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He insists that he will not cut deeply into the operations-and-maintenance account, which pays for such items as training, ammunition and spare parts and has been a favorite target for past budget cutters. He is also determined to avoid "stretch-outs," the common practice of maintaining orders for tanks, say, or fighter planes but buying fewer each year than originally planned. Stretch-outs often cause production to fall below economic rates, so that the Pentagon ultimately pays more for each tank, plane or ship.
Carlucci does talk about cutting "force structures," meaning numbers of troops, ships and planes, and of axing "lower priority, marginal" weapons systems, especially those still in the research-and-developm ent stage. But so far, he refuses to chop any of the superexpensive weapons programs that such experts as former Defense Secretaries Brown and James Schlesinger doubt the Pentagon could have afforded even under Weinberger's spending plans.
Should Carlucci try to cancel some major weapons systems, he would have no guarantee of succeeding. Generals and admirals have become adept at making end runs around their own civilian chiefs to enlist the support of sympathetic Congressmen. And for all their bellowing about vast sums of money wasted on weapons that do not work, few legislators will vote for military economies likely to hurt their own districts. One example: the Pentagon could save perhaps $2 billion a year by closing unneeded military bases, but Congress has not permitted a major base closing since 1977.
The upshot: many critics fear that, for all Carlucci's vows, the necessary cutbacks will once more be accomplished largely by the tried-and-untrue methods of stretch-out and reductions in readiness. Says Lawrence Korb, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense: "Already the Air Force and Navy are flying less and steaming fewer training hours than necessary, and already there are cutbacks in necessary operations and maintenance."
There is no painless way out of this bind. Arms control is a fiscal wash for the short term: verification costs money, and so will additional weapons systems required to replace those being scrapped. But Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who is trying to pep up a stagnating economy, seems to be casting about for a way to cut Soviet military spending. He has talked about a shift in the U.S.S.R.'s military doctrine from offense to defense. That implies restructuring the Soviet armed forces, making them adequate to defend the U.S.S.R. but not to launch an offensive.
Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov took this line in March when he met Carlucci in Berne, Switzerland, for the first extended get-together between American and Soviet defense chiefs. Carlucci's report: "I said, 'Fine, I hear you. But I do not see that ((change in doctrine)) reflected in force structure, and I do not see it reflected in your activities around the world. Until we do, it behooves us not to change our current policy.' " If the Soviets someday suit action to words, a mutual reduction in conventional forces as well as nuclear weapons could finally save both sides some serious money.