For some time now, I have been addressing various audiences inside the Navy as well as the public. It is especially appropriate that I relay to the membership of the Naval Institute the general message I have been telling. It is important for you to understand it because the membership of the Naval Institute includes a majority of the spokesmen who are called upon to talk about the Navy to the public.
I need not lecture USNI members about the public awareness of a defense budget approaching one hundred billion dollars. American citizens are generally concerned with the strains defense expenditures place on a national treasury already pressed by rapidly expanding, mandated increases in other federal programs. I think three fundamental points must be kept in mind, however, concerning the military posture which the President has asked the Congress to support in fiscal year 1976.
The first is that the defense budget, if approved as submitted, will represent historically low demands on our country’s fiscal, industrial, and manpower resources. DoD expenditures will represent about 5% of capacity output—the lowest point since the pre-Korean demobilization. As a "burden” on the economy, the Department of Defense has been cut almost in half since the Vietnam high. As a percentage of total government spending, at 16% it reaches the lowest point since before World War II; and our military manpower has been reduced by some 600,000 compared to the mid-1960s, before we began our Vietnam expansion.
The second part is that the Soviets concurrently have shown no abatement in the trend toward steady buildup of their own military capabilities. The most recent intelligence data show that in every meaningful category of defense expenditures, the Russians continue to invest more than we do. Calculated in dollar prices, the Soviets currently outspend us by 25% in military procurement, 20% in overall research and development, 20% in general purpose forces, and 60% in strategic nuclear offensive forces. In the period since I960 the Soviet Union has expanded its military manpower by well over a million men and has deployed a massive capability in the Soviet Far East while simultaneously strengthening its capabilities opposite NATO.
In the area closest to my own professional interest, I observe that the Soviets have spent 50% more than the U. S. Navy for new ship construction over the past decade, and that they are currently outspending us by one third in that category, despite our own increased efforts to replace the World War II-vintage vessels still in our naval inventory.
The third point that must be made is that these contrasting U. S. and Soviet trends have occurred against the backdrop of shifting power relationships in the world—to which the changing U. S.-Soviet military balance has itself contributed significantly. We know that the Soviets continue to see merit in shifting that balance to their own advantage. They believe that something called the "correlation of forces” controls the course of world events, that military power is a central element of that correlation, and that the correlation increasingly has come to favor the Soviet Union in recent years. For this reason, I would expect them to continue increasing their real spending on military power by the 3% to 5% annually that has characterized their actions over recent years.
All of this suggests that we are entering a period of significantly changed relationships in the world, and that many of the comfortable assumptions concerning the ability of American military power to maintain peace and stability, and to assure the protection of our own vital interests around the world may be challenged in the years ahead.
With that by way of background, I would like to turn now to the role of the Navy in maintaining the kind of military balance which I think is essential to our well-being in the future. In my view, the Navy will have, in the immediate years to come, four main tasks.
► First, in this age of nuclear weapons, it must continue to contribute to deterrence of strategic war. In the time ahead, as enemy weapons become more accurate, our sea-based missile systems will continue to increase in importance as a part of our nation’s arsenal.
► Second, our Navy must be able, in the event of war, to control the areas of the sea that we wish to use—in short, to keep our sea lines of communication open. To do this, sea control forces are composed of a complex of weapons systems, including submarines, patrol aircraft, aircraft carriers and surface combatants.
► Third, when it is our national policy to do so, the Navy must be able to project U. S. power ashore to protect our vital interests. These forces include aircraft carriers with planes capable of moving hundreds of miles inland and amphibious ships with the ability to land Marines on distant shores.
► Fourth, perhaps the most important mission of the Navy for the era of peace we seek is that of overseas presence. The existence of our Navy demonstrates to those who would deny us free use of the seas that hostile challenges to our interests, or those of our allies, may result in a confrontation with U. S. armed forces. The presence of our naval forces on station in the Mediterranean, the western Pacific, and more recently, periodic deployments into the Indian Ocean, have given our national authorities a credible, reliable, and very flexible instrument for the support of our foreign policy and provided an underpinning for our diplomatic efforts to maintain peace and stability in areas that matter to us. With these tasks before us, let us now look at the world of the future in which our Navy will most likely be operating. It is not a particularly comforting scene.
