decisions of our policy-making bodies are therefore deceptive and purposely so. The seeming unanimity merely defers the doctrinal dilemma until, some crisis or the requirements of the budgetary process force a reconsideration under the pressure of new dangers.¹

Within the Department of Defense these problems are compounded by the obsolescent division of functions among the services and the predominant role which is played by fiscal considerations in setting force levels. According to the Key West agreement at each service has the primary mission of defeating its enemy counterpart. It is the mission of the Air Force to dominate the sky, of the Navy to control the sea, and of the Army to defeat the enemy's ground forces.¹

With modern weapons, the present definition of primary missions amounts to giving each service a claim to develop a capability for total war, for the sky cannot be dominated, short of a scale of attack on the opposing retaliatory force which will unleash an all-out conflict. Control of the seas implies the destruction of industrial facilities and supply depots deep in enemy territory, as Admiral Burke testified before the Symington Committee. And the Army has declared a 1500-mile missile essential for the performance of its mission. A division of functions among the services makes sense only if the functions in fact represent distinguishable strategic missions. If each service in the performance of its primary mission must carry out tasks inseparable from the primary mission of its sister service, its energies will be increasingly absorbed in jurisdictional disputes. Nor can this problem be avoided by administrative fiat, as has been demonstrated. The Interservice rivalries are inherent in the definition of missions; they result inevitably from a division of roles on the basis of means of locomotion at a time when technology which makes a mockery of such distinctions.

are especially bitter, because the disputes among the services have grown so severe, because force levels, which determine appropriations, are set on the basis of each service's 1. See above Chapter Two, p. ...

primary mission. Since in purely military terms the primary mission in unachievable
without defeating the enemy completely, each service will always consider its force
levels inadequate and each service will be convinced that one reason for this
inadequacy is a transgression by a sister service on its field of jurisdiction.

Thus the setting of force levels on the basis of the primary mission, of a service,
when this primary mission represents no distinctive strategic option, inhibits an
over-all approach to questions of doctrine. The disputes between the Army and the
Air Force regarding the importance of airlift for the Army can serve as an illustra-
tion. The significance of their dispute resides not in the arguments advanced
on either side, but in the fact that in terms of the primary missions of each service
it is insoluble. The Air Force, charged with defeating the enemy air arm, must
consider any investment in planes of no tactical or strategic combat effectiveness a
a diversion of resources.
The Army, on the other hand, charged with destroying its
enemy counterpart, cannot carry out its primary mission if it cannot get into
 combat. For its position to fight. To the Army, airlift is the condition of any effective action.
The rigid division of functions among the services, therefore, inhibits
the consideration of airlift in terms of over-all strategy. The Army, to which
the airlift is essential, is precluded by the Key West agreement from developing one,
it, and Secretary Wilson's latest clarification of missions reinforces the prohibition
building up against an Army air arm.
The Air Force, with its weapons which depend on the air as a means of locomotion, is almost impelled by its
primary mission to consider airlift a marginal requirement. In fact the Key West
agreement precludes the Air Force from considering the airlift in the only terms
which are meaningful to the Army: that of strategic mobility.

Thus our process of arriving at strategic decisions breaks down at the
precise point where the division of functions on the basis of means of locomotion

Department of Defense Press Release, November 26, 1956.

without an adequate military establishment and inhibiting a consideration of what such a capability might be. It is not that the imposition of a budgetary ceiling is, inevitably pernicious, a removal of all budgetary restrictions would equally inhibit doctrine, because it would lead each service to seek to protect itself against every contingency and to hold weapons for every eventuality, as occurred to some extent during the Korean war. And the proliferation of weapons systems unrelated to the means that in the end will be made in the confusion of battle. The difficulty with our present budgetary process is that by giving priority to cost over, requirements, it subordinates doctrine to technology. Budgetary requests are not formulated in the light of, a strategic doctrine, rather, doctrines are tailored and if necessary invented to fit budgetary requests.

The predominance of fiscal considerations makes for doctrinal rigidity. because it causes each service to be afraid that a change in doctrine will lead to a cut in appropriations. This was illustrated by a violent dispute in 1950 between advocates of strategic airpower and a group of scientists at the Lincoln Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who were accused of advocating a cut in our retaliatory force in order to build up air defense. The remarkable thing about this dispute was that the M.I.T. group explicitly denied underrating the importance of strategic airpower; they insisted that their recommendations had been solely concerned with building up our air defense. Yet the partisans of strategic airpower had a psychology, if not logic, on their side. With a fixed ceiling on defense expenditures it was clear that any new appropriation was bound to lead to the reduction of existing forces; a new capability could in practice be developed only at the expense of an existing one.

As a result, budgetary pressures compound the inherent conservatism of the military and lead to the subordination of doctrine to the battle for appropriations.

orthodoxy, the ceiling is not as rigid as its advocates maintain. It also means that if the current defense budget is too low even to maintain our retaliatory force, as was argued by the Chiefs of each service before the Symington Committee, an increase in expenditures is essential to remedy this situation and to bring about an essential capability for waging war. This capability must include an adequate aircraft for the Army, the limited war capability described earlier, limited war capabilities where we have tactical air support, expanded and modernized ground forces, and an air force capable of meeting our weakest: airlift, tactical air support, expanded and modernized ground forces, the new types of anti-submarine warfare and even anti-submarine warfare.

The doctrinal handicap imposed by the predominance of fiscal considerations has been outweighed effectively, is not compensated for by any increase in civilian control either within the executive branch or by Congress. The difficulty of effective control over military programs is made more difficult by the annual review of programs and, their technical complexity. The yearly review is increasingly out of phase with the substantive realities of defense planning. The hiatus between development, and procurement, stretches over several years in the case of most weapons. The introduction of a new weapon into one unit implies that all units will be so equipped over a period of time. Thus the first order for B-52's logically carried with it the obligation to continue procurement until all heavy bomber wings of the Strategic Air Command were equipped with jet planes. Similarly, the beginning of construction of an aircraft carrier makes almost inescapable future appropriations to complete its construction.

3. The minimum requests by each service were as follows:

Air Force $23 billion (Symington) p. 1494
Navy 13 billion " p. 1358
Army 12 billion " p. 1280

Although these figures are by no means conclusive and the requests were reduced by the Secretary of Defense from $48 billion to $38 billion, the budget was held down only by deferring major new procurement. Every deferred expenditure will increase the pressure in the future years either to increase the budget or to reduce forces. And no new provision was made for the limited war capabilities where we are weakest: airlift, tactical air support, expanded and modernized ground forces and even anti-submarine warfare.

*See above Chapter Five, p. 44*

4. This difficulty is not confined to the field of defense policy although it is perhaps most evident there. The European Recovery Program (E.R.P.), for example, was launched by an authorization for the expenditure of $15 billion over a five-year period. Although Congress was not legally bound thereby to appropriate this