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03 August 2000
Pentagon Spokesman Kenneth Bacon briefed.
Following is the transcript:
Defense Department Regular Briefing
Briefer: Kenneth Bacon, Spokesman
Pentagon Briefing Room
Arlington, Virginia 2:08 P.M. EDT
Thursday, August 3, 2000
Bacon:
All right. Let me start with a couple of announcements.
First, to bring you up to date on the military support for the
firefighters in the West. We currently have more than 1,800 service
members, active duty and Guard, helping to fight fires in the western
part of the United States. As you know, the Army has sent -- active
duty Army sent about 500 soldiers up from Fort Hood, and they're
already engaged in fighting the fires. The Marines will send about 500
people tomorrow. I said to you on Tuesday that they were from -- they
were going to come from Twenty-nine Palms. On Tuesday that was
correct. Since then, a new unit has been assigned to this task.
They've changed the unit. So this unit will come from Camp Pendleton.
They'll move out tomorrow morning, and they should start arriving in
Idaho Falls at about 8:30 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time tomorrow
morning.
The flying fire trucks I told you about, the eight C-130s filled with
bags of -- or tanks of fire retardant, have flown more than 383 hours,
and that's 318 sorties, made 336 airdrops and delivered more than 7.7
million pounds of fire retardant chemicals since they've been on
station. That's the latest on the fire-fighting support.
Second announcement, and last announcement, is that on Tuesday, a
moment you've all been waiting for, we're going to announce the
winners of the Yahoo! Fantasy Careers contest. As you remember, back
in May we announced that we were working with Yahoo! to set up a
Fantasy Careers contest whereby people could submit essays to each of
the five services and the winners would then get to spend several days
with that service. For instance, the winner of the Coast Guard contest
will train with search-and-rescue swimmers. The winner of the Air
Force contest will fly in some high-performance fighters. The winner
of the Army contest will jump in a tandem jump with a Golden Knight,
fly in a helicopter, do some other things. The winner of the Navy
contest will land on a carrier and spend some time on a carrier and
then, of course, fly off. And the winner of the Marine contest gets to
go through Marine basic training -- I think a week or five days of
Marine basic training. So we'll announce those winners next week.
We thought the contest was very, very successful. It generated a lot
of interest and showed us the power of the Internet in terms of
helping to support recruiting efforts.
With that, I'll take your questions.
Charlie?
Q:
Any update on when the DRR [deployment readiness review] is going
to go to Secretaries Gansler and Cohen?
Bacon:
Well, it hasn't gone yet. I would anticipate it would go to the
secretary in the next week or so. I said earlier that I anticipated
the secretary would make his recommendation sometime next week. It
could take longer than that. As we like to say about the NMD [national
missile defense] program, it will be event-driven, not
schedule-driven; that he will make his recommendation to the president
probably some time before the end of the month.
Q:
Would you keep us posted -- I mean, you're not going to have
briefings later in the month, and may not come up on briefing here.
Could you take the question and keep us posted on when it goes? I
assume it'll go to Secretary Gansler first. Will he be briefed first
and then he would brief the secretary, or how will that work?
Bacon:
Well, briefing is an ongoing process, and there'll be -- it's
also a somewhat evolutionary process in that there will be a lot of
briefing, changes will be made, drafts will be written, new changes
will be made. So I would anticipate it will take a little bit of time.
Q:
By changes, Ken, you mean in the DRR or what the SecDef is going to
recommend to the president?
Bacon:
I think the whole process is a process of trying to pull
together the best information, and then questions will be asked along
the way, the questions will be answered; the answers will be
incorporated, and at some point they'll say, "Eureka, we've got a good
enough product to call the DRR, the Deployment Readiness Review." And
that, then, will go to the secretary. The secretary, at that point,
may have more questions, and there may be areas that he wants fleshed
out, there may be areas that he wants explained. And so it could be a
process that takes some time.
Q:
Can you let us know when he gets the first draft?
Bacon:
No. I'm not going to get into the business of telling you every
time a new draft is written. And I may not even tell you when the
final draft is sent up.