Even in a period of detente, it is clear that uncertainty and change are hallmarks of the international situation. One needs only to scan the globe to see its surface pocked with trouble spots: Ethiopia, the Middle East, Cyprus, and Southeast Asia. This catalog of troubled areas covers the same geographic span of crises that we have reacted to with regularity since World War II.
For the Navy, however, there are two significant differences. With a decline in our overseas base structure, the Navy must be prepared to shoulder a larger share of the responsibility for safeguarding our national interests in these areas. For example, we are in the process of renegotiating our base rights with both Spain and Portugal. This includes our rights in the Azores.
The final significant element affecting the Navy’s role in the future is the continued growth of the Soviet maritime capability. The Russian Navy is demonstrating on a day-to-day basis a new and growing ability to operate very modern, sophisticated and powerful naval forces in open ocean areas far away from their home bases. Only several months ago, a Soviet task force cruised around one of these United States— Hawaii—and then steamed home along the Alaskan coastline. More recently, a Soviet task force of missile-equipped cruisers, escorted by submarines, conducted training operations in Caribbean waters. Meanwhile, the Soviets maintain their large fleet in the Mediterranean and continue to expand the scope of their operations in such strategically important areas as the Norwegian Sea and the Indian Ocean.
It is in the face of this expanding Soviet naval challenge that the U. S. Navy must be prepared to meet an undiminished scope of worldwide commitments and responsibilities.
How well prepared are we to do this?
This year, the number of ships in the active fleet of the U. S. Navy averaged about 508, a number which becomes more meaningful when you consider that six years ago we could boast of a 976-ship Navy. Next fiscal year our forces will reach a level of 490—an historic low which takes us below the figure of 1939, two years before Pearl Harbor.
We need ships to be a Navy. And we must have new ships of the proper kinds and in the correct balance of numbers and types if we are to carry our undiminished level of commitments against the backdrop of a steadily expanding Soviet Navy. We have been decommissioning ships faster than we have been building new ones. And although today we can accomplish the naval tasks of our national strategy, in some areas it is only with the barest margin of success. As Soviet maritime capabilities continue to increase, it is clear to me, as it must be apparent to you, that it is essential to reverse the declining trend of our naval force levels.
With the shipbuilding plans we now have programmed, we can reverse that downward trend. But as force levels shrink—as we wait for the shipyards to produce—we cannot call "time out” and ask the Russians and world affairs to wait for us.
► We must face our responsibilities squarely.
► We must find a way to do more with less.
► We must devise a strategy which will extract every ounce of potential from each ship, each aircraft, and each person in the Navy.
Technology is expanding at an exponential rate, reducing some weapons systems to obsolescence virtually as the)' leave the drawing board. But those human qualities of dedication, loyalty, integrity and compassion have not lost one shred of their basic value since the dawn of history. It is upon continued recognition of the part these human values play in any military organization that we must focus our attention.
We must return to fundamentals.
The responsibility for making a Navy out of hardware rests squarely on out shoulders, for it is the Navy’s people alone who can make the hardware work. It is in recognition of this fact that I have put my initial emphasis and greatest stress on personnel programs. Paramount among our efforts in this area is a concentration on our leadership.
Fleet readiness must be our primary objective. For no matter how difficult the task, how severe the threat, or how sparse the resources, the United States Navy must—and will—always be ready to carry out that mission upon which the security of the American people so profoundly depends.
But we need public support in order to do that job. As the Secretary of Defense has recently observed, we are at the point in our defense capabilities now where any further significant reductions can put in peril our ability to defend those interests that the nation has categorized as vital over the three decades since World War II. If we are to abandon those interests now, it should be done as a conscious act of national policy only after the most careful deliberation, and with a full awareness of all its consequences for the things we hold important.
I do not think the American people-even during a period of difficult internal stress—want to take so drastic an action. I personally do not believe we could look to the future with any sense of confidence or security if we were to do so. But we are in danger of stumbling into this situation unconsciously by continuing to cut away at our ability to maintain military balance, to deter actions hostile to our essential interests, and to support a diplomacy intended to bring peace and stability to areas that are important to us.
A sound defense posture must have public support. The responsibility for ensuring that the public is informed lies in great measure to the professionals who comprise the membership of the Naval Institute. The challenge is there. Press on!
[Signed] J L Holloway III