Fuding The Numbers

THERE'S ONLY ONE THING WORSE than intense ideological conservatism mindless ideological conservatism. A case in point is Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger '38's Pentagon, which is rapidly gaining a name for itself not only as an advocate of unrelenting military build up, but also as an institution with no compunction about fuding the numbers to keep its already over swollen budget swelling.

The latest news from the capital of the military industrial complex courtesy of the independent Congressional Budget Office is that the Pentagon's briefcase toters conveniently underestimated the inflation rate by several points for the next several years. According to the The Boston Globe,which first broke the story this week this means that the nation's defense program could cost more than $100 billion above the costs currently projected by the Pentagon.

Whoops! Just a mistake, you can hear the Defense department bureaucrats straggling to apologize. Just misplaced that little pinky on the calculator. The litany of excuses for this error are surely being prepared by Defense Department flaks at this very moment. And in a normal period eg-regious as the potential cost overrun is, we would be satisfied with the stingiest of mea culpas.

But the latest Pentagon boo-boo falls into an all too predictable pattern of willful misrepresentation that has come to characterize the Weinbergian spending and procurement process. A curious mind set has come to accompany the staggering arms build up Weinberger and Reagan have embarked on an outlook that consistently underestimates the costs of the fancy weapons systems the Administration wants and consistently miscalculates the nature of the military threat posed by our adversaries.

The former point has been driven home most forcefully by Pentagon "whistle blower" Franklin C. Spinney, who in 1983 told Congressmen that the Defense Department consistently under budgets its weapons programs and takes on more programs than it can reasonably expect to efficiently complete. This tendency seems borne of the same mentality that sees a monolithic, unbeatable Soviet army read to pounce on the West, while disregarding the poor caliber and internal rifts of that army which make such an invasion unlikely.

No one is denying that the world is an increasingly dangerous place in which U.S. vigilance and sobriety is sorely called for to meet whatever military challenges may arise. But this shouldn't mean that the American public has to hand over a blank check to the Pentagon especially when it can't be sure that check is going to be cashed wisely. Many have claimed that the U.S. armed forces banks too much on overly complicated weapons systems that are prone to excessive cost overruns and might not work on the battle field the M-1 tank and the F-18 fighter plane are two examples of this trend. The current Pentagon's proclivity to avoid reality in its budgetary planning as evinced in the latest inflation numbers scam can only exacerbate this tendency.

Reagan now wants more than $300 billion in his next defense budget and Weingerger is pressing hard to make sure most of this gets through Congress. Congress shouldn't give him it at least until he gets a new calculator.