Q:
Well, are you going to get into the business of letting us know why
this happened?
Bacon:
Pardon?
Q:
Are we going to get a briefing on that?
Bacon:
Yes, we'll do that on Thursday. As I said on Tuesday, we plan
to do it relatively soon, and the day is a week from today. So that's
the current schedule.
Q:
What is that you're doing?
Bacon:
To explain finally why Integrated Test -- what happened in
Integrated Flight Test 5.
Q:
Next week?
Q:
Thursday?
Bacon:
Thursday is what our current plan is, because we're doing the
Yahoo! Fantasy Jobs contest on Tuesday, and I wouldn't want to have
conflicting news.
Yes?
Q:
There's another report/study that you guys have been in the works
for a long time, it's on this Defense Science Board and how do we help
-- how do we assist the health of the defense industry.
Bacon:
Right.
Q:
Dr. Gansler said April 10th I want just briefing charts so I can
get this thing out the door fast. We're in August. Where is this thing
at, from a status standpoint?
Bacon:
That's a good question. I'll find out. I mean, it's somewhere
in the system. But I think what you'll find is that good ideas don't
have to wait to be sent forward in a report to be acted on, and I
think that some of the ideas for helping the -- speed dealings between
the department and defense contractors have probably been taking
place. But I'll try to get you an update on that.
Q:
Specifically, what's the status of the big recommendation to
increase progress payment rates from 75 percent to 85 percent? That
would have a material impact. Is that still an operative
recommendation, or has that been abandoned because of cost
considerations? I'd like you to take that for the record.
Bacon:
Sure.
Yes?
Q:
During Secretary Cohen's briefing to the Senate Armed Service
Committee, the hearing, he said that there was a necessity to have
allied support. And recently the British have hinted a little
opposition to that. Does that have any effect on his recommendation at
all? Has he said anything about that?
Bacon:
Well, I've read the same stories you've read in the paper. I
don't think the British government has taken a view on support for NMD
at this stage. Remember, the president has not made a decision on NMD,
so there's really nothing for them to take a view on at this stage.
At some point, if President Clinton decides to go ahead with
deployment of an NMD system, we would have to make upgrades to radar
we have in England, and we would also have to make upgrades to a radar
-- an early-warning radar we have in Greenland. So we would be
consulting with our allies at that time. We've talked to them in
general terms about the threat and about the architecture of the
system we're thinking of. We've talked to them about our dealings with
Russia and our efforts to amend the ABM Treaty, and those efforts
continue. So we'll continue to be in close contact with our allies.
Q:
I think we're tied up in semantics here again. The secretary's
repeatedly said recently that the president is NOT going to make a
decision on deployment but simply make a decision on whether or not to
go ahead with contracts. And you've just said "if Clinton decides to
go ahead and make a decision on deployment."
Bacon:
Well, the president has -- he could decide, if he wanted to, I
suppose, to stop the program, in which case we wouldn't have to talk
with our allies. I'm not trying to suggest what the president's going
to do or not going to do. But he has a range of options available to
him.
And you're right -- what Secretary Cohen has talked about is a
decision that would deal immediately -- most immediately with the
Shemya radar in Alaska. But theoretically, the president has -- he can
decide in the simplest terms to go ahead or not to go ahead. That's
the simplest way to describe the decision he has to make. The
technicality is that he -- a decision to go ahead would involve a
decision to go ahead with the Shemya radar. He could decide to go
ahead, to not go ahead, to go ahead but delay certain steps. I mean,
those are among the options he'll be considering. And I don't mean to
suggest in any way what decision he'll make.
Yes?
Q:
I want to go back just for a moment to the Yahoo fantasy contest.
Bacon:
Right.
Q:
You mentioned that you were pleased with the success and --
(inaudible) -- the power of the Internet. Do you have any idea at this
point how the Internet is turning out to be as a recruiting tool? I
mean, do you have any idea whether more prospects, for instance, are
visiting Internet recruiting sites as opposed to, say, walking in
recruiting stations or --
Bacon:
I don't. Those are very good questions for the people who will
be briefing on Tuesday.
