[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 114 (Tuesday, July 30, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9150-S9154]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         MARINE CORPS GENERALS

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I have just received a letter from the 
Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. C.C. Kruluk.
  General Kruluk's letter concerns the Marine Corps' request for 12 
additional general officers.
  His letter responds to a letter which I sent to the House conferees 
on the fiscal year 1997 Defense authorization bill.
  My letter urged the House conferees to hang tough and block the 
Senate proposal to give the Marine Corps 12 more generals.
  The Senate approved the Marine Corps's request. But the House remains 
opposed to it.
  So the request for 12 additional generals is a bone of contention in 
the conference.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my letter to the 
conferees and the Commandant's response to it be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the letters were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                    July 29, 1996.
     Hon. Charles E. Grassley:
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Grassley: I have been provided a copy of the 
     letter you sent to House Conferees concerning the proposal in 
     the Senate Authorization Bill that would give the Marine 
     Corps twelve additional general officers. While this responds 
     to the issues raised in your letter, it has been my desire to 
     meet with you in person to discuss this issue. I understand 
     our staffs have finally worked out a time to do so, and I 
     look forward to meeting with you on Wednesday.
       Those familiar with the Corps know that we pride ourselves 
     in squeezing the most out of every dollar that you entrust to 
     your Marine Corps. The also know that we don't ask for 
     something unless it is truly needed.
       The main thrust of your letter is that the number of 
     general officers should be reduced consistent with force 
     structure reductions. Reduction in end strength does not 
     necessarily have a one-to-one correlation with command billet 
     reduction. Permit me to explain. As you have correctly 
     stated, the Marine Corps in 1988 had a total active duty end 
     strength of approximately 198,000, with a general officer 
     population of 70. Today, we have an end strength of 174,000, 
     and a general officer population of 68. That said, please 
     note that the 82nd Congress mandated in Title X that our 
     Corps of Marines be ``so organized as to include not less 
     than three combat divisions and three air wings,''--as it was 
     in 1987, it is so organized today. This point is key: While 
     the Marine Corps has reduced its end strength by 24,000 
     personnel, its three division, three wing structure has 
     remained essentially unchanged. Those familiar with the 
     military know that the requirement for general/flag officers 
     is tied directly to the number of combat divisions and air 
     wings--and that number has not been reduced. Of the 70 Marine 
     general officers in 1987, 11 were assigned to joint/external 
     billets. Today, 16 of the 68 Marine general officers are 
     serving in joint/external billets. Today we have 52 general 
     officers manning essentially the same structure that was 
     manned by 59 general officers in 1988.
       Throughout our history, we Marines have prided ourselves in 
     doing more with less. In the past, we have compensated for 
     our general officer shortfall by ``frocking'' officers 
     selected for the next higher grade to fill that position 
     without the pay. While that practice has its own drawbacks, 
     it did provide us with the requisite number of general 
     officers to fill critical shortfalls. Last year, the Senate 
     set increasingly strict limits on the number of general 
     officers that the Services may frock. And I understand their 
     rationale--the practice of frocking simply makes deficiencies 
     in Service grade/billet structure. These shortages are indeed 
     better addressed with permanent fixes rather than the stop-
     gap measures such as frocking. This restriction on frocking, 
     however, has placed the Marine Corps in an untenable 
     position. Losing six of our nine frocking authorizations 
     means that we would now have 46 general officers manning 
     essentially the same structure that was manned by 60 general 
     officers in 1987. This makes it critical that we have 
     additional general officer allotments.
       In response to your remark that we are ``simply trying to 
     keep up with the Joneses'' let me offer this: Other Service 
     ratios of general officer to end strength range from one 
     general/flag officer for 1,945 troops to one general/flag 
     officer to 1,435 troops. Excluding the Marine Corps, the 
     Service-wide nominal ratio of one general per 1,620 troops 
     would give the Marine Corps a minimum of 104 general 
     officers. The twelve additional officers that the SASC has 
     provided would give us a total of only 80--hardly keeping up 
     with the Joneses!
       Finally, this is a matter of providing quality, experienced 
     leadership for our Marines. We are the nation's force in 
     readiness, standing by to go into harm's way to protect U.S. 
     interests globally. Providing these brave Americans with an 
     adequate number of commanders and representation in the joint 
     arena is not just prudent--it is the right thing to do.
       Senator Grassley, I am convinced that these additional 
     general officer billets serve the best interest of our 
     Services and our national defense. I am also convinced that 
     the solution is not to bring the other Services down to our 
     untenable position, but rather to grant us the minimal 
     increase we need to properly perform those functions Congress 
     has mandated and our nation expects. Our meeting on Wednesday 
     afternoon should be productive--I am looking forward to an 
     honest and open dialogue. Semper Fidelis!
           Very respectfully,
                                                      C.C. Krulak,
     Commandant of the Marine Corps.
                                                                    ____



