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Something like Sex. The old problem of economic bolts and jolts resulting from Pentagon decisions has intensified under Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. The defense budget has kept getting bigger, the pace of technological change has accelerated, and McNamara himself has done a lot of shaking up in an effort to trim costs. He has scrapped several development projects, including nuclear-powered aircraft and the Skybolr air-to-ground missile, and ordered 70 defense installations shut down.
Because so much is at stake, Pentagon decision makers must wrestle with incessant efforts to influence them. Lobbying for defense contracts is a major industry in Washington. Senators and Congressmen with military bases or defense plants in their states or districts try to exert influence on behalf of their constituents.
Trying to eliminate such pressures, says Deputy Secretary Gilpatric, "would be as futile as an effort to eliminate interest in the opposite sex among teen-agers."
McNamara has repeatedly declared: "We will not be influenced." Yet even Mc Namara has become increasingly aware of the effect of his decisions, has taken steps to soften the impact.
In Disguise. He has established the Office of Economic Adjustment. To towns and cities afflicted by the closing of bases or the termination of contracts. OEA sends teams of experts to study the local economy, meet with officials and businessmen, and help work out community programs. Sometimes OEA adds a dollop of federal aid. The Defense Department has no funds of its own for grants or loans to communities, but it is able to channel help from the Commerce Department's Area Redevelopment Administration and other dispensers of federal largesse.
Often, however, OEA's assistance consists solely of advice. The OEA team sent to Wichita, for example, drafted a recovery plan urging the city to expand meatpacking and grain-handling activities and increase oil and gas production, but OEA gave Wichita no material aid. Robert F. Steadman, head of OEA, found Wichita's economic resilience "absolutely astounding." Despite the steep decline in bomber production, the unemployment rate last fall was only 3.8%, well below the national average.
Steadman takes a special pride in OEA's work in Presque Isle, Me. Soon after taking over at the Pentagon, McNamara ordered the shutdown of Presque Isle's principal source of income, an Air Force base for obsolete Snark missiles. An OEA task force flew into town, worked out development plans with local leaders. Since then, Presque Isle has acquired 1) a new state vocational school, housed in former Air Force buildings; 2) a new junior high school, being built on land donated to the town by the General Services Administration; 3) a free airport and 4) three new manufacturing plants. Says Steadman: "The people there now tell us that closing the base was a blessing in disguise."