The Drawdown Deepens
here's a saying in the military that no battle plan ever survives the firing
of the first shot. After weighing in on the divisive issue of restructuring and
shrinking America's military and defense-industrial base, President Bill Clinton
might well say the same thing about campaign plans.
Take, for instance, Clinton's campaign assertion that reducing the Defense
Department's active-duty force to 1.4 million troops could be accomplished by cutting only $ 62 billion from the Bush Administration's Pentagon budget plan in
the next four years. It turns out that the cut was understated, as Defense
Secretary Les Aspin confirmed on March 27. Aspin projected a cut of $ 88
billion, with some of the added reduction needed to offset unachievable savings
that the Bush Administration had projected would flow from management reforms.
The additional cuts will have to be taken from military pay, training,
weapons procurement or other Pentagon accounts. And the cutting may not stop
with the $ 88 billion Aspin mentioned: Some say the cuts will top the $ 100
billion mark when more detailed versions of the budget are released later this
year.
The Clinton campaign's battle plan, moreover, did not reckon with world
developments or congressional foot-dragging. Now it appears that the Somalia
deployment, events in the former Yugoslavia and disarray in Russia may require
more resources. Both Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole, R-Kan., and Senate
Armed Services Committee chairman Sam Nunn, D-Ga., have suggested that Clinton
has cut too deeply into the nation's defense capabilities. Even archdove Ronald
V. Dellums, D-Calif., the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee,
has voiced protest -- albeit only out of parochial concern for cuts Aspin has
aimed at military bases in his San Francisco Bay district.
As if these conflicting strains did not make rational planning difficult
enough, military leaders must also anticipate the findings of the independent
Base Closure and Realignment Commission, which has until June 30 to accept or
modify Aspin's base realignment plans before sending its list to Clinton, who in
turn will forward it to Congress for an up-or-down vote.
Leaders of the armed services, of course, have long been coping with the
downward trends in budget and manpower that Clinton's election served to
accelerate. For them, the advent of Clinton and Aspin means a bit more pain in
an already difficult drawdown, as detailed in the following service-by-service
review.
THE ARMY
When they see news reports on the latest base closure announcements or plans
by the new administration to cut defense, many Army officials are amazed at a
tone that seems to suggest that the drawdown is just beginning.
"Whenever there's a new administration in the White House, there's always a
psychological sense of a new beginning," says Gen. David Meade, the Army's
director of plans and policy. "So most Americans probably aren't aware that last year alone we took 72,000 soldiers out of Europe alone, along with their
spouses, children, dogs, cats, parakeets, furniture and cars.
"But if you're a sergeant 1st class in Germany, and your unit's gone away,
and you've transferred to Fort Hood, Texas, while your wife remains in Europe so
your son can finish his senior year in high school, you already know all about
change. And it hits hard when you hear someone on TV say, 'Gee, the Army has
got to start shrinking.'"
Specifically, the Army has cut its active forces by 25 percent since 1990 and
expects to be down by 32 percent by the end of 1995. It has deactivated one
corps and four divisions, on its way down from a force of 18 active divisions
with 781,000 troops in 1990, to one of 12 active divisions numbering 536,000 by
1995. At present the Army is slightly ahead of schedule with active-duty
end-strength having aleady fallen below 600,000, making today's Army the
smallest since 1950. In the process, last year alone three out of four Army
soldiers faced a change-of-duty move.
That restructuring is dramatically changing the face of the Army. "The image
you'll see at the end of this will be of a completely different Army," says
Meade. A decade ago, as much as 50 percent of the Army was stationed overseas.
According to Meade, "what you're seeing taking shape now is an Army that is no longer forward-deployed, but rather stationed in the United States, including
Alaska and Hawaii, and ready to project forces out."
That fundamental vision has served as the blueprint not only for how the Army
is taking its personnel cuts, but where its remaining forces will be based in
the United States and how they will fight in the future. For instance, the
model for fighting future wars will no longer be based on the European Command
or Pacific Command, which have traditionally relied on forward-stationed Army
troops overseas. Rather, the new model is Central Command, a small headquarters
based in Florida that can call on a host of U.S.-based forces for rapid
deployment, as it did for the Persian Gulf War and the current deployment in
Somalia.
Returning Home
The lion's share of the Army's personnel cuts are coming out of Europe.
