Postwar Plans Department

Washington wrangled in hearing rooms and cloakrooms over the blueprint of the nation's postwar military structure. Two basic details were at issue: i) the proposed merger of the services (which the Navy determinedly fought) and an independent air force (see below); 2) universal military training, which had set educators, religious leaders, legislators and plain citizens at loggerheads with the military and each other. Congressional opponents of the training bill tried to kill it last week in committee and will try again. There is at least a 50-50 chance they will finally succeed. Present prospects of the service merger: likely.

While Washington argued over these two issues, Army & Navy leaders went ahead with plans for their hoped-for postwar establishments, the Navy on the supposition that the merger would be defeated, the Army on the premise that universal military training would be adopted.

On Sea. Navy's plans are for 6,084 combatant and auxiliary vessels (including 18 battleships, 27 large carriers, etc., etc.), plus 558,000 men and officers, 12,000 aircraft--to which the House has already given its unanimous approval. Estimated cost: more than $3 1/2billion aear.

On Land. Army's plan, not yet presented to Congress, calls for an "overall balanced force" of 4,500,000 men. Components: 500,000 Regular Army, at least 425,000 in the reorganized National Guard, the balance in the active "Organized Reserve Corps." The universal-training system, which would keep men in the active status for "a period of years" after their one year in camps, would be the feeder for the Reserve Corps. Priority in National Guard organization would be given to development of air units. One source of reserve-officer material would be R.O.T.C. courses (five hours a week for two years) which would pay $200 annual allowances to students. Estimated cost of the Army's program, which includes an air force: more than $4 billion.

In the Air. For a separate air force, Lieut. General James Doolittle suggested a plan last week (see below). He gave no estimate of its cost, but no one doubted that it would be in the billions, too.

In the Red? Would the nation stand the burden, in the first years of peace, of such staggering expenditures? Apparently military and naval men thought it would. In the years before the U.S. started preparing for World War II, the nation groaningly coughed up only some $650 million annually for national defense, lived to regret its penny-pinching. In the four fiscal years of 1941-44, the nation had to appropriate a total of more than $270 billion to fight its biggest war.

Today the Army and Navy are sure that the nation will never go back to starving its armed services. But there is a limit to peacetime arming. What is it? The services, each after its own appropriations, would have to wait for the answer until the structure of national defense was blueprinted.

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