Planning U.S. General Purpose Forces: Overview
Abstract
As the Congress makes decisions on budget targets for the First Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 1978, the appropriate size of the defense budget will be one of the most important issues. The military forces that the budget buys can be divided into two parts. These are the strategic retaliatory forces--intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and bombers; and the general purpose forces--all the rest of the Navy, Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps. The general purpose forces account for most of the defense budget: decisions about their size, location, equipment, and level of readiness determine much of the defense budget. In turn, the appropriate character and size of these forces should be tied to conceptions of how and where they would be used, and to assessments of the capability of likely adversaries. The series of six Budget Issue Papers on the general purpose forces, of which this is a part, is intended to lay out the most significant assumptions underlying current planning of the general purpose forces, to discuss the match between those assumptions and the current or projected forces, and to suggest what might change in defense programs if somewhat different planning assumptions were adopted. The other papers in the series are: The Navy, Army Procurement Issues, The Tactical Air Forces, The Theater Nuclear Forces, and Forces Related to Asia. This Overview is intended to establish the context for the other papers, to sketch their major findings, and to draw together options for the defense budget as a whole rather than element by element. The Summary of this paper is presented as a brief summary of the entire series.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1977
- Accession Number
- ADA593864
Entities
People
- John E. Koehler
- Robert B. Pirie Jr.
Organizations
- Congressional Budget Office