Under the Base Force plan promulgated by Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Colin Powell
and approved by the Bush Administration, the U.S. military presence in Europe
was scheduled to shrink to roughly 150,000 active duty personnel by 1995, of
which 92,000 would be Army troops. Already, under that plan, the Army has
withdrawn half of its European-based forces and returned 293 overseas installations to host countries.
Under a policy and programming guidance document sent to the Army by
Secretary Aspin in February, however, the service was directed to find
additional savings of $ 2.5 billion in its fiscal 1994 budget request. To meet
that target, the Army has decided to accelerate troop reductions, stepping up
the pace to include an extra 18,000 personnel by the end of fiscal 1994.
In his guidance, Aspin stipulated that the military should budget for further
reductions in Europe, toward an end-strength in fiscal 1996 of approximately
100,000. That number was endorsed by German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at a meeting
of NATO defense ministers earlier this year. At that force level, the Army
projects it would have just 65,000 troops in Europe.
Ironically, the Army would reportedly like to return its forces from Europe
faster than Aspin thinks is prudent. If those positions are going to be cut
eventually, say officials, the Army would just as soon eliminate them now to get
to its stipulated ceilings. The service is also waiting for direction on what
additional cuts it might have to absorb as part of President Clinton's announced
plan to reduce the military by 200,000 beyond the Base Force. "If we're coming down in Europe anyway," says Meade, "the faster we do it,
the better for the rest of the Army, because otherwise those cuts will have to
be made in Kansas or Washington."
Slowing Withdrawal from Korea
Under a three-phase plan begun in 1990, the Army took 5,000 troops from a
total of 32,000 based in South Korea. The second phase of the withdrawal, which
would have brought 6,500 more troops home, has been suspended indefinitely,
however, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Nunn and ranking Republican
John Warner pushed for a delay in light of reports of North Korea's efforts to
develop a nuclear weapon and its decision to withdraw from the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Apparently vexed by the Nunn-Warner restrictions, as well as by Aspin's
reported reluctance to accept the Army's accelerated withdrawal from Europe,
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Gordon Sullivan revealed his frustrations in testimony
before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Forces and Personnel.
"We have been precluded from bringing forces home from overseas at a rate
that we can handle and which saves us money in the long run," Sullivan said. "Some of our forces in the United States have readiness levels lower than I
would like -- precisely because I can't bring the soldiers who should be in
those squads and tank crews home from Europe and Korea."
U.S.-Based Forces
As Army forces do shift from overseas to stateside bases, the need to station
them where they can be redeployed quickly in an emergency influences decisions
on which stateside bases and units to retain in a smaller Army. Bases with
ample training room that are situated near mobility hubs such as ports or major
military airfields, for instance, clearly stand the best chance of weathering
the drawdown and the latest round of base closures.
"It's no accident that the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) at Fort
Stewart, Ga., and the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas, are full-up
divisions with high priorities in both manning and equipment," says Meade. Both
can be rapidly deployed around the world from nearby ports in Savannah, Ga., and
Beaumont, Texas. Under the recommendations of the Defense Department's Mobility
Requirement Studies, new fast-scalift ships will also be homeported in those
harbors to deploy the divisions anywhere in the world in 15 days. "So the
fundamental vision of an Army stationed in the United States and capable of responding to crises and contingencies around the world affects how we're
stationed, how we train and how we deploy," says Meade.
Another base that seems destined to prosper under the Army's new deployment
imperatives is Fort Lewis, Wash. A large port in nearby Tacoma and a military
airhub at McChord Air Force Base make it an ideal strategic hub for deployments
to the Pacific Rim, including Korea. The relatively uncluttered Pacific
Northwest also offers good training opportunities. Recently, the Army
transferred one of the 7th Infantry Division's brigades to Fort Lewis from its
former home in Fort Ord, California, which is scheduled to close as part of a
previous round of base closures. The 7th Division is officially scheduled for
deactivation by Sept. 30, 1993.
The Army also recently announced that it will fold the colors of the 6th
Infantry Division in Alaska, though one of the three brigades of the deactivated
division will remain in place. That will officially bring the Army down to 12
divisions, including one airborne, one air assault, two light infantry, five
mechanized and three armored.
