Defense: Strongest & Longest

Without fanfare or even much of a press release, a Pentagon milestone was passed last week. Robert Strange McNamara, 49, completed his 1,716th day as Secretary of Defense, thus exceeding the tenure of the late Charles E. Wilson (1953-7), who had previously held the job longer than any other secretary since the Cabinet post was created in 1947.

If Lyndon Johnson has anything to say about it, his aloof, ferociously efficient Defense Secretary will stay with it at least another thousand days. "He's the only man in my Cabinet I can find at his desk at 7 a.m.," allows L.B.J. Since resigning as president of Ford Motor Co. to come to the Pentagon in January 1961, McNamara has proved the most controversial, strongest and best Defense Secretary in the history of the office, and has made the post the second most important in the Government.

Management Revolution. Under his auspices, the U.S. military posture has been dramatically strengthened by percentages that McNamara himself so often recites that they have become known around the Pentagon as "the litany": a 200% increase in both the number and destructive power of U.S. nuclear weapons; a 45% rise in the number of combat-ready Army divisions; a 51% gain in the number of tactical fighter squadrons; a 100% increase in both military airlift capacity and in naval construction; a tenfold jump in the size of special, counterinsurgency forces.

The new strength has not been bought cheaply. For McNamara's buildup, which has given the armed forces the capacity to respond flexibly to guerrilla and conventional warfare as well as to nuclear attack, the defense budget this year will be $7.5 billion higher than the last Eisenhower defense budget in 1960.

The bill could have been nearly $5 billion a year higher had not McNamara brought a management revolution to the Pentagon. Coldly weighing every decision on its merits, he has frequently rejected the once sacrosanct proposals of his military chiefs, demanding documented facts to support opinion. Obsolete, political and redundant programs—many of them pet projects of brass and politicians—have virtually been eliminated.

Enmity & Respect. McNamara's bold cancellations and cutbacks of major weapons-system programs, notably the air-to-ground Skybolt missile, the supersonic B70 bomber and nuclear-powered planes and aircraft carriers, have earned him the enmity but also the grudging respect of the military. His decision to close down 95 military bases last year (at an estimated savings to the taxpayer of $477 million a year) threatened local economies and brought cries of outrage from Governors and Congressmen—and Illinois Senator Paul Douglas' tribute: "You are the first man to have the courage to do it."

Over almost universal criticism of his award of the TFX jet fighter contract to General Dynamics instead of Boeing—which Air Force experts said had submitted a better and less expensive design—McNamara steadfastly insisted that "it was the most important single action we have taken thus far to reduce the number of different weapons systems in our inventory."