The State of the Arsenal
David Evans does not think war is inevitable in the Persian Gulf. But if it comes, he can imagine the United States losing, or winning at such a high cost that the victory will be remembered as a catastrophe. He believes–and has been writing–that much of the high-tech equipment that is supposed to make our army of Arabia invincible is junk.
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He told us, “We’ve had a crisis in infantry antitank weaponry that’s been known for over ten years. It’s not because the Army hasn’t spent the money. The Army has dribbled away extraordinary sums of money to produce third-rate, overly complex, overpriced, and unreliable weapons.”
The invasion of Kuwait has forced the nation into a kind of reappraisal of the Reagan-Bush years, a weighing of the era’s carelessness and gluttony. Evans wants to know what happened to the “$1 trillion transfusion of cash that went into the Pentagon.” He marvels that the country could have spent so much money, above and beyond normal defense spending, and today not even have enough spare parts.
Does George Bush understand these shortages? we asked. Evans doubts it. “There are very high level discussions taking place now. I’m not sure how high they go. I’m not sure [the secretary of defense or chairman of the joint chiefs of staff] knows how bad the situation is. Nor is it unique to the Army. There is an enormous chasm between what the Army’s been promising and what it can now deliver. Think of this terrible irony. The president is pumping more troops in there in order to get another option–the option being to attack. But it’s an option his generals cannot sustain.
“Now, for those who say the elite of America aren’t involved in the situation–my answer is, what kind of a company commander do we think Dan Quayle would have made, anyway? And do we really want the sons of the buy-out artists and junk-bond salesmen now trying to lead our forces in battle? I don’t want those guys anywhere around.”