                                                  U.S. Senate,

                                    Washington, DC, July 24, 1996.
       Dear House Conferee: I am writing to encourage you to hang 
     tough and do everything possible to block the Senate proposal 
     that would give the Marine Corps 12 additional general 
     officers.
       The Senate argues that these additional Marine generals are 
     needed to two reasons: (1) to fill vacant warfighting 
     positions; and (2) to meet the requirements of the joint 
     warfighting area mandated by the Goldwater-Nichols Act.
       These arguments are nothing but a smoke screen for getting 
     more generals to fill fat headquarters jobs.
       In 1990, your Committee took a very straightforward, common 
     sense approach to the question of how many general officers 
     were really needed. Your Committee could see the handwriting 
     on the wall. The military was beginning to downsize in 
     earnest. As the force structure shrinks, your Committee said 
     the number of general and flag officers should be reduced. 
     New general officer active duty strength ceilings were 
     established. The total number authorized had been set at 
     1,073 since October 1, 1980. The FY 1991 legislation reduced 
     that number to 1,030 in 1991, including 68 for the Marine 
     Corps. However, based on the projected 25% reduction in the 
     force structure between 1991 and

[[Page S9151]]

     1995, which in fact occurred, the number of general officers 
     authorized to be on active duty was lowered to 858 by October 
     1, 1995, including 61 for the Marine Corps.
       This is how your Committee explained the decision to cut 
     the number of generals in 1990 (Report 101-665, page 268):
       ``The Committee believes that the general and flag officer 
     authorized strengths should be reduced to a level consistent 
     with the active force structure reductions expected by fiscal 
     year 1995.''
       The Senate Armed Services Committee report contained 
     identical language (Report 101-384, page 159). But the Senate 
     committee linked the need for fewer generals directly to a 
     projected 25% reduction in the force structure. In addition, 
     it provided a more detailed justification for the lower 
     ceilings as follows:
       ``The committee believes that these ceilings should assist 
     the military services in making critical decisions regarding 
     the reduction, consolidation, and elimination of duplicative 
     headquarters. The ceilings should also assist the military 
     services in eliminating unnecessary layering in the staff 
     patterns of general and flag officer positions.''
       In reviewing your Committee's justification for lowering 
     the general officer ceilings, there is no mention of the need 
     to fill vacant warfighting positions--even though the Gulf 
     War was looming on the horizon. And there was no mention of 
     the need to fill joint billets mandated by Goldwater-Nichols.
       Your Committee gave only one reason--the right reason--for 
     reducing the number of general officers in 1990: The number 
     of general officers should be reduced consistent with 
     projected force structure reductions.
       So what has changed since that legislation was adopted six 
     years ago? Why has the Marine Corps fabricated a new 
     rationale for more generals? Nothing has changed. DOD is 
     continuing to downsize, and according to recent testimony by 
     Secretary Perry, that process is expected to continue into 
     the future (refer to page 254 of his Annual Report to 
     Congress). Your guiding principle still applies: As the force 
     structure shrinks, we need fewer general officers. It was 
     valid then. It's still valid today.
       So why is the Marine Corps trying to topsize when its 
     downsizing? There is no reasonable explanation for giving the 
     Marine Corps 12 extra generals. The extra 12 generals 
     requested this year comes on top of an extra 7 Marine 
     generals authorized just two years ago in special relief 
     legislation.
       In my mind, the issue boils down to one indefensible point: 
     the Marine Corps is trying to keep up with the Joneses. This 
     is a war over stars. The Marine Corps wants to have as many 
     generals per capita as the other services. This is not the 
     right way to resolve the problem. There is a better way. You 
     should fix it in exactly the same way your Committee fixed it 
     in 1990. You should fix it by giving each service the right 
     number of generals--a number that matches the force 
     structure.
       I hope that reason prevails on this issue. At a minimum, I 
     think the decision on the extra 12 Marine generals should be 
     delayed until the Inspector General has conducted an 
     independent review of all Department of Defense headquarters, 
     commands, and general officer billets and determined exactly 
     what is necessary based on real military requirements.
           Sincerely,
                                              Charles E. Grassley,
                                                     U.S. Senator.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I would like to respond to General 
Krulak's letter.
  This is the main point in his letter, and I quote General Krulak's 
own words:

       The main thrust of your letter is that the number of 
     general officers should be reduced consistent with force 
     structure reductions.

