Taylor Returns to the Wars

...Burke promptly answered by saying that his experience had convinced him of the direct opposite...

...This is perhaps overoptimistic...

...For its part, the Navy has remained dead set against any change in the existing JCS system...

...A commander crossbucked by two deputies is hardly apt to be of more serene mind and unfaltering judgment than a Chairman at odds with three committee members...

...power would begin, he estimated, by mid-1961...

...The Air Force, after all, could hardly be expected to collaborate in a reform which might avail Taylor the opportunity to push his programs...

...Retired), is military analyst of the Detroit News...

...That, it seems to me, is a safe enough prophecy...

...Just before Taylor's appointment, White wrote a column in which he said that his experience had convinced him of the need for changing to the Single Chief system...

...The Army wants sufficient air power to mount and guard its own operations, arguing that it cannot count on the Air Force...

...But Taylor has lived with these problems, and, as Socrates said, there are things about a house which the dweller understands better than an architect...

...It sees the dominant mission of the Strategic Air Command — massive retaliation — carrying the whole service further away from the close-knit partnership with the infantry-artillery team which blesses Marine Corps operations...

...Each member would perform the function of Chairman by monthly rotation...

...This is so because the Chairman, in addition to the prestige of his office, also has the ear of both the Secretary of Defense and the President...

...military policy and organization ever written by a man later returned to service, could expect to be asked some unpleasant questions...

...He added: "The Army views the Navy carrier program as unjustifiably large...

...True, some marginal improvements which Taylor advocated have been effected by the Kennedy Administration...

...His most recent book is Night Drop...

...Indeed, only Taylor's ideas for "improved planning and training for limited war" may be counted as partially accepted...

...Toward the end of The Uncertain Trumpet, Taylor writes: "All these actions will require sacrifice on the part of every one of us...

...He added, however, that the situation had changed since the publication of The Uncertain Trumpet...

...A poll would probably show that a minority of the General Staff would go along with the reform, and that this sentiment has not strengthened markedly since the publication of The Uncertain Trumpet...

...the Air Force to life at home and operations conducted intermittently against longrange strategic targets...

...Short of a nuclear war, this latter comment cannot be voided by the logic of events...

...The Supreme Military Council would have no permanent Chairman...

...Along with the JCS there would be other casualties, including McNamara's form of military censorship...

...While there are other details to Taylor's plan, these are the main propositions...

...Thus, the tendency of the JCS to deadlock over rival service interests and come up with split papers is not necessarily a block to progress...

...What of the views of other top military commanders...

...Such rallying cries have rung through the ages, and seldom wholly in vain...

...not even Allen Dulles knows for certain...

...Elsewhere, he contends that the Air Force has been too dilatory about retiring the manned bomber and changing over to ICBMS...

...military operation in South Vietnam was expanded all training has taken on an anti-guerrilla tinge...

...Either the members would stop fighting among themselves for their own individual preserves, or the JCS would go out like a light...

...In fact, his difference in this matter with the Air Force's General Curtis LeMay looms so large that any similarity of views between Taylor and the Air Force about abolishing the JCS seems trivial...

...Among other things, the taxpayer will have to brace himself for a military budget of $55 billion annually for the next five years, and the Defense Department must prepare for a "thorough housecleaning to throw out many outmoded concepts, illusions, shibboleths and fallacies...

...His position on the JCS is therefore not only independent...

...Taylor would drastically reduce the role of the Air Force, and have the Army fill up the vacancy: "The Army should be adapted primarily to life and operations on an overseas land mass...

...In the Pentagon, the cost of not having the closest possible approach to ideal organization runs high enough during peacetime...

...General Thomas D. White of the Air Force and Admiral Arleigh A. Burke were Taylor's colleagues on the JCS...

...The Committee's inquiry, naturally enough, revolved around the ideas in the General's book...

...Taylor points out that the JCS is not a decision-making body but an advisory staff with the mission of supplying firm military guidance to its civilian superiors—with whom action ultimately rests...

