The New Pentagon Team

The dynastic rivalries among the Army, Navy and Air Force after World War II prompted President Truman to unify the services under a Secretary of Defense. Old Soldier Eisenhower stripped the individual service secretaries of their power to deploy troops. Later, the exigent Robert McNamara took command of all departmental decisions by unifying military-budgetary decisions through the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Last week Richard Nixon's Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, introduced his three service secretaries; all fit the pat tern of administrator now prescribed for the job.

Laird reappointed Stanley R. Resor, 51, who has been Secretary of the Army since 1965, in order to provide experience and continuity in the upper echelons of Defense. A suave New York lawyer, polished at Groton and Yale, he is the son of the late Stanley B. Resor, the famed advertising man who headed J. Walter Thompson from 1916 to 1961. He came out of World War II a major with silver and bronze stars won in the Battle of the Bulge. A Republican, he has influential friends in both parties. Negotiator Cyrus Vance was his roommate at Yale Law School, and he is extremely close to Nixon Adviser William Scranton. While he displays the McNamara traits of super-efficiency and clipped speech, Resor is known as an artful pacifier of both generals and politicians.

Slim Chance. By being named Secretary of the Navy, John H. Chafee has escaped temporary political limbo. Last November, he failed to win a fourth term as Governor of overwhelmingly Democratic Rhode Island, after pro posing a state income tax. At that time, his chances of getting a job in the Nixon Administration seemed slim indeed. He had backed George Romney's abortive bid for the presidential nomination. He then switched to Nelson Rockefeller, and finally, at the Miami Beach convention, openly opposed the nomination of Spiro Agnew for Vice President.

Nevertheless, his excellent administrative record placed him high on the appointment list. He has degrees from Yale and Harvard Law, and Navymen will find he retains the ruggedness demonstrated during his days in the Marine Corps, when he fought at Guadalcanal and Okinawa. Chafee, 46, chose the Navy job because he does not have to "commit himself for life," indicating that he is likely to run for office again in Rhode Island. His experience at Defense will not hurt. Chafee's tiny state has three major Navy installations, which annually pour some $174 million in payrolls into its economy.

Unlike the Navy and Army bosses, the Air Force Secretary should ideally be a specialist, firmly grounded in the intricacies of engineering technology. In NASA's former Deputy Administrator Robert C. Seamans Jr., Laird has a skilled executive with firsthand knowledge of the multi-billion-dollar Air Force projects that range from the newest supersonic planes to the manned orbiting laboratory. Before leaving NASA a year ago and returning to a teaching position at M.I.T., he was responsible for everything from budget planning to maintenance of the worldwide system of tracking stations.

One of his last jobs was to determine what caused the tragic Apollo fire in January of 1967. Seamans, 50, earned his Sc.D. at M.I.T. in aeronautical engineering, and for a time was chief engineer of RCA's electronics and controls division. Over the years, his own research projects have included a gunsight for guided missiles and the automatic controls systems for high-speed airplanes. A man who values his leisure and loves New England, he was not eager to go back to Washington's pressures. But Seamans has long been a staunch advocate of aeronautics and space research as a fundamental basis of national power. As Secretary of the Air Force, Seamans will have the chance to push his ideas within the military establishment.

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