The subcommittee met at 9:05 a.m., in room SD-138, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Daniel K. Inouye (chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Inouye, Leahy, DeConcini, Bumpers, Harkin, Stevens, Garn, Kasten, D'Amato, Rudman, Specter, and Domenici. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE STATEMENT OF HON. DONALD B. RICE, SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE ACCOMPANIED BY GEN. MERRILL A. McPEAK, CHIEF OF STAFF, U.S. AIR FORCE OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR INOUYE Senator INOUYE. The subcommittee is pleased to welcome the Honorable Donald B. Rice, Secretary of the Air Force, and Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, as they provide testimony on the Air Force budget request for fiscal year 1992. The budget under review continues the trend toward a smaller, leaner force structure begun several years ago. The Air Force budget provides for a modest 0.8 percent real growth over fiscal year 1991 and a 1.7 percent real growth in fiscal year 1992. At $86.8 billion, the request provides for a phased downsizing of the fighter force from 35 to 26.5 wing equivalents by fiscal year 1995. Similar reductions apply in Air Force manpower, with military manpower dropping by nearly 22,000 and civilian end strength by over 16,000 in fiscal year 1992. In adjusting to new fiscal constraints, the Air Force is recommending termination of a number of programs, including the advanced tactical aircraft, the F-16 procurement beyond 1993, the Peacekeeper missile, and the Tacit Rainbow missile programs, to name just a few. Other programs, such as SRAM-II and SRAM-T missile, will be restructured. AIR POWER PLAYS DECISIVE ROLE The successful prosecutions of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm have made clear the decisive role air power can play on the modern battlefield. It also has proven the value of American high technology and the importance of proper systems integration. Any lingering doubts over the effectiveness of our stealth aircraft, particularly the F-117, should now be put to rest. Equally impressive was the Air Force's employment of smart munitions which allowed our bombers to score precision strikes against hardened Iraqi targets with a minimum of collateral damage. Never before has the world witnessed such military capability applied by men and women of unmatched skill, courage, and professionalism, and the statistics of the war speak for themselves. For nearly 6 weeks, U.S. tactical air and strategic air forces ruled the skies over Kuwait and Iraq. They flew approximately 112,000 missions, including nearly 60,000 combat sorties, against the enemy. Preliminary estimates are that the Military Airlift Command moved nearly 484,000 passengers and 520,000 metric tons of cargo to the Middle East between August 2 and March 1. Through it all, U.S. Air Force ground crews have been able to handle this surge of activity with a readiness rate comparable to that at their home bases under ideal conditions, which is a truly extraordinary accomplishment. TIME FOR SELF-EVALUATION Operation Desert Storm provides us with a fresh opportunity to take stock of ourselves, our war-fighting doctrines, and the choices we have made regarding military preparedness. Our success, however, should not be allowed to obscure the difficult decisions which lay ahead, decisions on the future of our air and sealift capability, the health of our industrial base, and the defense management reforms which have yet to be fully implemented by the Department. There is much work to be done to ensure that in the next conflict American forces enjoy the same margin of success they have known in the gulf. I believe I speak for this subcommittee when I say that all of us are proud of the job done by the Air Force and by its able leaders. You have written a new chapter in the annals of American military history and should be justly proud. Once again I congratulate all of you on a truly remarkable campaign, and the subcommittee looks forward to working with you in the weeks and months ahead as we begin the process of reviewing the Air Force budget request to ensure that the achievements of the present will continue into the future. Before proceeding, do any of my colleagues have any statement they would like to make? Senator GARN. I have no opening comments. Senator RUDMAN. I have no opening statements, Mr. Chairman. Senator D'AMATO. Mr. Chairman, I have one or two questions I would like to submit for the record. Senator INOUYE. With that, Mr. Secretary, welcome again, sir. General McPeak, welcome, sir. Please proceed as you wish. Secretary RICE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We very much appreciate the opportunity to appear before you this morning and to lay out the Air Force proposals in the President's budget for fiscal year 1992-93, and as well as to discuss the 6-year plan that lies behind that. We have provided a statement which I would like to ask if it could be entered into the record. Senator INOUYE. Without objection, your full statement is entered into the record. PRESENTATION BY SECRETARY RICE Secretary RICE. I believe all the members of the subcommittee also have a set of charts, and we appreciate the opportunity, Mr. Chairman, to run through these charts with you and present the program that way. If it is all right with you, I will go to do that now. GLOBAL REACH-GLOBAL POWER SUSTAINING THE VISION I am told, Mr. Chairman, that the microphone we had set up somehow did not make it electronically, so I will try to do it without a microphone, and if I am not speaking loudly enough I hope you will let me know. As the committee will remember, we laid out in a white paper that was published last June a strategic vision for the future of the Air Force in terms of the role it could play providing its part of our overall national security capabilities. We entitled it "Global Reach-Global Power." Contain local/limited war and tension; restore the peace Purpose of power projection Emphasis on rapid, mobile, lethal, long-range, Hedge against turnaround in risk of global war Control of sea, air, and space lines of communication Security assistance and complementary force planning It called for a strategic planning framework which is summarized in this chart. It would set out the major areas, which I know the Secretary and the Chairman have elaborated before the committees in their testimony, the key things that the Nation has to be able to accomplish with its military capabilities in the areas of nuclear deterrence, in the area of conventional power projection, and also carrying out these changes in a way that makes sure that we hedge against a turn-around in the risk of what is happening in the Soviet Union and that we pay attention to particular needs, such as control of sea, air, and space lines of communication, and areas of security assistance. PLANNING OBJECTIVES Sustain Deterrence-Nuclear Forces Provide Versatile Combat Force-Theater Operations & Power Projection Supply Rapid Global Mobility-Airlift and Tankers Control the High Ground-Space and C31 Systems Build U.S. Influence-Strengthening Security For the Air Force, then, we can develop from that broader national security guidance several areas of planning objectives. We need to be sure that we do our part in sustaining nuclear deterrence; that we provide versatile combat forces for power projections for contingency operations, for theater operations. We are responsible for a key part of the rapid global mobility that our forces need. Airlift and tankers, of course, are our part of that. And we are responsible for the lion's share of DOD activities in space, and so we think also of the objective of controlling the high ground and worrying about our space and C3I systems. And the Air Force, of course, has a special role in working with our security partners around the world. DESERT STORM: INITIAL OBSERVATIONS Our Desert Storm forces arew upon 20+ years of investment. Future Forces proved flexible and responsive Combat effectiveness a combination of training, readiness, and *Operate with near impunity in contested air space without a host of support F-117As, representing 2.5% of the combat assets, covered -31% of targets Accuracy in combat not degraded by survivability tactics Regains element of surprise CINC's call for more B-52s shows bomber conventional role Precision-guided munitions and stand-off weapons proved vital Now, before going on to our specific program, I want to take just a moment to recognize that there are lessons to be learned from Desert Storm. When we laid out the global reach-global power vision last year, we, of course, had no way of being able to anticipate that we would have such an early opportunity to demonstrate many of the concepts that had been laid out there. The work of learning from Desert Storm will, of course, go on for a long time as more and more detailed investigations are done. But some things are quite clear on the front end. The forces that we employed, as I think you recognized in your comments, Mr. Chairman, drew on the investments that had been made in the past. We know that combat effectiveness was due to a combination, not just of the cutting edge technical systems we had, but of the quality of the people in our Armed Forces and the extensive training and readiness support that we had provided them over the years. As you pointed out, Mr. Chairman, stealth has clearly been proven under fire. The F-117's operated with impunity in contested air space. They represented only about 2.5 percent of the combat as |