...He has thrown down the gauntlet to the Air Force, the service with the firmest hold on the affections of Congress and the greatest ability to rally aggressive influence from the business community...

...Taylor also observes that the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff has a "predominant position, overshadowing the chiefs singly or in combination...

...Thanks to the candor of The Uncertain Trumpet, however, it is far more likely that the new Chairman's path will prove thornier than that of any of his predecessors...

...Here the objective is to insure a neutral view...

...No such program was adopted in 1960, and none is being contemplated now by the Kennedy Administration...

...The anti-guerrilla Special Forces have been doubled in size—from 2,500 to 5,000—and ever since the U.S...

...Taylor argued that the Army must have its own organic aviation for two reasons: 1) To carry troops where needed in a combat zone, and 2) to give them fire support from above...

...He contends that it is insensibly favored by the lion's share of the military budget, that it spends this money prodigally and that it is more intent on maintaining a vast establishment than on developing realistic programs consistent with the national interest...

...Taylor refers to it as the "satisfied customer" who wants the status quo and is opposed to any change in the present missions of the service...

...As the argument of The Uncertain Trumpet develops, it becomes clear that the reform General Taylor would work in the top command structure is only a means to an end: His real target is the Air Force...

...The civilians in control of military policy may—and sometimes do—reject a unanimous recommendation of the JCS, or, when convinced of its Tightness, approve a minority recommendation...

...The new Defense Chief would preside over the present Joint Staff [the Indians who now work for the JCS], assisted by two deputy chiefs of staff of the military services other than his own...

...Nor has any better fate met Taylor's suggestion that the IRBM be taken from the Air Force (which had grabbed it) and returned to the Army (which had developed it and wished to keep it a mobile weapon...

...Thus, as an item of official, press and public concern, the missile gap died more than a year ago...

...But in the two years since they were written even those Congressmen whose hearts bled over the peril arising from the missile gap have gone silent...

...And there the issue dangles...

...were put to the test of all-out war, the existing JCS "committee system" would collapse from the first shock wave...

...To partly offset the Soviet Union's "preponderant missile strength,' Taylor argued for a $6 billion crash program to make the NikeZeus anti-ballistic missile operational by 1961...

...By his own arguments, these conditions should give him the right-of-way for establishing a Single Chief of Staff over all services without the need for a personal "crusade...

...In addition, his prestige across the nation is enormous, and he is popular with the press...

...the most biting and specific criticism of U.S...

...and the theory that larger standing forces, at the expense of reserves, build national safety...

...Thus, after two years of reflection, we have another split paper...

...While reading The Uncertain Trumpet we learn that Taylor wrote it because he was genuinely alarmed about the United States' prospects for surviving the current decade...

...He believed not only that force levels were too low, but that the high command apparatus was so clumsy as to be unworkable and that the distribution of funds to the different services was both wasteful and little related to the nation's main security needs...

...The first of these points is no longer in the domain of theory...

...In the pocket-size war in Southeast Asia, Army-owned planes now shuttle troops, though the lift is not yet adequate for larger operations...

...Convinced of their urgency, people respond by giving their lives and their treasure...

...I have been slow to accept the reality of the so-called Missile Gap," Taylor wrote...

...According to Taylor's concept, the members of the Supreme Council would be taken off the rolls of their own services and would be of an age where they could not anticipate further promotion...

...For national safety, he argued, the aim should be one million men in the Army and approximately triple that in the combined services...

...Nevertheless, the book is only two years old...

...position is that in ICBMS this country is equal or superior to the USSR...

...S. L. A. Marshall, Brigadier General, U.S.A...

...He would be the senior military officer of the United States Government reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense and to the President...

...the national system of clearing individuals for positions of trust...

...Too little time has passed, and too little change has been wrought either in the Pentagon or in the balance of forces afield to stale the book's major arguments...

...Taylor maintains that if the U.S...

...Did he still believe in them?, the Senators asked...

...NEW JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN SEEMS HEADED FOR ROUGH BATTLES Taylor Returns to the Wars By S. L. A. Marshall When General Maxwell D. Taylor came before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month for approval of his appointment as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Jcs), he must have been aware that he was in for a difficult session...