  This is General Krulak talking:

       The reduction in end strength does not necessarily have a 
     one-to-one correlation with command billet reduction.

  He goes on to say:

       This point is key: While the Marine Corps has reduced its 
     end strength by 24,000 personnel, its three division, three 
     wing structure has remained essentially unchanged. Those 
     familiar with the military know that the requirement for 
     general/flag officers is tied directly to the number of 
     combat divisions and air wings--and that number has not been 
     changed.

  Mr. President, I would like to respond to General Krulak.
  First, the suggestion that the number of generals should be reduced 
consistent with force structure reductions is not a rule dreamed up by 
the Senator from Iowa.
  The rule was first put forward by the Senate Armed Services Committee 
years ago.
  It has been expressed by the House Armed Services Committee.
  It was the guiding principle used in formulating current law.
  It is still in current law--section 526 of title 10, United States 
Code.
  That law places a ceiling on the number of generals and admirals 
allowed on active duty.
  This is the rule behind the law:
  As the force structure shrinks, the number of generals and admirals 
should come down.
  If the force structure expands, then the number of generals and 
admirals should go up.
  That simple, commonsense logic has guided military planners since 
time began.
  Second, General Krulak agrees that end strength has fallen.
  However, he contends that the Marine Corps' combat force remains 
essentially unchanged.
  Let's briefly review the facts.
  In fiscal year 1987, Marine end strength was 199,525, including 70 
generals.
  Today, the fiscal year 1996, there are 172,434 marines, including 68 
generals.
  While end strength is down and two generals are gone, the Marine 
Corps still has three divisions and three airwings.
  General Krulak is right about that. The force structure is intact.
  Unfortunately, it's not whole. Some troops are missing.
  The end strength is down by 27,091 Marines.
  If the structure is still there, but some people are gone, that's a 
hollow force, isn't it?
  Mr. President, is another hollow force creeping out of the Pentagon 
fog?
  Mr. President, on July 17, I placed a Marine Corps briefing paper in 
the Record, page S7986.
  That paper was entitled ``Making the Corps Fit To Fight.'' It was 
dated April 1996.
  This is what it says:
  Marine infantry battalions are at 57 percent of authorized 
requirements for platoon sergeants.
  If that's true, then the Marine Corps structure is already getting 
hollow.
  A Marine platoon can't function without a good sergeant.
  Mr. President, do we need more generals to lead a hollow force?
  Clearly, a hollow force doesn't demand more generals. Nor does a 
static force demand more generals.
  Only a bigger force demands more generals, and that isn't in the 
cards right now.
  Third, General Krulak introduces another argument to justify his 
request for more generals.
  This one is designed to de-couple the issue from the force structure. 
This is how he tries to undo the logic.
  He says he needs 12 more generals to fill joint billets mandated by 
the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986.
  It's a distortion to suggest that Goldwater-Nichols mandates more 
generals when the force structure is shrinking.
  Joint billets--just like service billets--should be squeezed as the 
force structure shrinks.
  This is the message hammered home by Marine Gen. John Sheehan:
  ``Headquarters and defense agencies should not be growing as the 
force shrinks.''
  That's General Sheehan, commander in chief of the U.S. Atlantic 
Command.
  All the data points indicate that downsizing is continuing and will 
continue for the foreseeable future.
  So the argument that more generals are needed to fill joint billets 
doesn't hold much water, either.
  A few years back, the Marine Corps had another commandant. His name 
was Al Gray.
  He was tough as nails. He was known as a mud marine.
  He didn't look at the Marine Corps' needs like a bureaucrat would. He 
looked at it like a Marine--from the bottom up, starting with platoons 
and companies.
  In a December 1987 interview with the Chicago Tribune, General Gray 
talked about his plans to fill his units with people from the bottom 
up. I quote:
       `If the Marines fill their need for officers and troops 
     before they get to the big headquarters in Washington,' he 
     said with a grin, `that might be a blessing in disguise.'