Q:
At your last briefing, you said that you didn't yet have the
recruiting statistics for July. Have those come in yet?
Bacon:
No, I still don't have the final recruiting statistics for
July.
Q:
Does it appear -- can you say at this point whether it does, in
fact, appear that all of the services will meet their recruiting goals
by the end of the year to have the required end strength that they're
looking for?
Bacon:
Right now, the services believe they're on track, if current
good news continues, to meet their end-strength goals by the end of
the year. Meeting end-strength goals is a function of two things,
retention and recruiting. To the extent that retention is higher than
anticipated, they have to recruit less. And most -- I think that the
Army, the Navy and the Marines so far are experiencing higher than
anticipated retention. More people are choosing to stay in. They have
to bring in fewer new people to fill gaps. The Air Force, I believe,
is still running slightly lower than its retention goal as of June.
So all services have been working on ways to improve retention. I
think that the pay raises that have gone into effect recently, as well
as some of the other quality-of-life improvements, including for
soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines who have been in a while, the
improvement in pensions, have all been incentives for people to stay
in longer, to reenlist for new terms of service. That's helped
retention.
At the same time, we've bolstered recruiting by adding recruiters, by
increasing benefits, bonuses, in particular, education benefits. The
Army had a press conference yesterday talking about some of their
plans for improving education for soldiers in the Army. All of these
have a cumulative effect. We're also in the process of improving our
advertising, trying to make it sharper, more focused, and a better
tool for attracting people into the military. All of these, I think,
have a cumulative effect, and it seems to be working so far.
Q:
And just to clarify one point, from what you said, is it the case,
then, that the reason that the services met or exceeded their
recruiting goals in May and June was because they were able to lower
the goals because they didn't need as many recruits because of
higher-than-expected retention?
Bacon:
I don't know specific facts in terms of numbers, but certainly
at least the Navy has lowered its recruiting goal as retention
exceeded its plans or its projections. I don't know about the Army,
but I would anticipate that that's the case.
So as I say, you have to look at both sides of the scale -- you have
to look at retention as well as recruiting, and it's unfair only to
look at recruiting because, of course, the number of people required
to be recruited reflects retention.
Q:
And one last thing. Do you know if this higher-than-expected
retention trend is also true for the Reserves and the Guard? Or are we
seeing a more difficult problem in keeping people in the Reserves?
Bacon:
There have been some retention problems in the Guard and the
Reserves, but I don't know the dimensions of them. I'll try to find
out, or the briefer who will be here on Tuesday from Personnel and
Readiness I think will be able to answer those questions. But the
Guard and Reserve have been working hard on retention as well as on
recruiting.
Yeah, Tony?
Q:
Ken, Boeing today agreed to pay the Justice Department $54 million
to settle two lawsuits involving defective gears on Chinook
helicopters. Do you have any insight into whether the Army or the
Pentagon are pursuing whether to administratively debar or suspend
Boeing or the subcontractors, since the incidents involve five
servicemen dying?
Bacon:
I just learned of this settlement before coming in here. I have
not had a chance to check with the lawyers to find out what their
plans are, what their next step is.
Q:
Would you take that question?
Bacon:
Yes.
Q:
Yeah, because normally the Army -- the services have procurement
fraud task forces that monitor cases like this for appropriate
administrative remedies. I assume that's happening in this case, if
you could pursue that.
Bacon:
Well, the settlement does call for about $54 million, as I
understand, although a big chunk of that goes to the person who filed
the fraud claim in the first place. But the rest will go to the
Defense Department.
Q:
On top of that, though, there's a procedure for looking at whether
the companies are culpable from a negligence standpoint and should be
either debarred or hit with an administrative sanction. That's the
normal follow-up, and we'd like you to track that.
Bacon:
Okay. Sure. We'll take that question.
Yes?
Q:
The USS Chancellorsville, a missile -- guided-missile vessel --
Bacon:
Right.
