Aspin Seeks to Cut Troops by 375,000 : Military: Defense Department document also says the secretary wants to halve U.S. strength in Europe. Budget would be $10.8 billion below Bush Administration plan.

By MELISSA HEALY

Feb. 4, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Les Aspin has directed the military services to prepare a plan that would reduce troop strength by 375,000 in the next five years and withdraw almost half the U.S. troops in Europe by 1996, according to an internal planning document obtained by The Times.

The proposed reductions are part of a $256-billion budget request that Aspin ordered drafted for fiscal year 1994, which begins in October. At the same time, Aspin wrote in his internal planning memo that a “major strategy review,” to be completed by summer, may result in further cuts and changes to the 1993 and 1994 defense budgets.

Aspin’s 1994 budget blueprint would cut defense funds by about $10.8 billion beyond the $267-billion Pentagon budget the Bush Administration had proposed. It marks the first installment in an estimated $60-billion worth of reductions the Clinton Administration plans to make in the Pentagon’s budget over the next five years.

Aspin’s “Policy and Programming Guidance” memo sets a target of 1.4 million U.S. troops by the end of fiscal 1997--including 100,000 troops in Europe--and orders cuts of $2.5 billion in the Pentagon’s “Star Wars” budget. It also defers the start of production on a new aircraft carrier and establishes a new program under which some idled defense plants would be paid to maintain their readiness for future military production.

Under Aspin’s proposal, the Navy and Marines would experience the largest budget cut--$3 billion total from the planned 1994 spending level. The Air Force was directed to reduce its 1994 budget by $2.8 billion and the Army by $2.5 billion.

The figures in Aspin’s memorandum correspond roughly with President Clinton’s campaign promises, although Aspin’s overall target for future troop levels is slightly lower than those projected by Clinton in campaign speeches.

The proposed reductions to 1.4 million are much deeper than the George Bush Administration had planned or than military leaders have sought. The Bush Administration and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had argued that U.S. forces should not be reduced to fewer than 1,620,000 troops, from a current level of about 1,775,000.

Former President Bush and U.S. military officials have argued that U.S. troop levels in Europe should fall no lower than 150,000 from the current level of about 180,000. A force smaller than that would be unable to fight effectively, they have said.

Last March, Powell derided an Aspin plan similar to the one laid out in the defense secretary’s memorandum. Powell called the plan “fundamentally flawed in a number of ways: Its methodology is unsound, its strategy unwise and the forces and capabilities it proposes unbalanced.”

At the same time, Aspin’s proposed cuts are certain to disappoint many Democratic lawmakers who hope to divert much larger sums of money from the defense budget for programs designed to revive the domestic economy and expand social services. Aspin and his advisers acknowledge that they eventually will have to settle for more modest cuts than they want.

Moreover, Aspin’s cuts are expected to have a relatively minor impact on the federal deficit. Because the expenditure of budget funds is stretched out over a number of years, a $10.8-billion budget cut would likely result next year in an actual spending reduction of only $6 billion.

“The (fiscal year) ’94 budget reductions are the first step toward moving to a smaller but effective force structure that relies on high-quality, technologically advanced forces organized to cope with regional threats,” Aspin wrote in his overview of the budget plan. “Care must be taken to retain a robust and ready capability for the new force to perform regional operations like Desert Storm.”

The superior training and technological edge that U.S. troops enjoyed in the Persian Gulf War, Aspin said, were “essential for minimizing both casualties and the length of conflict.”

Bush’s budget plan, sent to Congress in January, called for a reduction of 83,000 active duty troops in 1994 and a pay raise of 4.7% for those who remained.

Aspin did not specify how many troops should be cut in 1994. Instead, he directed the services to propose cuts in troops, training and equipment that would meet his budget. To reach Clinton’s target of a 1.4-million-person force and to achieve his proposed budget cuts, the military services almost certainly would have to cut more than the 83,000 troops that Bush had planned.

But even as Aspin laid out a new, deeper target for military manpower cuts, he wrote: “We must protect the nation’s commitment to its servicemen and women in terms of compensation, quality of life and minimization of involuntary separations.”

In an earlier, more detailed draft of his memo, Aspin outlined a new initiative designed to keep in operation defense firms that may not be needed now but would be essential in a national emergency. In 1993 and 1994, Aspin wrote, funds would be sought to provide for “the prudent ‘warm shutdown’ of those production facilities that are not programmed to be used for several years but which would likely entail inordinate restart costs if critical skills, tools and facilities were not judiciously retained.”

In another development, the White House announced Wednesday that it has nominated William J. Perry, an investment banker and former Pentagon acquisition official, to become deputy defense secretary. In that position, Perry will oversee programs like the “warm shutdown” initiative and others designed to help defense contractors convert to profitable civilian enterprises.