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this interview be printed 
in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Chicago Tribune, Dec. 13, 1987]

                      Marines: Myth Versus Reality


         modern corps is big, costly, heavy on supporting cast

                            (By David Evans)

       Washington--The Marines have a new commandant, Gen. Alfred 
     Gray, a veteran of

[[Page S9152]]

     the Korean and Vietnam Wars. He's characterized by marines 
     who know him as a self-taught thinker and a ``warrior's 
     warrior.''
       He inherits not one, but two Marine Corps. One is the corps 
     of myth: small, cheap, and mostly fighters. A Marine Corps, 
     if you will, designed to kick down the door of a defended 
     coastline and put a lot of grunts on the beach in a hurry and 
     looking for a fight.
       Then there's the real Marine Corps: big, expensive, and 
     with relatively few fighters but a big supporting cast. This 
     real corps plans to land ashore where the enemy isn't.
       Al Gray isn't very happy with this real corps.
       ``We're going to make some changes,'' he growls. ``It's 
     time for a fresh, simple look.''
       People are not his problem. Today's young marines are the 
     highest quality ever, by any measure. They're enough to make 
     a hard-boiled commander's eyes water with joy.
       The real problems are deeper, and structural. They have to 
     do with the rising cost of the Marines, a tail-wagging-the-
     dog support structure that pulls marines out of fighting 
     units, and a new-found addiction to costly, exotic equipment.
       Gray is already grousing about some of these problems.
       ``Americans expect their Marine Corps to put fully manned 
     infantry battalions into the field,'' he said in a recent 
     interview, ``not units missing 100 or more troops.''
       That's an unusual admission from the man in charge of a 
     corps of 20,000 officers and 180,000 enlisted marines. But 
     over the years the corps bought equipment that took more 
     people to maintain and repair, and it created more and larger 
     headquarters units. These competing demands for manpower, in 
     secondary support and headquarters activities, siphoned 
     marines out of the fighting units.
       The slogans remain--``Every marine is a rifleman''--and 
     ringing speeches are still made about the infantryman as the 
     corps' ultimate weapon. But in the real Marine Corps, the 
     infantryman is steadily becoming an endangered species. Of 
     the 180,000 enlisted marines, about 33,000 are officially 
     designated as infantrymen.
       Throw in the artillerymen, tank crews and combat engineers, 
     and the total number of enlistees in the ``combat arms'' 
     amounts to barely 51,000. Instead of closing with and 
     destroying the enemy, the traditional role of marine fighting 
     men, nearly three out of four enlisted marines are now doing 
     something else; repairing equipment, hanging bombs on 
     airplanes, driving trucks.
       In this respect, the Marine Corps looks very much like the 
     U.S. Army, where three out of four active-duty soldiers are 
     in support functions, too.
       Mark Cancian, a Marine Reserve major, sums up recent trends 
     with this observation: If the corps' structure of 1962 were 
     in place today, a structure that featured larger infantry 
     battalions and less logistics support, ``there would be 
     17,000 more marines in Marine divisions--one entire 
     division's worth.''
       ``Another insight,'' says Cancian, ``is to look at the 
     number of `trigger pullers' in the division.''
       These are the marines who personally deliver fire on the 
     enemy: the riflemen, artillery cannoneers, tank crews. 
     Everybody else is helping to coordinate and support that 
     fire, but the number of trigger pullers amounts to barely 
     7,500 in a division of 17,500 enlisted marines.
       There are barely 22,500 ``trigger pullers'' in all three 
     active divisions. Add a few hundred pilots flying close air 
     support, say 500, and there are perhaps 23,000 marines in a 
     corps of 200,000 whose primary duty is to personally fire on 
     the enemy.
       Most of these ``trigger pullers'' are found in the 27 
     infantry battalions that represent the cutting edge of the 
     corps. Those battalions may be short the infantrymen they 
     need, but they have plenty of headquarters over them: 29 
     regimental and higher level headquarters, in fact.
       If the Marines have grown top-heavy with headquarters 
     units, they've also become harder to move. Too heavy for easy 
     deployment, despite Gen. Robert Barrow's warning as 
     commandant in 1980 that the corps ``should be light enough to 
     get there, and heavy enough to win.''
       Artillery is an instructive example. The Marines ``heavied 
     up''' their artillery from 105 mm. to 155 mm. howitzers, in 
     part because the Army was shifting to heavier artillery, and 
     in part because of the long range of Soviet guns. But the new 
     howitzer has to be disconnected from the truck that pulls it 
     before being loaded into the standard medium-size landing 
     craft. And the truck doesn't have enough power to pull the 
     gun through sand, so a forklift has to be waiting on the 
     beach to pull the gun ashore.
       Air units are more difficult to move, too. The Marines are 
     replacing their aging F-4 fighters with new F-18s. According 
     to the maintenance officer of a fighter group of 60 aircraft, 
     the number of maintenance vans that must accompany the same 
     number of F-18s went up 72 percent, from 150 vans to 260.
       The Marines have become so heavy that the supplies for a 
     full-up amphibious force of 50,000 marines fill about 6,800 
     containers, each as big as a small bus. Landed ashore, the 
     containers blanket a huge area.
       ``About 22 acres of nothing but boxes,'' says a colonel, 
     who asks: ``Can we afford a target that large?''
