Military claims it needs more funds than either candidate is proposing

WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush are promising to build up the military, but neither presidential candidate is proposing to spend anything close to what the military says it needs.

In fact, if the next commander in chief wants to fund some of his priorities, he may have to cut some programs from the current defense budget.

In recent congressional testimony, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the current defense budget of about $300 billion leaves them approximately $50 billion a year short of what they need to modernize their arsenals.

They argued that the next administration should devote a large chunk of the federal budget surplus to develop and purchase weapons and to keep the military ready for war even as it conducts peacekeeping missions around the globe. Neither presidential candidate has adopted that view.

Bush, the Republican candidate, vows in almost every stump speech to strengthen the armed forces and improve the life of men and women in uniform. His running mate, Richard Cheney, a former defense secretary, contends that U.S. military power has deteriorated over the past eight years.

Gore and his Democratic running mate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, put less emphasis on defense matters in campaign appearances. But Gore proposes to spend more than Bush on defense.

Bush would earmark $45 billion for increased defense spending over the next decade, compared with the $100 billion in Gore's 10-year budget plan. Both promise improved health care and housing as well as increased pay for service members. They differ from each other - and the military leadership - on how much money would be left over to buy weapons.

Gore's proposal generally adheres to the policy of the Clinton administration, which has boosted defense spending over the past four years, though not as fast as the service chiefs would like. For example, procurement of weapons and equipment rose from $43 billion in 1997 to more than $60 billion in the 2001 budget. But the chiefs would have liked to have hit that mark two years ago.

In a Bush administration, the budget ax probably would swing at several big-ticket defense programs. Among the likely targets cited by Bush advisers and defense experts are plans to modernize the Army's armored forces, field three new types of tactical aircraft and build a new fleet of attack submarines.

Bush has frequently stated that he wants to "skip a generation" of weapons technology, but he has refrained from explaining what weaponry he would forgo and how long he would be willing to wait for science labs to produce the next generation.

Those decisions would be made after his defense secretary conducted "a comprehensive military review to develop a new architecture for American defense designed to meet the challenges of the next century," according to his campaign.

The only new military hardware Bush has explicitly endorsed is in missile defense, and his plans are ambitious. Bush would dramatically expand the Clinton administration's $60 billion plan to provide a limited defense for the United States with land-based interceptors. The Republican candidate says he would also

provide defenses for South Korea, Japan, Israel and the European allies, as well as other "friends" overseas and U.S. military forces abroad.

According to defense experts, this would require space-based defenses as well as a fleet of ships with short-range interceptors. The price tag would far exceed Bush's proposed increases in defense spending, and so significant cuts would have to be made in existing programs.

"We need to have a military of high morale, high spirits; a military that's well paid, well equipped, well housed," Bush said in a recent campaign speech. "I will rebuild the military power of the United States in order to keep the peace." Despite such promises, the $45 billion that Bush would add to defense spending over 10 years is a modest amount in Pentagon terms. It is less than half the size of Gore's proposal and less than half the increase adopted by the Clinton

administration two years ago.

The apparent discrepancy between Bush's rhetoric and his budget plans has confused even his staff at times. Condoleezza Rice, the former Stanford University professor who is his top national-security adviser, insisted in an interview last month that the $45 billion covered only part of his planned increases in defense

spending and that more would come from uncommitted budget funds.

But Bush and Cheney were challenged on the $45 billion figure during the debates, and neither claimed there was any more in the pot. When Gore noted how much more he would devote to defense, Bush responded that he did not want to get into a "spending contest."

More so than on many other issues, Gore is running on the Clinton administration's defense record. He cites the administration's reversal of the cutback in military spending that followed the end of the Cold War, and he says America now has "the world's greatest military."

Aside from promising increases in pay and benefits for the armed services, Gore has not specified how he would spend the additional $100 billion. He rejects Bush's notion of skipping a generation of technology, arguing that the armed forces would be left with obsolete equipment while waiting for new weapons to be developed.

Gore has not directly addressed the military leadership's primary complaint about current defense policies. The service chiefs have repeatedly warned Congress that they are mortgaging the future strength of the armed forces to pay for the current fast pace of operations around the world.

Gore's policy of forward engagement envisions continued, and perhaps expanded, use of the military overseas in peacekeeping, humanitarian and nation-building missions. He promises to reduce the wear and tear on personnel caused by repeated deployments with more considerate rotation schedules, but he has not addressed the military's complaint that such deployments force them to rob modernization programs to pay for current operations.