Up From a Shoestring

If there is to be an even bigger military budget, as the President has indicated, the Air Force is sure to get the biggest share. It is already getting set to present the Joint Chiefs with a formal demand for 161 groups. And it already has strong congressional support, led by Massachusetts' Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (TIME, July 23).

To achieve the force that it regards as minimum for the nation, the Air Force must first break the "balanced forces" concept which rigidly rules the J.C.S. Balanced forces is a cozy compromise of unification, whereby the three services agree to split what money there is into equal portions. If equal shares happen to make sense in any one year, that is only a happy accident; its merit is peace among the services, not efficiency in arming against a war. Now, says the Air Force, the time has come to do away with it.

To the Joint Chiefs, the airmen are prepared to present a simple argument: the current "shoestring" Air Force of 87 groups (present goal: 95 groups), half of them obsolete planes, is not nearly strong enough to cope with Soviet air power. The Navy is already the world's biggest and best. The Army, with 27 divisions under arms and three more on the way, has all it can handle at the moment. Of the three services, the Air Force is the weakest. To increase it to 161 modern groups (138 combat groups plus 23 troop carrier and transport wings) within three years will cost a staggering sum, between $90 and $100 billion.

The Air Force demand for such a huge buildup is apt to touch off the loudest howl the Pentagon has heard since the row over the B-36--and principally from the same source: the Navy. But if Air Force Chief Hoyt Vandenberg fails to convince his colleagues in the J.C.S., the Air Force is ready to take it up to Defense Secretary Marshall. There the Air Force expects to win.

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