       ``Amphibious operations by their very nature require 
     bulldozers and other heavy equipment,'' explains Lt. Col. Ken 
     Estes, a staff officer at Marine headquarters.
       All those support marines, the heavier equipment and the 
     stacks of supplies cost more money. An E-3 lance corporal in 
     an infantry squad costs $15,600 a year in pay and benefits; 
     and E-6 staff sergeant clerking in a headquarters unit costs 
     $22,800.
       The new truck carries the same 5-ton load as the vintage 
     model it replaces, but costs $31,000 more (in constant 1986 
     dollars.)
       Heavier artillery shells for the new howitzer cost 160 
     percent more.
       These are just a few examples of the thousand different 
     ways the corps' appetite for money has ratcheted steadily 
     upward.
       The Marines are no longer the K mart of national defense; 
     they are smack in the mainstream of an upscale defense 
     establishment where costs are rounded to the nearest tenth of 
     a billion dollars.
       The corps' annual budget now hovers at $9 billion. Since 
     the Navy buys airplanes for the Marines out of its ``blue 
     dollar'' budget, the real cost of the corps runs closer to 
     $13.7 billion a year, according to Pentagon budget experts.
       Even the Marines may not realize how expensive they have 
     become. In 1976 the total cost of equipping, paying and 
     training each marine was about $37,000. That's in equivalent 
     1987 dollars. Since then, the per capital cost has rocketed 
     to $68,000 for each marine--a stunning 83 percent increase. 
     Part of that jump is the extra pay for more experienced 
     marines, with the rest driven by the rising price of 
     equipment and operations.
       The cost is still less than the $104,000 the Army spends 
     for every soldier, but the difference is narrowing, and fast.
       If the taxpayers cannot afford the money-rich diet to which 
     the Marines have grown accustomed, the Navy can't, either. Or 
     at least it can't afford enough of the kind of highly 
     specialized amphibious ships the Marines want.
       The biggest new class of amphibious ships, for example, 
     costs more than $1 billion and figures prominently in the 
     planned expansion of the amphibious fleet from 62 to 76 
     vessels.
       The Marines have rejected cheaper ships as a solution to 
     the numbers problem. One design concept, known in the 
     pentagon by the codeword LTAX, would have provided the same 
     carrying capacity as the large amphibious ships now under 
     construction, but at one-fourth their billion-dollar cost.
       ``LTAX didn't have the built-in survivability or creature 
     comforts,'' admits a Pentagon naval expert, ``but it would 
     have provided a way of complementing the limited number of 
     true amphibious ships we can afford.''
       If the Marines have erred by growing too heavy for easy 
     deployment, they've also strayed from Gen. Barrow's timeless 
     dictum by not being heavy enough in the right areas to win. 
     In antitank combat, for example, the Marines' problem is more 
     than serious--it is critical.
       With the exception of the TOW missile, the Marines' 
     infantry antitank weapons are not up to the job, according to 
     a recent General Accounting Office report on antitank 
     weapons. The warhead on the shoulder-launch AT-4 antitank 
     rocket is too small for assured frontal kills against 
     attacking Soviet tanks. Critics, including some marines, call 
     the AT-4 ``the paint scratcher.''
       Worse, the Marines probably are not buying enough TOWs. 
     Their planned consumption rate in combat is one TOW missile 
     per launcher every two days.
       The Marines have had the Dragon medium-weight antitank 
     missile for a decade, but its accuracy and punch are dismal. 
     In combat, the GAO estimates the Dragon may hit the target 
     only 8 out of 100 shots. Although the corps is upgrading the 
     Dragon with a new warhead and sight, it will be years before 
     the new weapons are in the hands of troops.
       Moreover, the new warhead adds 2\1/2\ pounds to the 
     missile's weight, which skeptics claim will reduce the 
     Dragon's range. The first block of ``improved'' missiles may 
     be less accurate, because the pulse rockets used for guidance 
     corrections will be used up faster to counteract the added 
     weight.
       Maj. Gen. Ray Franklin, in charge of the Dragon improvement 
     project, claims initial warhead tests are ``very 
     impressive.'' He's hoping to field 15,000 new missiles for 
     $60 million.
       Other experts aren't so sure.
       ``They're getting super performance from prototype 
     warheads,'' says an ammunition expert, ``and they're having 
     nothing but problems trying to produce them in quantity.''
       He believes the Dragon costs ``are going to go out of 
     sight'' even if the production problems are solved, and 
     Franklin won't get nearly what he hopes for the money.
       If Marines on the ground aren't equipped to kill tanks, 
     they'll need air support to do the job.
       At enormous expense--$5 billion--the Marines have equipped 
     five squadrons with British-designed AV-8B Harrier close air 
     support jets. The Harrier doesn't have the right weapon for 
     killing tanks, say a number of weapons experts familiar with 
     its performance in live-fire tests.
       The Harrier's 25 mm. cannon was tested extensively against 
     tanks at Nellis Air Force Base in 1979. In 24 passes, the 
     Harrier fired hundreds of shells, getting plenty of hits but 
     not a single kill. Reportedly all but seven of the shells 
     bounced off the tanks' armor. Test reports reveal the Air 
     Force's 30 mm. cannon did much better, killing tanks in 60 
     percent of the firing passes.
       Tom Amlie, a Pentagon weapons expert, says the Harrier's 25 
     mm. gun ``is too heavy for light work [shooting up trucks], 
     and it's

