Half Speed Ahead

The U.S. is still bustling with civilian prosperity. More than a year after the Korean war began, six months after the President proclaimed a national emergency, there is no trace of stern austerity, though the nation is both fighting a big war and mobilizing against the threat of a bigger one. Stores still bulge with everything from aluminum ski poles at $7.95 a pair to metal-hulled cabin cruisers at $5,500 each. Most corporate profits are at record-breaking levels or close to it. So are prices--and so too are wages. Instead of becoming a garrison state, the U.S. could tell itself--for the moment, at least --that it had never had it so good.

How Are We Doing? The war mobilizers promised to arm the U.S. without disrupting its economy. It is evident as of mid-July that they have not disrupted the economy. But how well have they armed the U.S.?

Last week Charles E. Wilson, who had retired from his $275,000-a-year job as president of General Electric to become U.S. mobilization boss, made his second report to the nation. It had been a "year of achievement," he said. But it was not good enough: the mobilization program, he candidly admitted, is a full 20% behind schedule. Out of 64 key military items, 17 were behind schedule in the first three months of 1951. Items:

AIRCRAFT: Deliveries are about on schedule or slightly ahead, and two-thirds higher than they were a year ago. But production then was only about 215 planes a month, is only about 350 today. The mobilization-plan goal: 12,000 to 13,000 planes a year. (World War II peak: 100,-ooo a year.) Employment in the aircraft industry has jumped from 185,000 to more than 300,000.

TANKS: Deliveries are four times greater than before the Korean war--but tank production before then was infinitesimal. Another fourfold increase is expected in the next year. On light tanks, the news is good: new models rolled off production lines at the Cadillac plant in Cleveland in March, three months ahead of schedule. New heavy tanks are due off production lines this month or next.

SMALL WEAPONS: Production of the new 3.5-in. bazooka is so high that cutbacks have been ordered. Tied in with the airborne's effort to lighten all equipment, several new items have been developed. Among them: a new entrenching tool, four pounds lighter than the old; an aluminum-nylon helmet, 8% lighter; new tropical combat boots, 3/4 Ib. lighter. Also due to be lightened: rifles, pistols, machine guns and ammunition.

ATOMIC WEAPONS: Still supersecret, but Wilson reported "striking advances." Said he: "Atomic bombs considerably improved over those used in World War II are being produced on an industrial basis."

These figures, most of them vague because of security reasons, do not tell the whole story. U.S. industry was preparing to prove again that it is, as Viscount Grey once remarked to Winston Churchill, like "a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can generate." Among the fires now being lighted:

P:Steel mills are already halfway to their goal of producing an additional 18 million tons a year (greater than Britain's entire annual output) on top of the 100 million tons they were turning out before Korea.

P:Aluminum mills have been given a goal of 1,500,000 tons a year, roughly twice the capacity before the Korean war.

P: The oil industry has been asked to drill 43,000 new wells this year and to expand refining capacity by a million barrels a day. It can do so if it gets the tubular steel.

P:Reserve plants, built by the U.S. during World War II, are being swiftly put back into operation. Before Korea, there were 440 of these plants, worth $7.5 billion, in mothballs or on standby status. By May, more than half of them (344) were either back in production or about to be. Included are 15 out of 17 aluminum plants, all of the ferro-alloy plants, all but eight of 54 gun and ammunition plants, and 60 out of 77 shipyards.

What's the Trouble? The biggest defense-production bottleneck is a shortage of electronic equipment. Major items, from planes to heavy artillery, have been set back and are still being set back because of a short supply of such electronic gear as bomb sights, zero landing systems and gun-laying equipment for airplanes, tanks, ships and artillery. Defense officials are constantly being asked: Why are so many television sets being made, and why all the fiddling with color television if electronic supplies and technicians are needed? The answer, which satisfies few hearers, is that a factory making television sets is not necessarily equipped to make highly complex electronic gear. Charles Wilson, an electronics expert himself, has now set up a board to speed electronics production.

There is also a serious shortage in alloy metals used in jet and other high-temperature engines. All the world's resources of such scarce alloys as tungsten and nickel will not fill U.S. needs when production hits its peak. Defense officials are pushing a search for substitutes. So far, little luck.

Labor shortages in general are not a problem, but there is a crying need for specialists: engineers, machinists, tool & die makers, molders and pattern makers, etc. The engineering shortage is the most acute. Last year U.S. colleges and universities turned out 52,000 engineers. This year 38,000 will be graduated. The 1952 forecast: 26,000.

