MILITARY READINESS

September 2000
		Is the U.S. military properly prepared to provide for the national defense? Gore defense adviser Gordon Adams, retired US Army Col. David Hackworth, former Defense Dept. official Lawrence Korb and Bush defense adviser Stephen Hadley take your questions.

Forum introduction Has the definition of readiness changed? How can we ensure the safety of military personnel? Are false readiness reports common? What enemy is the military allegedly unprepared to fight? What can be done to boost military morale? Is mandatory anthrax immunization causing morale to sink?     Sept. 14, 2000: Four experts discuss military readiness. Online Special: Coverage of the Missile Defense Debate August 9, 2000: Whether or not to build a defense system. July 10, 2000: The Pentagon's second failed test of the National Missile Defense System Browse the NewsHour's full coverage of military issues     US Department of Defense

A military officer in Fort Hood, TX asks: Our readiness and ability or execute our missions is horrific. I served as a platoon leader and am now a company commander and I will assure everyone, our troops are frustrated and are not happy. What can the government do to solve our morale problems?   Gordon Adams responds: The government can treat the military with respect and invest in the things that address morale. The current administration has worked this issue hard with additional investment, passed its own budget plan, in pay (biggest raise in 20 years), quality of life (36 percent increase in funding over the past eight years), readiness and training (20 percent increase in resources in the past eight years), housing (raising the off-base allowance to 100 percent over the next three years). They have also worked with the services to adjust structure so that deployments are less stressful, a process now well under way in the Air Force and starting in the Army.   Stephen Hadley responds: Governor Bush has directly addressed these issues in his public statements on the military. He has expressed his great faith in those who serve our nation in uniform and his belief that they are the best military force in the world. But he recognizes the morale problem which you have described. Let me use his words: "[E]ven the highest morale is eventually undermined by back to back deployments, poor pay, shortages of spare parts and equipment, and rapidly declining readiness. Not since the years before Pearl Harbor has our investment in national defense been so low as a percentage of GNP. Yet rarely has our military been so freely used - an average of one deployment every nine weeks in the last few years." To deal with this problem, Governor Bush has called for a number of measures: He said that in his first military budget he will add $1 billion in salary increases. He will provide targeted bonuses for special skills. He has said that two-thirds of military family housing units are now substandard and must be renovated. He has called for improving the quality of training at our bases and at the national training centers. But he has also said that our military requires more than good treatment. He has called for an end to open-ended deployments and unclear military missions. He has said he will "replace uncertain missions with well defined objectives." He has said that America will remain engaged in the world, providing leadership, and maintaining its commitments to friends and allies. But the goal of any military operation should be clear and readily achievable. Use of the military in this way will also enhance morale.   Col. David Hackworth responds: Great question. What is desperately needed is for the senior uniformed leadership of the US military to stand tall and present what is really the truth of what's going on down at the bottom to the president and secretary of defense and the Congress, not just to go along to get along. My experience today, and it hasn't changed since the Vietnam War, is that the top is not in touch with the bottom. The people who are the senior generals running around with three and four stars, who can fix all of the problems, don't go down and really find out what's going on at the bottom. As a result, they live in a stratosphere of wonderful, perfumed air in places like the Pentagon, and they're simply out of touch with the mutiny that's going on down at the bottom with young captains such as yourself. I get these messages day after day after day -- really dedicated, patriotic, young leaders that want to do the right thing. They want to lead their men, and they're the ones who are responsible. They're there and they know it's their job to take those men and lead them into battle, and if they're not well trained, those men are going to be killed. The situation that exists today is precisely the situation that existed during the Vietnam War -- an eight-year war where the top didn't understand the nature of the war, and the top wasn't in touch with the bottom. And the kids down at the bottom -- the 58,000 grunts who died and 300,000 who were wounded. The Westmorelands and the Abrams didn't go down and talk to the kids in the rifle platoon and ask "what's going on here?" What we need is people at the top who are going to be truth-tellers, to stand tall, and to remember what their oath was all about: to defend America from its foreign enemies and its domestic enemies. And what they're about now is defending their service for a bigger budget -- a bigger share of the defense appropriation.   Lawrence Korb responds: The government can define clearly what tasks it expects the military to perform and then ensure that it has adequate funding to carry out these tasks. Currently, the US military is structured to fight two major regional contingencies while it is being asked to carry out peacekeeping or humanitarian measures. Today's military is a smaller version of the Cold War military. It has not been transformed to deal with today's environment. The Army's new initiative is a step in the right direction.