Birthing a Behemoth

The biggest, most crucial, yet least predictable segment of the budget is defense. And though the Administration is striving mightily to keep it to a minimum, the Pentagon last week was in labor with a behemoth.

The defense budget's most elusive variable is the war in Viet Nam. The conflict is now costing around $2 billion a month, up 100% in the past year. One item alone, the amount of aerial ordnance unleashed over North and South Viet Nam, is already equal to the World War II level, and has surpassed that of Korea. The U.S. has lost 560 planes to date (427 over the north, 133 over the south), more than its worldwide losses in wartime 1942. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recently ordered 280 new fighters at a cost of $700 million, and is pressing ahead with a program that will have increased U.S. troop-and-supply airlift capability by 1,000% between 1961 and 1971. The military buildup announced by the President 16 months ago has boosted armed-forces strength by a net of more than half a million men (present total: 3,228,377), affecting every aspect of logistics.

Thus it seemed all but certain that the Administration would:

-- Request a supplemental appropriation to the 1966-67 defense budget--originally estimated at $60.5 billion--of from $10 billion to $15 billion, bringing total defense expenditures in the current fiscal year to possibly $75.5 billion, biggest since the record $79.9 billion spent in 1945, last year of World War II.

-- Recommend an initial defense outlay for fiscal 1968 that, from all present indications, can only exceed the current level.

-- Anticipate a deployment of 500,000 men in Viet Nam by the end of 1967 --despite the prediction of many experts that the level will in fact come closer to 750,000.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.