...During Taylor's four years as Army Chief of Staff, for instance, the Chairman participated in 21 split papers and the Secretary of Defense accepted his view in 18 cases...

...Taylor replied that he would not "crusade" for the highly publicized Single Chief of Staff system he had advocated, but would not withdraw anything he had written...

...To be sure, no one high up in the Kennedy Administration would fight to save the JCS...

...The Air Force would have as its motive force—no longer the airman's wild blue yonder—but the prevention of general atomic war...

...The lone Army view, on the other hand, was supported only once...

...This indictment is the cardinal theme of Taylor's criticism: His real quarrel with the loint Chiefs of Staff is that it has proved powerless to prevent this imbalance...

...The Supreme Military Council, consisting of three four-star officers of the Army, Navy and Air Force, would be advisory to the Secretary, the President and the Congress...

...With extraordinary candor, the General had earlier made known his critical views of this country's military position...

...Of course, Taylor will head the JCS as a soldier, but his earlier retirement has considerably impaired his lines to the Army...

...THIS CONFRONTATION between the services, rather than a negative attitude on the part of civilian authorities, is what may be expected to frustrate the grand design Taylor outlined in The Uncertain Trumpet...

...These statistics in themselves may help explain why Taylor wrote out of frustration...

...The Regular Army has been enlarged to 16 divisions and a strength level of about 925,000 men—but this was merely a "temporary goal" in Taylor's view...

...if the emotional ties of a lifetime could be that readily dissolved, retired generals and admirals would stop writing memoirs critical of every service save their own...

...Right or wrong, the current official U.S...

...But the new Chairman of the JCS would go far beyond this, and here he speaks for most Army men...

...I have concluded that there is indeed such a gap...

...But now it is he who is the President's choice, he on whom the Secretary of Defense must look with favor...

...Nearly everything that troubled him in 1960, therefore, should trouble him still...

...As to the second point, the Army still has no air fighter command, and in view of Taylor's overall assessment of the problem, the Air Force is unlikely to yield that mission short of a fight to the finish...

...it is more isolated from service connections than that of any Chairman since General Eisenhower...

...The author of The Uncertain Trumpet (Harper, 1960...

...That leaves only the Army, which has never taken an official position either for or against the Single Chief system...

...Both are now retired, and neither has an ax to grind...

...How his reform promises swift decision-making with greater safeguards than now obtain is not immediately apparent to one outside the intimate circle where military policy is formed...

...This partial eclipse of U.S...

...How Taylor would make over the top military command if he had the opportunity is best stated in his own words: "I would dissolve the JCS and replace it by a single Defense Chief of Staff for the one-man functions and by a new advisory body called provisionally the Supreme Military Council...

...Moreover, a Secretary of Defense or a President getting conflicting advice from a Single Chief and a Supreme Council is likely to be left with as much room for doubt as when pondering the split papers of the present JCS...

...General Taylor's words may be true as gospel...

...Moreover, he saw these faults as doubly dangerous because the Soviet Union was at the threshhold of a decisive advantage in strategic weapons...

...The trouble in this case is that, with institutions as with individuals, pride of place is the last possession voluntarily surrendered...

...But these factors no more spoil Taylor's argument than do the truisms that short of war no nation stands ready for war, and that in the military, as in the city precincts, politics can often frustrate reason simply because people love power...

...On the contrary, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and his Deputy Secretary, Roswell Gilpatric, particularly favor increasing centralization, delegating major power to one clear mind and voice, and sweeping away every obstacle to swift, sure decision-making...

...Some credit for closing the missile gap—if in fact it has been closed—is generally accorded the Navy for its celerity in making the Polaris operational...

...Until about 1964 the United States is likely to be at a significant disadvantage against the Russians in terms of numbers and effectiveness of long-range missiles...

...In his book, Taylor wrote: "The Army accepts the advantages of the Polaris submarine-missile combination but is skeptical as to its time of availability...