[[Page S9153]]

     too light for the heavy work of killing tanks.''
       It may be suicidal for Harrier pilots to press their 
     attacks to gun range, anyway. There isn't an ounce of armor 
     on the Harrier, and its engine is wrapped in fuel tanks. A 
     Naval Air Systems Command briefing reveals the Harrier is 10 
     times more vulnerable to ground fire, given a hit, than the 
     Marines' F-18 fighter, and 20 times more vulnerable than the 
     Navy's A-7 attack jet.
       Instead of flying Harriers into the teeth of the thousands 
     of automatic weapons found in a Soviet motorized rifle 
     division, the preferred method is to employ so-called 
     ``standoff'' weapons. These are missiles or bombs that can be 
     guided to their targets from outside the range of enemy 
     weapons.
       ``That's why they're ga-ga for laser-guided Maverick 
     missiles,'' concludes E.C. Myers, former director of air 
     warfare in the Pentagon.
       The Maverick is tricky to use against tanks, however. Of 
     100 Harrier test runs against tank targets in 1985, the 
     Center for Naval Analysis found the pilots were successful in 
     finding, locking-on and firing only 6 percent of the time.
       The Marines could use their F-18 fighters armed with 
     Rockeye cluster bombs against tanks. Because the Rockeye 
     spreads bomblets over a wide area, it cannot be employed 
     close to front-line marines. Even so, it is not a very 
     effective weapon. Defense Department munitions effectiveness 
     manuals indicate that four Rockeyes have less than 50 percent 
     chance of killing one tank.
       The real Marine Corps, it seems, is ill-equipped, both on 
     the ground and in the air, to defeat massed tank attacks. And 
     this kind of attack is the Sunday punch of the Soviet army 
     and Third World armies equipped with Soviet weapons.
       ``We're not pleased with what we have for air work against 
     tanks,'' admits Maj. Gen. Charles Pitman, the assistant chief 
     of Marine aviation. He hopes improved Mavericks will solve 
     the problem.
       Perhaps the biggest problem is whether the country can 
     afford the Marines' ambitious plans for the future.
       The Marines are touting a new landing concept.
       ``We have to come from over the horizon,'' says Gen. Gray, 
     to avoid exposing the amphibious fleet to shore-based 
     antiship missiles.
       But new equipment is needed to carry troops and equipment 
     the greater distance to the beach. One is a hovercraft called 
     LCAC (for Landing Craft Air Cushion,) which can ``fly'' over 
     underwater and beach obstacles.
       The Marines also say they need a new kind of aircraft 
     called the MV-22 tilt-rotor. The MV-22 will take off like a 
     helicopter and fly like an airplane, tilting its engines to 
     again land like a helicopter. The new tilt-rotor would be 
     used land marines as far as 25 miles inland.
       Freed of traditional beach landing restrictions, the 
     Marines say they can threaten a much wider coastline. The 
     enemy commander, accordingly, will be forced to choose 
     between spreading his forces or leaving large areas 
     undefended.
       The Marines plan to exploit either choice by punching 
     through a weak and overextended cordon defense, or by landing 
     at undefended spots to quickly build up forces ashore, before 
     the enemy can move and counterattack.
       ``If we're going to land where the enemy isn't,'' observes 
     one colonel who's skeptical of the new concept, ``why bother 
     staying way offshore, over the horizon? We have enough 
     trouble landing at the right spot from 4,000 yards 
     offshore.''
       ``For the actual landing,'' he says, ``we've moved the 
     mother ships from 4,000 yards offshore to 25 miles. We've 
     increased the distance more than 12 times, but the hovercraft 
     is only 5 times faster. We're worse off.''
       The speed advantage of the tilt rotor over current 
     helicopters may be illusory, too. Three out of four tilt-
     rotor helicopters making the 50-mile trip from ship to inland 
     landing zones will be toting loads that are too big and heavy 
     to be carried inside. They'll be slung underneath, and some 
     pilots say these ``external'' loads will reduce the tilt-
     rotor's speed further.
       The experimental tilt-rotor now flying has never carried an 
     external load.
       Ultimately, the marines must use beaches accessible by 
     conventional landing boats anyway. The new hovercraft and 
     tilt-rotor aircraft will carry ashore only 12 percent of the 
     troops, 6 percent of the vehicles and two-tenths of 1 percent 
     of the ammunition and supplies. Everything else will have to 
     be moved ashore in conventional landing craft, which will be 
     restricted to the 17 percent of the world's coastlines where 
     the water and beach conditions are suitable.
       ``The enemy will know the entry points on his own coastline 
     that lead to meaningful objectives,'' says a former Defense 
     Department official who questions the new landing concept. 
     ``That's where he's going to defend, and that's the ground 
     the marines will have to take.''
       ``We delude ourselves by retaining the `assault' label,'' 
     says Col. Gordon Batchellor, a highly regarded tactician, 
     ``as we quietly build a scenario where movement, but no 
     assault, occurs.''
       This force structure, he maintains, ``will be useless when 
     a true assault is called for.''
       The new landing concept is expensive. Each air-cushioned 
     hovercraft costs $20 million and can carry a single 70-ton 