Q:
-- is visiting China. Is this a new phase is cooperation in
Sino-U.S. military relations? As a follow-up, I understand there's
going to be a Chinese vessel, warships, visiting the U.S. Do you have
any dates and places for that?
Bacon:
Yeah. The visit of the Chancellorsville is taking place now.
She arrived in China yesterday, China time, and she will depart on
August 5th. It is the first visit by a U.S. Naval ship to a mainland
port, that is, excluding Hong Kong, since 1998. So it's the first
visit since the unfortunate, tragic and mistaken bombing of the
Chinese Embassy during Operation Allied Force a little more than a
year ago.
It is part of a military re-engagement program with China that
involves mutual ship visits, and there will be some Chinese ships
visiting, I think, ports in Honolulu and San Diego (sic) [Honolulu and
Seattle], I believe, in -- I believe these are upcoming this year or
next year. And we are also obviously increasing high-level contacts.
Secretary Cohen recently came back from China. We have had -- Admiral
Fargo is in China now, both in Beijing and then accompanying his ship
in Qingdao, where the ship is visiting.
Yes?
Q:
On the Patriot radar tests in Ocean City and Wallops Island, you're
ready to go ahead with that tomorrow, and feel that you have satisfied
the few residents' concerns about the environmental impact?
Bacon:
Well, this is a radar test. It's designed -- this -- what we're
talking about here is a test of radars that would be possibly deployed
in connection with the Patriot 3 missile. And it's part of a program
designed to expand the radar capability and range -- primarily range,
I believe -- of the PAC-3 radar. And as far as I know, we still plan
to go ahead with that test.
Q:
And again, of course, you're saying that your environmental studies
show that it is not harmful to the people or animals in the area?
Bacon:
Well, I believe that's to be the case. I mean, there's a lot of
radar around, and this is just a -- to the best of my knowledge, there
should be no impact available on the public. There have been -- there
was a finding of no significant impact. And they're available -- you
can get a copy [.pdf, 3 MB] right here of that finding, if you'd like
to read through it. They're also available at the Ocean City Public
Library, so anybody who wants to go in and read the basis on which we
decided that there's no significant impact caused by the test is free
to do that. We encourage people to do it.
Q:
Just to be clear, this is a test of just the radar; there won't be
a missile test involved?
Bacon:
No, no, it's not a missile test. It's a test of radar
capabilities. And it's using radars at Wallops Island, Virginia, and
Ocean City, Maryland, airport, and on board an Aegis cruiser at sea.
And as I said, it's designed to help us come up with radars that are
better able to detect and track threatening aircraft or missiles at
longer ranges than we currently acquire them. So the PAC-3 missile can
be vectored toward those enemy attackers.
Q:
Is there a simple way to describe how the test takes -- what's
involved in the test, or is it something that -- I mean, how do you
test the radar to see -- I mean, is there --
Q:
Is the -- (inaudible) --
Bacon:
Yeah, there would be -- I believe that there will be objects
that they will attempt to track. I don't know whether they're -- they
--
Staff:
Lear jets.
Bacon:
Lear jets. They're going to see if they can track down Lear
jets from, I think, progressively farther away is how I understand it
--
Q:
(Off mike.)
Bacon:
-- looking for ways to increase the range of the radar.
Q:
It's a cooperative engagement capability test, right? One of their
CEC tests, the network radars?
Bacon:
Well, it's certainly an engagement capability test.
Q:
And how do these radars differ from civilian radars that you might
find at the airport -- (inaudible)? They're more powerful? They --
Bacon:
Well, the Aegis radar is a phased array radar, as you know. And
one of them is an airport radar. The one at the Ocean City airport is
a standard radar (sic) [An Army Patriot radar will be temporarily set
up at the Ocean City airport.] And I don't know what type of radar is
at Wallops Island. [The radar to be used at Wallops Island is a
permanent, shore-based Navy radar.]
Q:
Okay.
Bacon:
Two Lear jets flown by the Navy will fly in military range area
over the Atlantic and will act as target objects for the radar network
to detect and track. And there will also be a Navy P-3 Orion flying in
the area to relay information back.