Deeper than the shortages of men and materials are the vexing problems of inadequate planning and inefficient administration. This is not altogether bluff Charlie Wilson's fault. At the outset, the President had decided that, as far as possible, production chores would be carried out by old-line Government departments. For most of the year, Wilson has been riding herd on dozens of bureaus and agencies which were not always going in the same direction. But when he reported to Washington, he was given almost unlimited powers. He has not always used them in the slam-bang way that was expected, particularly in shaking up the poky procurement methods of the Pentagon. A year after the Korean war, there are still no detailed estimates of the amount of war materials needed or a schedule for delivery of these materials.

Charlie Wilson, optimistic by nature, professes not to be disturbed because the defense program is now behind schedule. The lack of a few tanks or planes a month now, he says, out of his faith in the U.S. production machine, can be made up by a single day's production later on. Industrialists agree--if the U.S.S.R. allows the U.S. the "later on."

What's the Goal? In pre-Korean days, the public was told what wonderful blueprints for M-day were all drawn in Washington; the U.S. would not be caught napping if another war came. Phantom orders were already written; simple telegrams to machine-tool manufacturers would set off $900 million in orders.

The war for which these neat blueprints were prepared did not come. At the outset of the Korean "police action," presidential aides had a stock answer to any suggestion that the U.S. would have to mobilize: "After all, we are only fighting the North Koreans." Not until the Chinese Communists entered the war in November did the Administration declare a national emergency. General Marshall and his Pentagon planners went to work to design a new mobilization plan, more modest than the old M-day plan. They had congressional authority to mobilize as fast and far as they wanted, but Defense Secretary Marshall, who has said he won his Ph.D. in Mobilization in World War II, put on a cautious brake. His decision: a gradual three-year arms buildup, costing about $130 billion. Goal: to provide weapons & equipment for a U.S. armed force of 3,500,000 men, while also supplying allies abroad.

Basically, the plan called for building up production lines and running them full speed from the time they began operating until mid-1953. At that point, by the Marshall timetable (which assumes no general war until then), production will be allowed to taper off to a rate of perhaps $25 billion to $30 billion a year as a semipermanent part of the U.S. economy. Congress has already appropriated $49 billion for fiscal 1951, of which $41 billion will be spent for military procurement (see chart), and the President has submitted a 1952 budget of $60.7 billion.

How Good Is the Goal? Mid-1953 has become, as M-day once was, one of those magic-sounding dates which Administration speakers like to roll off. Typical was Mobilizer Wilson's crack in April: "If we can stall off a decision by Stalin until after that time, he isn't going to attack in 1953, because he'll be a dead duck if he strikes then--and he knows it."

The less glamorous fact is that even in 1953, the U.S. will not be ready to fight a major war. The present mobilization plan has not pushed production throttles ahead to full speed; they have been set at roughly half speed. Under present mobilization, the U.S. would never reach World War II strength. Even if it went all-out, slammed on full controls and decided to produce arms to full capacity, there is no assurance that it could reach that level by the end

of 1953-The Administration has offered all sorts of explanations for its go-slow mobilization. Following the doctrine laid down by George Marshall, planners base their compromise on the unpredictable reality of a cold war, which might hot up at any moment, or simmer for ten years. They argue first that they do not want to disrupt the civilian economy (the military used to state its needs bluntly, leave to somebody else the onus of ruling that the nation couldn't afford it). George Marshall likes to say that the U.S. cannot mobilize too fast, or it will be "all dressed up with no place to go." Another pet Pentagon phrase capsules a planner's fear: that once production is really turned on, "the damned stuff will be running out of our ears." Even more basic to military men is the fear of overproducing the obsolete: if the U.S. has all the planes it needs to fight in 1953, but does not get into war until 1958, it will need just about an entire new air force. If the planners' optimism is justified, and the U.S. is not in World War III by 1953; the nation's taxpayers will be grateful for such economy; if the planners are wrong, the U.S. will be disastrously half-ready. It is a massive gamble, which only a few men like Elder Statesman Bernard Baruch boldly criticize: he, almost alone, would go all-out on production now; the rest mutter and have misgivings, but go along.

Whether or not the gamble works, the U.S. cannot afford to be 20% behind in half-speed mobilization.

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