The fact that the Army is closing Fort Ord and expanding Fort Lewis may be a
harbinger of the service's future priorities in basing. Fort Ord, Army
officials say, suffered from the congestion of the San Francisco and Monterey areas. It was also a smaller base, without the on-post maneuver room or
infrastructure of Fort Lewis.
The largest Army base on the recently announced list of 31 major bases
recommended for closure was Fort McClellan, Ala. The base was expendable,
officials say, because it was not home to a major, division sized unit. Of the
60 installations the Army has closed in the United States, almost 90 percent
have been smaller housing units or maintenance and ammunition depots. "There
are relatively few posts with the infrastructure to sustain and deploy an entire
division, so with the exception of Fort Ord, we haven't closed any of those,"
says Army spokesman Maj. Pete Keating.
Because Army civilian workers operate most bases, maintenance depots and
laboratories, the reductions are also having a profound affect on them. In
addition to recent closings, for instance, 63 Army installations have been
realigned, affecting workers such as those at Anniston Army Depot. The Army
says the civilian workforce, which constitutes 20 percent of the Army total, is
scheduled to shrink from 366,000 in fiscal 1990 to 285,000 by fiscal 1995. "We
have a very close and dependent relationship with our civilian workers, and
these consolidations and base closures have affected them across the board,"
says Meade. "Everyone's being hit."
AIR FORCE
In these days of shrinking force structure and reorganization, Air Force
staffers whose job descriptions include words like "coordinates," "reviews" or
"oversees" would be wise to start polishing their resumes.
"Those jobs are prime candidates for elimination," concedes Gen. Billy Boles,
director of Air Force personnel, describing the service's campaign to pare
middle management and streamline in an effort to retain as much fighting
capability on the flightline as possible. "We're looking to retain those people
whose jobs are described by active verbs like" conducts" and "operates."
By the end of this fiscal year, the defense drawdown will have reduced the
Air Force's fighter force by 27 percent from its high-water mark in fiscal 1987.
During that time, the number of fighter and attack aircraft in the service's
arsenal will have dropped from 1,798 to 1,212. By 1995, the Air Force plans to
have just 1,098 aircraft, representing a force-structure decline from 36
fighter-wing equivalents to 26.5.
Those reductions will dramatically affect Air Force personnel. Between 1986
and 1997 the number of officers in the Air Force will fall by 31 percent (from 109,049 to 75,774); the number of enlisted personnel by 35 percent (from 494,666
to 320,226); and the number of civilian personnel by 26 percent (from 263,248 to
194,254). That's a larger relative reduction, officials point out, than the
highly publicized layoffs that have afflicted major U.S. corporations such as
General Motors, IBM and Sears.
"That's forced us to let people know exactly who is targeted and what the
rules of the drawdown are, or else the anxiety level reaches such a high pitch
that it leads to inefficiency," says Boles.
A Major Reorganization
The service's vision of a smaller Air Force for the future was articulated in
1991 with the strategic white paper "Global Reach, Global Power," which focused
on a largely U.S.-based Air Force ready to deploy and project power around the
world. "Global Reach" coincided with the announcement of a major
reorganization; which featured a number of consolidations.
The biggest change has been in force structure devoted to strategic
deterrence. "We've already seen considerable drawdown in the areas of nuclear
bombers and missiles, with many strategic bombers being converted to a conventional role," says Boles.
To reflect that shift in emphasis, the Air Force abolished the Strategic Air
Command (SAC), based at Offutt Air Force Base, Omaha. Many of its personnel and
assets were merged with Tactical Air Command, creating the new Air Combat
Command at TAC's old headquarters at Langley Air Force Base, Va. Some of SAC's
refuelers were merged with Military Airlift Command (MAC) into the new Air
Mobility Command, based at MAC's old headquarters at Scott Air Force Base, Ill.
Meanwhile, a unified, nuclear warfighting command called Strategic Command was
established at Offutt to assume operational control of all Air Force and Navy
nuclear weapons.
The service also combined Air Force Systems Command, its prime weapons
developer and buyer, and Air Force Logistics Command. The new hybrid, Air Force
Materiel Command, is located at Logistics Command's former home, Ohio's
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Intelligence activities also were
consolidated, resulting in an overall reduction in the number of Air Force
commands from 13 to 10.
