Defense: Incorrect, Illogical, Etc.

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What with all of his computers and "cost-effectiveness" brainboys, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara often acts as though he holds a monopoly on the world's stockpile of sense. He seems to dismiss most of his many arguments with Congress as mere exercises in elementary pedagogy. Last week, however, a congressional committee report hit McNamara right where his pride is: it called his arguments against nuclear power for a new aircraft carrier "inconsistent," "misleading," "incorrect," "illogical," "exaggerated," "misinformed," "not realistic" and "not persuasive."

The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy was understandably concerned last October, when members read press reports that McNamara had decided to reject the Navy's request for a nuclear power plant in a new carrier authorized by Congress in 1962. Although the Atomic Energy Act requires McNamara to keep the committee "fully and currently" informed on such matters, he ignored its requests for information. Then, just three days after Rhode Island's Democratic Senator John Pastore, the committee chairman, announced the opening date for hearings on the issue, Secretary McNamara revealed that he had already decided against the Navy.

"Completely Protected." At the committee hearings in November, McNamara conceded that "there is a definite additional effectiveness in nuclear-powered carriers v. conventional, ship by ship." He "hoped" that within two years the Navy can begin a systematic shipbuilding program in which "all major ships" will have nuclear power plants. But meanwhile, he thought the additional cost of nuclear power in a carrier would be excessive, especially "because with the total force we have available we are completely protected against Soviet military and political pressure, and we don't need additional force."

McNamara put the nuclear ship's extra cost at $160 million for construction and later gave $480 million as the additional cost of its lifetime operation.

The real choice, he said, is between nuclear power and a larger number of conventional ships. Before he can make a general decision on that, he argued, he needs the results of current cost-effectiveness studies on the specific advantages of nuclear ships and on the overall role of carriers.

In its blistering—and unanimous—report, the 18-member committee* ripped into these arguments. It pointed to the "inconsistency" of McNamara's contention that no "additional force" is necessary and his approval of a conventionally powered carrier. It found that he had "overestimated" the construction costs of a nuclear carrier by $37 million because he included the cost of an extra aircraft squadron that the nuclear carrier could handle—even though the Navy proposed that this squadron be omitted. The committee said that nearly two-thirds of McNamara's estimate of extra operating costs was based on the cost of running the additional squadron. Actually, continued the committee, the nuclear ship would cost only about 3% more than a conventional carrier in a lifetime's operation. It termed this extra cost "mi nor, relative to the advantages."