Word: mcnamara
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Without Missing the Moon. Later Johnson met with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Afterward, McNamara said the Defense Department's budget would be trimmed by about $1 billion next year-to around $51 billion. The savings would come mainly from a cost-reduction program instituted by President Kennedy and from a letup in heavy expenditures for the now well-stocked nuclear arsenal (see box). McNamara declared that U.S. forces would be "superior to those in any other time in our peacetime history...
...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...
...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...
...Incalculable Waste." The committee ranged far beyond the shipbuilding argument, called into question the whole cost-effectiveness system upon which McNamara has based his defense policy. "In effect, this theory dictates that, in order to spend money to improve our weapons, we must buy fewer weapons to pay for the improvement," said the report. "If this theory had been rigidly applied in the past, we would not have many of the essential weapons we have today. If our potential enemies do not choose to use the same cost-effectiveness criteria as our Department of Defense, we may well find that...