Throughout the reorganization, the philosophy driving the changes was to
reduce unnecessary middle management whenever possible. When the service
eliminated the 19 air divisions it had scattered around the world, for instance, that took out an entire layer of management between air wings and the
numbered air forces.
Between 1991 and 1994, the air staff at the Pentagon will also be reduced by
roughly 30 percent, Boles says. "Wherever we had people in a chain of command
who were observing, coordinating or reviewing, we asked ourselves why these
people were necessary. "And anyone who didn't add direct value to our
operations, we eliminated," he says.
Air Force Basing
Of the 150,000 troops that the military is scheduled to withdraw from Europe
by 1995, roughly 58,000 will come from the Air Force. Aspin has directed the
services to plan for further reductions to a ceiling of 100,000, with the Air
Force's portion of that force thought to be around 35,000. To date, there has
been no indication of how the additional overall reduction in U.S. military
personnel of 200,000 would be distributed between the services.
The Air Force has already removed units from bases such as Hahn Air Force
Base in Germany and Alconberry Air Force Base in England and has vacated Clark
Air Force Base in the Philippines altogether. Officials say, however, that the nature of their mission and emphasis on "Global Reach" has given the Air
Force a sort of vagabond outlook that has lessened the trauma of overseas base
closures.
"I don't think we have quite the same emotional involvement in Europe that
the Army has," says Boles. "In fairness to the Army, when you talk about taking
a division out of Europe, that means 18,000 people and their equipment."
"But when we bring a wing out of Europe, you're talking 72 aircraft and maybe
a thousand maintenance and support personnel that could be airlifted back pretty
easily. And the air they have to fight in is pretty much the same over the
United States as it is over Germany," says Boles.
In terms of basing in the United States, the Air Force is presently reaping
the benefits of having started its drawdown and reorganization early. Some of
the most difficult reductions and consolidations on the way to a smaller force
have already been made. On the most recent list of 31 major bases that the
Pentagon proposed closing, for instance, more than two-thirds of the closures
would be absorbed by the Navy. Only four Air Force installations were included,
and one of them, Homestead Air Force Base in Florida, has already been nearly
shut down by Hurricane Andrew.
Reductions-in-Force
Even without a proportionate share of major base closures to worry about, the
Air Force is finding the drawdown painful. Last year, for instance, the
enlisted force was reduced by 24,000 beyond normal attrition. At the same time,
1,600 officers were forced to leave under a reduction in force.
"We seem to go through one of those every 20 years, and that's too often as
far as I'm concerned," says Boles. "These people all came in as volunteers,
both civilian and military, and they're good people. So if we have to ask them
to leave, we have to be very careful to offer them as much transition assistance
as possible. At the same time, we can't focus all our attention on those people
we're asking to leave, because we still have nearly 600,000 people who are
staying."
The most important thing the Air Force can do to avoid future disruptions,
says Boles, is avoid RIFs altogether. When the service anticipated having to
RIF 8,300 civilian employees at Air Force Materiel Command, for instance, it
worked with DoD and Congress to come up with a sufficiently attractive incentive
package to entice employees to leave voluntarily. Two weeks after the incentive
packages were offered, 6,700 employees had applied for them. Because federal rules governing RIFs allow those affected to displace less
senior employees, the Air Force also estimates that for every RIF, four to five
other employees are bumped. "So if the numbers of people accepting our
incentive package stopped today, that's still almost 7,000 people we didn't have
to RIF, and approximately 28,000 who didn't have to change jobs. That's saved
us a lot of inefficiency," says Boles.
The Air Force also plans to offer selected uniformed personnel the chance to
retire after 15 years, rather than 20, in 1994 and '95. The challenge, says
Boles, is having to take such measures amidst talk of a pay freeze, and convince
those who stay that they're still valued parts of a dynamic organization.
"If all the troops on the flightline hear is that the military is too big and
needs to be cut more, and we don't need them anymore, then they begin to feel
like the whipping boys for the nation," says Boles.
NAVY
Two years ago, during the Persian Gulf War, the Navy was making headlines
with its Tomahawk missile strikes, amphibious assault ships lurking off the
Kuwaiti coast and successful dogfights with Iraqi aircraft. These days, news from the Navy is more apt to concern sexual discrimination
charges, accidents at sea or criminal acts resulting from homophobia. The dark
cloud of the 1991 Tailhook scandal still looms over the Navy and may yet cost
the careers of several high-ranking officers. And the service is deeply divided
over the possibility of lifting the ban on homosexuals.