Yes?
Q:
Change of subject?
Bacon:
Sure.
Q:
I take it that the Pentagon doesn't intend to get involved in this
brouhaha off (inaudible) between the Canadians and this private
U.S.-owned ship carrying Canadian military equipment.
Bacon:
You're right. We do not plan to get involved. It's a commercial
dispute.
Yes?
Q:
I have an Iraq question, as we're looking at the anniversary of the
conflict in Iraq. Many people have charged that Saddam Hussein has
been diverting or skimming some of the proceeds from the
U.N.-sanctioned oil-for-food program in order to prop up his regime,
and not aiding the Iraqi people. I'm just wondering if the Pentagon,
A, shares that view, and B, has any evidence of that, any concrete
evidence that that's the case?
Bacon:
The oil-for-food program is carefully audited by the U.N. and
is designed to prevent the type of skimming you just mentioned. The
main source of revenues for Saddam Hussein, as I understand it, comes
from the illegal oil smuggling that is done sometimes with the
complicity of the Iranians. And that, of course, is increased -- it
goes up and down with oil prices. When oil prices rise, the smuggling
rises because the profits rise. The risks are compensated for better
by the higher oil prices. And because oil prices have been up over the
last year or so, the smuggling has increased; it varies from month to
month, but it has increased. I believe that's the primary source of
the money that he uses to fund his 80 palaces and fancy residences
that aren't generally available to the Iraqi people but are available
to him and his family.
Yeah?
Q:
Yeah, according to several speakers at the Republican National
Convention, quoting, you know, from retired General Schwarzkopf, the
U.S. military today is much smaller and less prepared than it was 10
years ago, and it has many more commitments. How do you respond to
that?
Bacon:
Well, the military is smaller. If you look at the size of the
military and military spending over the last 10 or 11 years, say
starting in 1989, you'll see a reduction in size of the military and
reduction in military spending. That pretty much bottomed out in the
last couple of years and has started to turn up. I think that the
peace dividend of the Cold War, that started after the Berlin Wall
came down, has been spent many times over, and the decline in
personnel pretty much ended, I think, in 1995, '96, maybe a little
before that, and spending began to turn around in '96 or '97.
The most significant increase in spending occurred as a result of
meetings that President Clinton had with the Joint Chiefs in 1998, in
September. It was those meetings that led to a $112 billion plus-up in
military spending that was proposed in January of 1999, January or
February of '99, for the fiscal 2000 budget, and that has gone into
effect, and what you see now is an improvement in spending and other
trends.
So yes, there was a long decline that started at the end of the Cold
War. It went through Republican and Democratic administrations, and
it's begun to turn around in the last couple of years.
Q:
Ken, on a related point, the secretary -- former Secretary Cheney,
last night in his acceptance speech, made a point of saying that
morale was something like at an all-time low. Stripped away of
rhetoric, political rhetoric, he has some insight into the process.
How does this building actually monitor morale? I mean, is there a way
to -- on a regular basis, the services actually try to quantify the
state of the force from a morale standpoint?
Bacon:
Well I think we've just talked about one very tangible
measurement, which is retention. And at a time when retention is
rising, it seems unlikely that morale is falling. So to the extent
that retention is a good measurement of morale, I think morale is
pretty good right now. What we find is that when soldiers, sailors,
airmen, Marines are busy, when they're doing missions they've been
trained to perform, and when they're doing them in a highly
professional and satisfying way, such as peacekeeping in Bosnia or
Kosovo, that their morale tends to be high. And indeed, we're finding
high retention in those areas and units that are deployed to Bosnia
and Kosovo.
Clearly, there have been problems with an over-stressed force because
of deployments. I think we've addressed those fairly well
administratively over the last four or five years. This was a high
priority of Secretary Perry's; it's been a high priority of Secretary
Cohen's, and you see it in terms of a reduction of inspections in the
Navy, you see it in terms of a reduction of duplicative or overlapping
exercises, you see it in terms of the creation of an Aerospace
Expeditionary Force by the Air Force to try to regularize deployments
so they're more predictable. There have been a number of steps that
have been taken.