     tank ashore. For the same money, the Navy could buy four 
     heavy ``utility'' size landing craft, called LCUs, each of 
     which carries 175 tons.
       A study by the House Armed Services Committee concluded the 
     tilt-rotor aircraft will cost more than $35 million apiece; 
     the CH-53E helicopter, which can carry twice the payload, 
     costs $16 million. The extra speed and range being built into 
     the tilt-rotor make up $15 billion of the total $25 billion 
     cost of this program.
       The Marines are buying into a number of hugely expensive 
     and technically risky programs like the tilt-rotor. With 
     these systems, they can range up and down enemy coastlines, 
     jabbing here and there, but the Marines may well be giving up 
     the capability to deliver the body blows of serious war 
     fighting.
       Gen. George Patton, no stranger to amphibious operations, 
     once said: ``A sparrow can outmaneuver an eagle, but he is 
     not feared. Speed and mobility not linked with fighting 
     capacity are valueless. Wars are won by killing.''
       Yet it seems the sparrow is the Marine Corps look for the 
     future.
       This situation may be perfect for Al Gray. After all, the 
     warrior is the man of bold decision in the face of adversity, 
     and Gray, as ``peacetime warrior,'' is facing monumental 
     problems. His budget is a fiscal Mt. St. Helens, unable to 
     contain the explosive pressures of bills now coming due for 
     costly programs started years ago.
       ``I don't believe in watering down our requirements,'' he 
     says, but he's also sending out strong signals that some 
     requirements may be revised. ``We're going to look from the 
     bottom up,'' he says, at the entire Marine Corps, ``starting 
     with platoons and companies.''
       Gray plans to fill the units with people from the bottom 
     up, too. If the Marines fill their need for officers and 
     troops before they get to their big headquarters in 
     Washington, he grins, ``that might be a blessing in 
     disguise.''
       He wants to move with breath-taking speed, bringing all the 
     infantry battalions up to full strength by next summer, 
     adding a fourth rifle company to each battalion as well. 
     Those two actions will put almost 6,000 infantrymen back into 
     the cutting edge.
       ``We're going back to everybody being an infantryman, 
     too,'' Gray promises. And he wants extra combat training for 
     all marines, regardless of speciality. ``The way we used to 
     do it,'' he adds.
       What else can he do? A number of civilian experts and 
     Marine officers concerned about the future of the corps 
     suggest a few basic actions.
       Eliminating unnecessary staffs is near the top of the list. 
     More than half of them are not needed under the most 
     demanding Pentagon plan for the Marine Corps, which calls for 
     the simultaneous employment of an amphibious force and four 
     brigades. Those commitments require only 13 of the 29 
     regimental and higher-level staffs the Marines now have, 
     leaving 16 of them unemployed.
       At one stroke, Gray could cut the headquarters overhead by 
     55 percent, saving millions of dollars in manpower costs that 
     could be applied elsewhere.
       With a quick trip to Europe, Gray can get the weapons that 
     marine infantrymen need to kill tanks. European antitank 
     weapons are generally heavier than their American 
     equivalents, largely because they have bigger warheads. The 
     West Europeans, who live much closer to those 50,000 Soviet 
     tanks, build weapons to kill them.
       The Marines don't have to wait years for an improved 
     Dragon, which still exists largely as a ``paper'' design. The 
     West German Panzerfaust III and the French Apilas, two 
     shoulder-launched rockets now in production, are good for 
     short-range work. For longer-range antitank engagements, the 
     Milan missile, combat-proven in Chad, is available.
       The Marines could buy 30 mm. gun pods to strap onto their 
     close support aircraft.
       ``The gun is the only way to kill tanks in close,'' says 
     Rep. Denny Smith (R., Ore.), who is prepared to help Gray get 
     the pods. They're cheap at roughly $300,000 each.
       For the price of half the Maverick missiles the Marines 
     want to buy, they could buy 30 mm. gun pods for every jet 
     aircraft in the corps. And they'd still have three times the 
     800 Mavericks they now possess.
       Among the corps' friends and critics, there is a nearly 
     universal belief that the Marines have lost focus. Instead of 
     concentrating on the basics, says Smith, ``they're trying to 
     capture hardware programs for a bigger budget share.''
       A number of Pentagon officials, who prefer to remain 
     anonymous, echo those sentiments, citing the ``over-the-
     horizon'' landing concept as little more than a technical 
     scenario for justifying expensive new programs like the 
     hovercraft and the tilt-rotor.
       The concept that epitomizes what may be the most important 
     problem Gray inherits: the pervasive failure to separate 
     tactical needs from technical wants.
       Tactically, the Marines needed a close air support 
     aircraft. Technically, they lusted for the Harrier, a jet 
     that could take off and land vertically. Now, they've got the 
     most vulnerable close air support airplane in the world.
       Tactically, the Marines needed lots of landing craft to get 
     to the beach. Technically, they coveted the air-cushion 
     hovercraft, which is quite literally a ``helicopter with the 
     roof off.'' Now they've sacrificed the build-up rate ashore.