As if that weren't enough, the budget crunch and diminishing Cold War threats
are making it harder to justify maintaining large force levels.
In response, Navy leaders have undertaken radical reforms to deal with
dramatic budget contraints and the changing roles and missions of the U.S.
military. So far, those reforms have included reorganizing the Navy command
hierarchy and releasing a strategic white paper titled "From the Sea," which
outlines the service's changing roles and missions for the next decade and
assess the requirements necessary to execute those missions.
In the report Aspin forwarded to the Defense Base Closure and Realignment
Commission in March, the Navy takes the hardest hit. Of the 31 major bases
recommended for closure and 12 for realignment, 26 are Navy and 2 are Marine
Corps. Military and civilian personnel are being offered voluntary exit incentives
to help ease the reduction of manpower. The Navy already is midway through a
five-year drawdown of active-duty personnel from 582,854 in 1990 to 509,000 in
1995. The Bush administration had planned to continue reducing personnel to
501,200 by 1997 in getting to its "Base Force" of 435 ships. Personnel planners
are preparing to reduce military personnel below what was approved by the Bush
Administration without forcing out career sailors -- those with six to 20 years
of active duty service.
Hard Choices
These various steps took on added significance in February when Aspin ordered
an additional $ 3 billion in cuts from the Navy's $ 82 billion budget, with only
$ 300 million to come from the Marine Corps. The request was part of an overall
$ 11 billion defense cut for fiscal 1994.
In response to Aspin's order, Adm. Frank Kelso II, chief of naval operations
and acting Navy secretary, on Feb. 8 forwarded a fiscal 1994 budget submission
that recommended retiring many older ships and aircraft and releasing 40,800
sailors -- 21,000 more than previously planned. To do so, the Navy would spend
an additional $ 209 million on voluntary exit bonuses and would resort to selective use of the congressionally approved 15 year retirement option for
obtaining further reductions.
President Clinton's proposed 1994 defense budget, released March 27, calls
for accelerating Navy and Marine Corps manpower reductions beyond what the Bush
Administration had proposed. The new budget would reduce active-duty Navy
personnel by 45,600, for a year-end total of 400,800. Reserves would be trimmed
by 20,275, to 113,400.
The Marine Corps, meanwhile, would be reduced by 8,000 to 174,100. That's a
cut of 2,000 more than the Bush Administration had planned to make. Marine
Corps reserves would lose 5,400, bringing their end-strength to 36,900.
"Losing ships hurts, but if we lose the confidence and motivation of Navy
people, we will lose everything," says Vice Adm. Ronald J. Zlatoper, chief of
naval personnel. "The pace is more important than the final numbers of people
on active duty, as far as our manpower-reduction strategy is concerned. Given
enough time, we can get down to practically any number without forcing
mid-career sailors out of the Navy."
On the civilian side, the plan recommended thousands of layoffs, with many
losing their jobs as early as May 1. Nearly 10,000 Navy shipyard workers could be cut, says one Pentagon source. Another 2,000 civilian cuts are
expected at Naval Sea and Air Systems Commands. The Pentagon is accomplishing
some of its civilian reduction by offering voluntary incentive payments of up to
$ 25,000 for those who qualify.
"These efforts were not easy. We are giving up real military capability and
significantly contracting our organic industrial and support base," Kelso wrote
in a memo accompanying the budget proposal. "In the case of civilians, some can
only be achieved by reductions in force, a number of which will have to be set
in motion by May 1 of this year to generate savings."
Long-Term Planning
The Navy's budget proposal, leaked to the press in February, revealed the
first phase of a closely guarded six-year plan to reduce the force to 320 ships
by 1999. The plan calls for retaining 12 aircraft carriers, the heart and soul
of the service's sea-based power projection, and aims well below Aspin's
previous proposal to reduce the Navy to 340 ships by 1997.
Navy officials would not confirm these figures, saying only that they are
among many such force planning, scenarios on the table. Both the Navy's 1994 budget proposal and its long-term plans are the result
of many internal -- and reportedly heated -- discussions on how to trim the
force over the next several years. Many of these proposals still are being
debated at various levels in the Pentagon, officials say.
