By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 7, 1997; Page A01

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen has decided to reduce planned purchases of jet fighters, shrink the Navy's fleet, cut up to 60,000 active-duty servicemembers and seek to close more U.S. military bases, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

The moves follow a major Pentagon review of U.S. defense programs.

They are part of a plan to generate about $15 billion in annual savings into the next decade to help pay for new equipment and weapons systems, following years of steady decline in the Defense Department's procurement account.

One of the programs to receive a boost of up to $2 billion, officials said, is the administration's plan to prepare for possible deployment in 2003 of a national protective shield against ballistic missile attack.

While top Pentagon officials had insisted for several years they could meet their modernization plans through savings from base closings and more efficient purchasing practices, it was increasingly clear that the operational costs of peace missions in such places as Bosnia and Haiti, and the expenses of maintaining a still-sizable post-Cold War force, were sapping procurement funds.

"No one expects overall defense spending to increase much above the current annual level of about $250 billion, so we have to reallocate," a senior Pentagon official said yesterday. "We're trying to reallocate without cutting teeth but by going after tail."

The personnel reductions are modest compared with the loss of more than 600,000 servicemembers, down to 1.45 million, since the Berlin Wall crumbled in 1989. Some defense experts had urged Cohen to take a bolder approach and make deeper cuts in order to finance an accelerated integration of computer-age technology into weapons systems and military command and control networks that would better prepare the U.S. armed forces for new types of 21st century warfare.

But the secretary, who took office in January, has decided on a less radical course. He has reaffirmed the need to maintain a military large enough to fight two regional wars in close succession and also meet many other operational requirements predicted by Pentagon strategists, particularly in peacekeeping and other noncombat missions.

Neither the Army, which will give up about 15,000 active-duty soldiers, nor the Marine Corps, which will lose about 2,000 members, expects to cut any of its divisions or other combat units in the process.

But the Air Force's reduction of up to 25,000 will result in the elimination of one of 13 wings, and the Navy's loss of 18,000 will come largely from the elimination of 15 surface combatant ships and two submarines, officials said.

Cohen also has decided to scale back planned buys of the Air Force's new F-22 fighter, from 438 to 339, and the Navy's F/A-18E/F plane, from 1,000 to 785 or fewer.

Plans also call for reductions of about 70,000 military reservists, mostly in the Army National Guard, and 80,000 in the Defense Department's civilian work force. Any attempt to trim the Guard is likely to face fierce opposition from the Guard's powerful lobby in Washington and from more than two dozen state governors who rely on the reservists in all sorts of domestic emergencies.

In a letter to Cohen two weeks ago, the top two Guard officers in the country – Maj. Gen. Richard C. Alexander and Maj. Gen. Warren G. Lawson – expressed "grave concerns" about the rumored reductions and complained about being excluded from the decision-making process.

Cohen's intention to seek two more rounds of base closings, in 1999 and 2001, is also certain to draw political fire on Capitol Hill. With many congressional districts still recovering from the disruptive effects of four previous rounds since 1988 that shut down 97 of the 495 major bases in the United States and realigned hundreds of others, some leading lawmakers already have signaled they are in no mood to go through the process again anytime soon.

Anticipating Cohen's move, Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), who heads the National Security subcommittee overseeing military installations, sent a letter to the secretary several days ago expressing strong opposition to another round of base closings, at least in the next five years. He questioned the actual savings that would accrue from more closures, particularly whether any savings would be available in the medium-term to fund modernization programs, given the substantial up-front costs of shutting bases.

He also objected to "rushing" into another round "without a complete and thorough understanding of the military implications" of earlier rounds.

"To my knowledge, there has been no comprehensive assessment of the mission impact of the totality of the closure and realignment decisions made to date," Hefley wrote.

Further, he asserted the Clinton administration had damaged the credibility of the base closure process in the last round two years ago by resisting an independent commission's recommendation to close two depots in California and Texas and shift some operations to military facilities elsewhere.

Asked about congressional opposition, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon told reporters yesterday that Cohen, a former GOP senator, regarded the earlier rounds as having worked well and would favor reestablishing the unique process under which the closures were decided.

That process involved the creation of an independent bipartisan panel whose recommendations could only be approved or rejected in total, preventing any tinkering by the administration or Congress.

"Closing bases is never easy. . . . It's time-consuming, it's emotional, but it worked," Bacon said. "Congress will have to go through the same set of choices that the military has faced" and decide whether to pay for unneeded bases "or weapons to make our troops more effective in battle," he added.

The Pentagon had indicated in 1995 at the end of the last round of closures that more would be necessary.

The 1995 round failed to go as far as initially planned after defense officials concluded shutting a larger number of facilities was just too difficult and costly.