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Hard choices looming, JCS chairman says

MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. — The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Wednesday the global financial crisis could cause greater unrest and potential new challenges for the military.

And at home, said Adm. Mike Mullen, military and political leaders will be forced to make “hard choices” about what to trim from defense spending.

“I’m extremely concerned about the impact of this crisis … I think it will generate additional instability throughout the world,” Mullen told about 1,000 airmen gathered in a hangar during his first-ever visit to icy Minot Air Force Base, a hub of the nation’s nuclear deterrence capability that is home to both B-52 Stratofortresses and Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles.

“It will impact us all,” Mullen said of the economic malaise afflicting much of the world.

Mullen also warned that the coming fiscal year defense budget, the first under the Obama administration, is likely, in his estimation, to “flatten out” after years of growth in the post-9/11 era.

“We’re going to have to make some hard choices,” Mullen told the group. “What I would like to get at, without being specific, is duplication. … I think we need to be balanced in our capabilities. It’s broader than just one service.”

At the same time, he said, “We need to make sure that we fund these wars. We cannot ask our people to go sacrifice their lives in combat and not train them, equip them, give them what they need to fight the fight.”

Mullen paid his visit just two months after Defense Secretary Robert Gates came to call in the wake of a year of Air Force turmoil caused by two missteps in the handling of nuclear materials.

One involved the mistaken loading of nuclear-tipped cruise missiles onto a B-52 that flew to Barksdale Air Force Base, La. Gates ended up firing the Air Force secretary and chief of staff and ordering a task force to look into Air Force nuclear surety.

Mullen said his visit wasn’t a formal follow-up to the Gates trip, noting that a mentor, retired Air Force Gen. John Jumper, had once encouraged him to come to Minot “in the dead of winter” to see what it was all about.

By the same token, Mullen later told reporters, one reason he came was “to encourage those who are here to recognize those [surety] challenges, hold themselves accountable for those challenges and problems, and to move forward.

“A lot of progress has been made,” he said during the town hall meeting. “But we’re not there [yet].”

Mullen said he applauded Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, and Air Force Secretary Michael Donley for making the nuclear enterprise “the No. 1 mission in the Air Force — and rightly so.”

Mullen commented only briefly on the Tuesday announcement from the White House that 17,000 additional forces will be deployed to Afghanistan by mid-summer, although he noted that he sees a “growing demand” for Air Force personnel there, ticking off areas such as airlift and close air support.

But demand will also continue for Navy and Air Force personnel not part of unit deployments. “It is going to last a long time in these fights,” Mullen said.

He noted that even as combat troops are withdrawn from Iraq, the need for combat support and combat service support troops there will continue. The use of such augmentees also frees up combat troops who might otherwise be detailed to do such work, he said.

“The ground forces have borne the burden of these wars,” Mullen said, adding that while officials seek to get Army units to a ratio of two years at home for every year deployed, the service will need another 12 to 18 months to get to that point.

Mullen said some 27,000 airmen are now stationed in U.S. Central Command’s area of operations, which encompasses both Iraq and Afghanistan.

“And I don’t see that coming down any time soon,” he said. “As chairman, I fully support as many airmen and sailors on the ground” to support the mission.