Word: nunn
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...when Goldwater and Nunn stood up on the Senate floor last week and joined forces to attack the performance and structure of the military establishment, the shock waves rippled clear across the Potomac to the innermost rings of the Pentagon. In eight sharply worded speeches, the two Senators accused the military of endangering the nation's defense and squandering its assets with interservice bickering. If the U.S. has to go to war anytime soon, charged Goldwater, "these problems will cause Americans to die unnecessarily. Even more, they may cause us to lose the fight...
...coordinated assault by Goldwater and Nunn began two weeks ago, when they holed up at Fort A.P. Hill in the Virginia countryside with a battery of experts and other Senators to discuss what had gone wrong with the military. Among those present: former Defense Secretaries Harold Brown and James Schlesinger and General David Jones, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Drawing from this discussion and two years of study, the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee will release a 600-page report this week calling for sweeping structural changes. The presidential commission chaired by Packard is expected...
...Joint Chiefs of Staff. In theory, the JCS is supposed to allow the Chiefs of the four services (the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines) to come together to shape military strategy. In fact, the Joint Chiefs have been unable to overcome age-old service rivalries. Explains Nunn: "They are called upon to do an almost impossible task--to represent their own services' viewpoint but simultaneously to sacrifice that view to the greater common good." Reforming the JCS has gained increasing backing on the Hill and from former top military officials...
...their Senate speeches, Nunn and Goldwater charged that interservice hostility risks defeat in battle. Although the services in each of the six regional commands are supposed to report to a single commander-in-chief (in the Pacific, a Navy admiral; in Europe, an Army general), in practice they remain virtually autonomous. To his colleagues in the Senate, Nunn declared, "I regret to report to you that we have unified commanders but divided commands...
...Force, for instance, is chronically unwilling to provide air cover for ground troops in the field, and the Navy is reluctant to buy ships to transport the Army. Turf battles surface most glaringly in actual combat. The invasion of Grenada in 1983 was a walk-over, said Senator Nunn, but only because the defenders were few and poorly armed. Coordination among the services was abysmal. Nunn cited the case of one Army officer who, unable to reach the Navy because of incompatible communication systems, had to use his AT&T credit card to phone his office in North Carolina...