[[Page S9154]]

       Gray appears to be sensitive to these problems. While he 
     remains outwardly committed to the Harrier and the tilt-rotor 
     program, he worries about the pervasive fascination at the 
     staff level with ``programmatic forces'' instead of real 
     ``fighting forces.''
       However, Gray is also sending out mixed signals to the 
     working level marines who have to translate his reformist 
     zeal into detailed plans and budgets. For example, he wants 
     to buy an assault gun, a form of light tank, which resurrects 
     a weapon that failed miserably in World War II.
       When the Marines start sorting out their must-have tactical 
     needs from nice-to-have technical wants, they're likely to 
     discover a lot they can do without.
       They just might figure out a way to produce a Marine Corps 
     the country can afford.
       If Gray is successful in making the real, the heavy and 
     expensive corps more like the lean, tough, deployable Marine 
     Corps of myth, the Marines will be restored to what he calls 
     ``real preparedness.''
       ``Anybody can have a bag full of numbers to look good,'' he 
     says. ``We're going to make sure we have the right people and 
     organizations for combat.

  Mr. GRASSLEY. If General Krulak would look from the bottom up, 
instead of the top down, he would quickly realize that sergeants and 
lieutenants are needed more than generals.
  Mr. President, I will be meeting with General Krulak in the near 
future to discuss this issue.
  I hope we both come away from this meeting with a fresh perspective 
on what the Marine Corps really needs right now.
  Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.

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