ballistics missile around the corner, Wilson scrapped the Air Force’s $500 million long-range Navaho to save $1 billion needed to make the bird operational.

The moneysaving troop cuts aroused neither joy nor grave misgivings among service planners. U.S. muscle, they agreed, will suffer little. The Army will come down from 1,000,000 to 950,000, but will keep its 17 authorized divisions; the Navy, from 875,000 (including 200,000 Marines) to 850,000, will maintain combat units at authorized size, keep the Marines at three divisions; the Air Force, from 925,000 to 900,000, will make no cuts in combat outfits. One probable overall effect: a further cutback in draft calls.

The timing of Wilson’s announcement mildly embarrassed some Senate Armed Services Committee members seeking to restore $1.2 billion House-made 1958 defense budget cuts (President Eisenhower had called the cuts “a needless gamble”); but to have waited until House and Senate had passed the budget would have brought stentorian Capitol Hill cries of “double-dealing.” In the crucial weighing of national security v. a balanced budget, last week’s economy measure would not be the last. Said one Defense official: “There’ll be more stretch-outs, more reductions, more cancellations. It’s inevitable. It’s the over-all trend.”