Have we solved the problem to everybody's satisfaction? Probably not.
But I think we've made significant progress. And while this has been
happening, we've been increasing pay, increasing benefits and trying
to improve housing. So it all has a cumulative effect on morale, and I
think we're seeing the impact of that in the better retention.
Yes?
Q:
I just want to go back to the Patriot for one second.
Bacon:
Sure.
Q:
Apparently there have been one or maybe two interceptor tests at
White Sands without prior notification to the press, as is normal. And
I was wondering if that's a new policy or what other reason there
might be that people weren't told ahead of time it was taking place?
Bacon:
Well, I don't know whether they were announced ahead of time or
not. That's, I think, an Army or a BMDO [Ballistic Missile Defense
Organization] issue. But there have been two successful interceptor
tests. They both involved cruise missile surrogates -- in other words,
drones -- that were simulating cruise missiles. They were designed
basically to test the Patriot's ability to hit low --
Q:
Air-breathing --
Bacon:
No, low -- small-profile targets flying at high subsonic
speeds, as cruise missiles do.
Q:
Well, our people in New Mexico who normally cover them were
surprised to hear of the recent success, because they didn't know if
it was just planned.
Q:
Yeah. There was one on the 23rd that was ballyhooed ahead of time.
We covered it. But there was an unsuccessful one on the 28th, and
there was no advance notice given of that.
Bacon:
But we did -- the Army did put out a notice afterwards that it
had happened.
Q:
(Off mike.)
Bacon:
That's right.
Q:
But the problem here is that one suspects that if these tests are
not announced in advance and then there's a test failure, there could
be a "delay," quote, unquote, in an announcement of a failure. We'd
like to know about these ahead of time.
Bacon:
I understand this. This is an Army-BMDO issue. I have not
looked into it. There may have been circumstances in this test that
prevented an early announcement, and I will look into it.
Q:
Thanks.
Q:
Well, there's one last question on readiness. While watching one of
the domestic entertainment networks this week, I noticed another
report about spare parts shortages affecting an Air Force unit. I'm
wondering -- I remember talking to the Air Force years ago about their
spare parts problem, and the Air Force claimed it was getting a handle
on that. Is that -- are we still in the situation where there's such a
shortage of spare parts that they have to take apart a perfectly good
plane in order to repair other planes, or what's going on? Is that an
anecdotal thing, or is that a widespread problem?
Bacon:
I thought that -- I've been watching CNN -- that everybody was
devoting full time to the convention.
Q:
(Laughs.)
Bacon:
But it is true that the Air Force has had a spare parts
problem. The origin of the problem really started in 1994. And I
talked to the secretary of the Air Force about this today. They did
not buy enough spare parts for several years in the mid-'90s -- '94,
'95, '96 -- for whatever reason. They didn't. That has been remedied
recently. There's been over $1.2 billion added in the last year or so
to the Air Force budgets to increase purchases of spare parts.
There, unfortunately, is a rather long lag. This isn't like buying an
air filter for your car. You don't go down to the local gas station
and buy one off the shelf. We're talking about spare parts for aging
aircraft, frequently F-16s, F-15s, that have been around since the
'70s and early '80s. So there is a lag between the time the money is
appropriated and the spare parts actually show up, but they are
beginning to show up.
There is still, unfortunately, some cannibalization going on.
Obviously, the Air Force, like all the services, concentrates on
keeping its front-line fighters at the highest state of readiness.
That's one of the reasons we're doing so well policing the no-fly
zones in Iraq, and it's one of the reasons why we did so well during
Operation Allied Force, in that we put herculean efforts into keeping
those fighters at the absolute highest state of readiness.
That has from time to time caused backups in maintenance for the
domestic force. Now we're getting enough spare parts into the pipeline
to deal with some of those backups. And my understanding is that the
backlog of needed parts is falling quite dramatically. So the Air
Force is making progress, but the problem isn't solved.
Q:
Thank you.
Bacon:
Thank you.
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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