Tailored to Fit

Defense Secretary Charles Wilson won his battle in Congress to cut $5 billion out of the Air Force budget for 1954, but in so doing he freely promised that the cut would not damage the combat effectiveness of the Air Force. Last week, attempting dutifully to tailor its cuts to fit the budget, the Air Force gave a fateful answer to Charlie Wilson's promise.

The first cut came, quite naturally, in personnel. Current strength of the Air Force is 980,000, and it was building to a planned strength of 1,061,000 next year. Wilson's budget imposed a ceiling of 960,000. To get under the ceiling, the Air Force is dropping 15,000 reserve officers from active duty during the coming year. Among those to go will be nearly 2,200 pilots, some of whom have checked out in the U.S.A.F.'s backbone jet bomber, the B-47. Firing experienced personnel will have a direct effect on Air Force combat-readiness, but the cuts must be made to make room for this year's crop of Air R.O.T.C. graduates, 9,600 strong.

Under the Wilson budget the Air Force also plans to:

P: Scrap plans for a buildup to 133 combat wings by next July and substitute a goal of only no wings. Though Air Force brass would like to see most of this cut come out of the 28 tactical wings which the U.S. has promised to NATO, Air Secretary Harold Talbott passed the word that the U.S. NATO commitment must stand unchanged. The alternative: a major reduction in the planned size of the Strategic Air Command and U.S. air-defense forces.

P: Eliminate some 64 supporting air units, e.g., transport, and 89 ground logistical units from the buildup program.

P: Cut training of new pilots from 12,500 a year to 7,200.

P: Cut authorized flying time 20%, a grievous blow to the precision training of combat crews.

P: Abandon construction of 22 combat air bases and 32 supporting installations (radar, supply, training, etc.) which would have been completed at the end of the fiscal year, leaving a total of 199 combat bases, 519 supporting installations.

P: Cancel orders for 145 B-47s,420 T36 trainers and 72 assault transports.

One of the most critical elements in the buildup of U.S. air power still hangs in the balance. Holding that there is no need to reorder production-model aircraft more than 21 months in advance, Wilson will wait until the next fiscal year (beginning July 1954) to decide whether the Air Force will go through with plans to buy 1,500 more combat planes, most of them supersonic fighters. But the decision already seems clear: to pay for these planes, the Air Force will need $1.5 billion more than it got in this year's budget; already Budget Director Joseph Dodge has decreed that overall defense appropriations must be cut another $5 billion in fiscal 1953-

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