Letter from Washington

This year the defense-budget cutting blade could finally start scraping the bone of the Reagan Administration’s strategic-force modernization plans, especially if Pentagon spending is marked at a level short of 3 per cent growth. Just when the next generation of nuclear-weapons systems (Midgetman, Stealth Advanced Technology Bomber, Trident II SLBMs) is nearing the critical transition from research to full-scale engineering and Star Wars research is heating up, there’s not enough money to go around for all.

“Anyway you play it out, the defense budget is going to be less in ’87 than in ’86,” says Representative Les Aspin (D., Wise.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, “and maybe critically less.” Aspin predicts that defense will take 50 per cent of all budget cuts, with or without the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings automatic cleaver. Last year’s $19-billion slice out of the Administration’s defense proposal used up what’s left of the obvious stretch-outs in procurement and hidden windfalls from inflation re-estimates. For the first time in the Reagan years, the big-ticket weapons systems will be under pressure.

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This year the defense-budget cutting blade could finally start scraping the bone of the Reagan Administration’s strategic-force modernization plans, especially if Pentagon spending is marked at a level short of 3 per cent growth. Just when the next generation of nuclear-weapons systems (Midgetman, Stealth Advanced Technology Bomber, Trident II SLBMs) is nearing the critical transition from research to full-scale engineering and Star Wars research is heating up, there’s not enough money to go around for all.

“Anyway you play it out, the defense budget is going to be less in ’87 than in ’86,” says Representative Les Aspin (D., Wise.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, “and maybe critically less.” Aspin predicts that defense will take 50 per cent of all budget cuts, with or without the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings automatic cleaver. Last year’s $19-billion slice out of the Administration’s defense proposal used up what’s left of the obvious stretch-outs in procurement and hidden windfalls from inflation re-estimates. For the first time in the Reagan years, the big-ticket weapons systems will be under pressure.