Gates's weapons cuts enrage left and right

WASHINGTON, April 8 (UPI) -- Liberal and conservative critics alike are raging at Defense Secretary Robert Gates's defense cuts: For liberals, he only nibbled at the Pentagon's enormous annual budget by cutting a number of high-profile programs. Conservatives are raging that he cut any at all.

However, Gates's cuts were not radical. And only one of them -- stopping production of the expensive F-22 Raptor air-superiority combat jet -- can really be criticized as ill-judged.

Gates also said the U.S. Air Force would not be allowed to buy any more C-17 Globemaster super air transport aircraft. He scrapped the controversial DDG-1000 projected fleet of next-generation U.S. Navy destroyers and the fancy new fleet of presidential helicopters, for instance.

Gates, who ran the CIA under the first President Bush and was appointed defense secretary by the second one, is the epitome of the cautious, responsible manager. He recognizes the need to rein in Pentagon spending. It almost doubled during President George W. Bush's eight years in office from an already colossal $365 billion to $654 billion in the current fiscal year. And that does not include the costs of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pentagon reformers complain that Gates's cuts are just the tip of the iceberg and that he hasn't tackled the ruinously expensive and often exceptionally inefficient way the Pentagon does business. The answer to those arguments is that you have to start cutting somewhere -- and Gates has. Also, in little more than two years of office, he has already cut at least five times as many programs as the supposedly "ruthless" and "decisive" Donald Rumsfeld cut in six years as defense secretary. The only program Rumsfeld actually axed was the expensive and almost un-transportable Crusader heavy military howitzer artillery gun.

Cutting the troubled DDG-1000 destroyer program was -- as United Press International columnist Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, has written -- a no-brainer. The existing DDG-51 destroyer fleet is good for many years yet, and it has been upgraded cost-effectively and well. The DDG-1000s were expensive, slow to build and far too large, making them more vulnerable targets for shore-based anti-ship missiles.

Gates did hand the Navy a sop by approving an additional Littoral Combat Ship to be built by Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics.

The Littoral Combat Ship was a good idea gone bad but still essential. It was supposed to be a cheap, multipurpose vessel that could operate close to shore. But the wish list of missions and weapon systems to accomplish them grew out of control. The LCS turned into another big, costly, way-behind-schedule giant.

However, it is still a lot cheaper and quicker to build than a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, and it carries the capability in maintaining force projection onto hostile shores around the world far more cost-effectively. Also, being far smaller than an aircraft carrier, the LCS is a lot less vulnerable to shore- or patrol-boat-based anti-ship cruise missiles.

Already there is a great hue and cry, gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes over Gates's decisions. Members of Congress -- Democrats as well as Republicans -- fight like furies to maintain lucrative defense spending in their home districts. When Rumsfeld did push through a plan to close and merge large numbers of unnecessary military bases within the United States, the Bush administration had to push a special law through Congress to get the plan implemented.

Despite the uproar and the opposition, Gates's cutbacks will almost certainly go through. They are financially necessary, and they are a lot less than many feared. Significantly, the Standard and Poor's Aerospace and Defense Index rose 8.4 points -- 3.6 percent -- to 244.12 after Gates made the details of his spending cuts public Monday.

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Part 2: The debate over the F-22 Raptor cutbacks