Security

As Defense Boss, Cheney Pushed Big Weapons Cuts

A Defense Secretary and veteran of Republican administrations, shocking the military-industrial establishment by canceling some of the Pentagon’s most bloated Cold War weapons programs. Robert Gates in 2009? Nope. Dick Cheney, twenty years before. In April of 1989 — months before the fall of the Berlin Wall — the George H.W. Bush administration proposed a […]

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A Defense Secretary and veteran of Republican administrations, shocking the military-industrial establishment by canceling some of the Pentagon's most bloated Cold War weapons programs. Robert Gates in 2009? Nope. Dick Cheney, twenty years before.

In April of 1989 -- months before the fall of the Berlin Wall -- the George H.W. Bush administration proposed a sweeping overhaul to the America's arsenal. Billions would be slashed from a whole range of the Pentagon's most-outdated, worst-functioning systems on land, sea, and in the air, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney announced.

He proposed cutting $7 billion from the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which the Reagan White House "oversold" as a fool-proof missile shield. 'S.D.I. is alive and well," he added. ''But like everything else... it's got to fit into a reduced budget.''

The purchase of stealth bombers should also be put off, since ''there are a lot of technical problems with it and it is extremely expensive,'' Cheney said at the time. Competing plans for mobile nuclear missiles should be combined, and reduced. 8,000 troops should be cut from the Army; the Navy should drop a carrier battle group; development of a new version of the F-14 jet should be scrapped; a purchase of 500 F-15s should be canceled; old destroyers should be retired; and so on.

Just like Gates' program cuts today, Cheney's proposals immediately drew hostile fire from Congressmembers, who "complained about reductions in their favorite programs," as the New York Times put it.

To the consternation of Marine Corps supporters on the House Armed
Services Committee, the Pentagon is canceling the Navy's V-22 Osprey plane, which would be used to ferry marines into battle from ships and to deliver and pick up special operations forces. That cut will save about $8.5 billion over the next five years.

But, of course, that cut never came. Congress kept the Osprey program, over Cheney's objections. He continued to push to trim the armed forces, for years afterward.

Today, finally, the Osprey is flying over battlefields. But some defense observers are wondering why the program wasn't slashed, in Gates' latest budget.

[Photo: VOA]

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