You are familiar with what we have done in elimination of the irritants, to provide equal opportunities. Better housing is one of the things we have really made strides on. How are we doing in retention? Has all this effort produced anything? Well, let's take retention of nuclear submarine officers. We have a retention objective for our nuclear submarine officers of about 62 percent. This is 2 years after their obligated service. You can see what a terrible drop that took in 1969 and 1970. We came to Congress and you gave us that bonus and this thing is straightened out now and we are quite satisfied we are now in good shape. I know you might not think so because this practically looks level, but it just took a while to reverse itself and you can put us down as confident there. For pilots, we want a retention of about 47 percent. Again, in 196970 we experienced this reduction in retention. It was responsible due primarily to the terrible tours they were getting in Southeast Asia. They just were not getting home and down retention went. Pilot retention has improved and I can say we are satisfied with what is happening there. The retention of surface officers isn't so good, as compared with the 45 percent we want. So we have a lot of concern in this area. With retention of enlisted men, we took a terrible dive in 1970. This graph covers men at the end of their first enlistment. Once they stay with us, reenlist the first time, then we are in pretty good shape. When they become career men the reenlistment rate is way up in the 90 percent. The key time is the first term reenlistment, and we would like to have about 31 percent stay. We don't want them all to stay with us; we want some turnover. It went down to around 10 percent before starting to rise. We like to think because of the effort we have taken, although unquestionably the national economy has had some effects, our reenlistment rate is up to about 20 percent. And the Marine Corps is also on the way up. They don't want to keep as many as the Navy does because you don't want all sergeants. The Marines have a goal of around 15 percent for first term retention. What are some of our problems: Increasing cost of weapons systems, the imbalance between our shore support and our operating units. It is difficult to close down bases, close down shipyards. The diminishing sealift capability of the U.S. merchant marine. The cost of environmental protection is going to be very expensive. We have taken care of most of our shore stations but not our ships yet. Frankly, we don't know how to solve the sewage disposal problem on our ships. We have all kinds of different projects underway but we haven't achieved the final solution. Finally, the all volunteer force is a big concern. We are giving everything we have to it, but both the reserves and regulars present concerns. Of course, the primary concern of all is the Soviet threat. What you just saw, the variety of submarines they were building, I hope that came through in the slides. They have put out many different types and designs. They are willing to build a variety of submarines, whereas we find that very expensive. PROBLEMS AND CONCERNS • INCREASING WEAPONS SYSTEM COSTS • IMBALANCE BETWEEN SHORE SUPPORT • DIMINISHING SEALIFT CAPABILITY OF U.S. • RISING COSTS TO SUPPORT ENVIRONMENTAL • ALL VOLUNTEER FORCE PROBLEMS AND CONCERNS THE SOVIET THREAT OUR MOST SERIOUS CONCERN TECHNOLOGY NEW, ADVANCED DESIGNS IN SHIPS, AIRCRAFT, EXPANDED ACTIVITY MEDITERRANEAN, NORTH ATLANTIC, CARIBBEAN, SUBMARINES OUTNUMBER U.S. IN ATTACK SUBS AND BUILDING HIGH PRIORITY TO SSBNS 74-696 - 72 - pt.2 - 39 896 You know how well they have expanded in the Mediterrane Here are some comparisons between the different appropriations Military construction is up a little bit. What are we getting? This is a brief summary of what the budg includes. For the shipbuilding and conversions, seven destroyers of t 963; this will be next to the last buy. In other words, if we get the then in 1974 that will complete our 30-ship program. Six 688 class nuclear attack submarines which I mentioned. Ca gress gave us the five last year and long leadtime funds for a si Congress is very keen on those submarines. Senator DOMINICK. That is the attack submarine? Secretary CHAFEE. That is the attack submarines; yes, sir. This the hydrofoil missile ship; we have to get going with it. It does represent a substantial sum of money but it is the possible wave of future. This is the PF which you discussed, which we will have a her ing on; that is $190 million for the first vessel. These are the submar tenders. We have to get going with these tenders. Whenever we w to save money we seem to cut the tenders. We just can't keep it up longer. Here are your Poseidon conversions and submarine tender conve sion. Here is the new construction basically 20 new ships and 22 conversions. For aircraft we are requesting 282 aircraft. That number of s airplanes just doesn't replace our attrition and our losses, but these r so expensive and that is the best we could do with it in our budge Sixty-six of them are for ASW, that is, the P-3Cs and S-34 43 are attack. A-7s, and A-6Es, and seven electronic warfare & craft, EA-6Bs-the A-6 and EA-6B are both Grumman aircra There is the Harrier for the Marines, the F-14, again, it is anothe Grumman aircraft. Trainers, transports-these VH-53 helicopte are for White House use but we are the designated purchasing age What about the money? Well, you can see in taking it in curre dollars, each year the cost is going up. Taking it in constant 19 dollars and wringing out the inflation we are down less than most the Vietnam years. Here at the peak of the Vietnam war, were peak expenditures. We are up somewhat from where we were in 193 but not much above what we all considered the last peacetime yer 1964. |