The evolution started last summer when Navy leaders bodly reorganized their
Pentagon command structure, cutting the number of flag officers by 20 percent
(34 positions), in the process.
The streamlined command structure provided the means for conducting a
six-month-long assessment of the Navy's assets and requirements, says Vice Adm.
William Owens, who as deputy chief of naval operations for resources, warfare
requirements and assessments is the service's top budget officer. Owens says
the reorganization, the release of "From the Sea" and the assessment process
were needed to help guide the Navy into the future.
Ownes, a submariner and former Sixth Fleet commander, served for two years as
senior military assistant to former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney before
becoming one of the Navy's top uniformed budget officers. In the latter role,
he coordinated the assessment process, which involved participation by 25
admirals and, for the first time, input from the Atlantic, Pacific and European
fleets' four-star commanders. The fleets were given direct access to the Pentagon via a liaison office established as part of the reorganization.
Owens says the assessment process produced a wide range of budget options for
fiscal 1994 and beyond. Kelso used those options to compile the final 1994
budget proposal. The admirals, meanwhile, are busy studying options for the
years 1995-99 for presentation to Kelso in June.
In addition to speeding up the reduction of active-duty personnel, the
Clinton plan for the Navy in 1994 includes:
- Reducing the number of ships from 443 to 413 by cutting a net 30 combatant
ships, including two attack submarines, six cruisers and eight reserve frigates.
- The early decommissioning of two oil-fueled carriers, the Saratoga and the
Forrestal, now undergoing overhaul in Philadelphia, to accommodate a
mixed-gender crew for use in training. Active-duty carriers would be detailed
for periodic use in training.
- Retiring numerous aircraft squadrons, including the first steps of a plan to
phase out by 1999 the Navy's entire fleet of A-6 bombers. The proposal cuts two
A-6 squadrons, two F-14 Tomcat squadrons and sets aside design money to upgrade
210 F-14s over five years, turning them into temporary fighter/bombers until a next-generation bomber is developed.
- Retaining development funds for several programs, including two tactical
aircraft, the AFX stealth bomber and the F/A-19 E/F, and the Marine Corps V-22
Osprey tilt-rotor troop delivery aircraft.
- Cutting administrative and civilian positions in proportion to reductions in
maintenance and construction projects.
Setting Priorities
The Navy's budget proposal isn't all downsizing. In some areas such as
research and expeditionary warfare, spending is actually set to increase. In
his memo to Aspin, Kelso defends spending money to develop items the Navy deems
essential for its new regional and coastal battle strategy.
For instance, the proposal spares advance funding of a ninth Nimitz-class
aircraft carrier. Funding also would be provided to remanufacture four Marine
Corps AV-8B Harrier jets for night capability. A sixth WASP class amphibious assault ship would be purchased, along with
development funds for a next-generation amphibious ship, the LX, to come on line
in 1996.
The budget sets aside money to improve the command, control and
intelligence for Marine Corps amphibious vessels to act as control centers in
joint operations. Funds also are appropriated to improve shipboard Aegis radar
systems for theater missile defense -- the type used to intercept Iraqi Seuds.
Emphasis also is given to standoff missiles such as the Tomahawk cruise missile,
shallow water anti-submarine warfare, mine countermeasure technology and
surveillance.
The Navy's 1993 base closure recommendations being formulated at the same
time as the budget proposal were not considered in the assessment process.
Owens says, since the closure list requires a long approval process.
James L. George, a naval affairs analyst with the U.S. Institute of Peace, is
not optimistic that the Navy's base-closing plans will survive congressional
scrutiny. "The Navy may be counting on large savings from base closures, but it
won't be easy because of the politics congressmen will play to keep them open.
Unfortunately, the Navy will have to cut more ships to keep those bases open.
It's not fair, but that's politics."
THE MANPOWER SLIDE
(end strength in thousands)
FY 1992 FY 1993 FY 1994
Active Military
Army 611 575 540
Navy 542 526 481
Air Force 470 445 426
Marine Corps 185 182 174
Total Active 1,108 1,728 1,621
Selected Reserves 1,114 1,080 1,020
Civilians 1,006 964 919
Source: DoD release, March 27, 1993










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