expeditionary airfields in a contingency. With the shift in emphasis toward operations in Third World environments, the Navy must be ready to generate higher sortie rates than would be possible by relying only on available carrier support.

The committee recommends an additional $5.7 million for expeditionary airfield equipment, including funds to accelerate purchases of arresting gear and flat racks for transporting the equipment. The committee also directs the Secretary of the Navy to provide a report to the congressional defense committees by March 31, 1994. This report should identify what would be required to have Navy squadrons operate from expeditionary airfields, including:

Additional expeditionary airfield investment,

Additional spares and support equipment for Navy squadrons, and

Additional training that Navy squadrons might require. Logistics-over-the-Shore

The committee is concerned that the Army and Navy are procuring two different systems for conducting the same logistics-overthe-shore (LOTS) mission. The committee believes that the Department of Defense should, in procuring LOTS equipment, strive for commonality. The committee believes that operating common equipment could provide enhanced support of joint operations, lower life cycle costs, and reduced acquisition costs, through more efficient production rates and eliminating such costs as licensing fees.

Therefore, the committee directs the Secretary of Defense to submit a report comparing the Army's barge ferry system and the Navy's elevated causeway system. This report should consider, at a minimum:

Inter-operability and compatibility;

Government ownership of design rights pertaining to each system;

Suitability for joint LOTS operations; and

Safety and training considerations.

The committee directs the Department to submit this report to the congressional defense committees by March 1, 1994.

AAV7A1 product improvement program

The committee is aware of a problem in the AAV-7A1 product improvement program. The Department of Defense Inspector General has recommended that procurement and installation of engine and suspension improvements be postponed until the program successfully completes operational testing. The committee agrees with this view, and recommends a reduction of $12.6 million to reflect this delay.

Night vision devices

The committee has recommended several initiatives over the last two years to improve night fighting capability, because of shortcomings in the Marine Corps highlighted by Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. The committee is encouraged by the steps the Marine Corps has taken on its own, but believes that more needs

to be done. Therefore, the committee recommends $12.6 million for additional night vision devices.

Marine corps training devices

The budget request included a total of $11.0 million in training devices. The Marine Corps has identified a shortfall in training devices of over $20.0 million beyond this requested level.

These training systems are used to build and maintain high levels of operational readiness. As operation and maintenance funds become scarcer, having enough training systems to support Marine Corps forces will be even more critical.

The committee recommends an increase of $10.0 million above the budget request for training devices.

Modernization of the non-stealthy heavy bomber force

The budget request for fiscal year 1994 contained $212.3 million in procurement and $93.5 million in research, development, test and evaluation for the B-1B bomber program and $47.4 million in procurement for the B-52 bomber program. The bulk of the requested funds are intended to enhance the conventional weapons effectiveness of these two bomber programs.

Both the Senate report to accompany S. 3114 (S. Rept. 102-352) and the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1993 required the Secretary of Defense to prepare a plan for further testing of the operational effectiveness of heavy bombers other than the B-2, in order to establish a baseline of current heavy bomber capabilities. They further required the Secretary to evaluate the adequacy of current U.S. operational testing capabilities, since former Soviet air defense systems, including many of their most modern systems, are becoming widely available on the open market. This both represents a growing threat to future U.S. operations against Third World countries and an opportunity for DOD to acquire real Soviet systems relatively inexpensively, rather than building "high-fidelity threat simulators," to help guide future Air Force bomber tactics and future electronic countermeasures (ECM) systems. The Senate report called for results to be available in time for hearings during the spring of 1993. To date, none of the required reports have been received, nor has any systematic testing of heavy bombers been conducted. Furthermore, although the administration's "bottom-up review" reportedly has belatedly added consideration of the utility of bombers in its analysis of the mix of tactical aircraft, no results of that review have yet been made available.

For the past year, the committee has had to rely on hearing testimony, Air Force advocacy documents such as the "Bomber Roadmap," and the results of selected studies and analyses to assess the potential contributions of various modifications to improve the conventional capability of the existing non-stealthy bomber force. Under the terms of the START II Treaty, the B-1B fleet would be deemed to be a conventionally-armed-only bomber, and not counted against START II limitations. This prospect has led the Air Force to refocus the mission of the B-1B bomber exclusively to conventional warfare missions, and to designate it as the "backbone" of the future bomber force. Some B-52H bombers would be adapted to deliver a variety of weapons now carried by the combat-proven B-52G bombers (which are to be retired) while others would be given only limited conventional capabilities beyond delivery of “iron bombs." The latter would also be relied upon (together with B-2 bombers) to provide nuclear deterrence, should a deteriorating international environment ever require bombers to resume nuclear ground alert. The Air Force has also announced its intention to transfer some B-1B bombers to Air Force National Guard and reserve units, although the committee has received neither written nor briefing information regarding these plans. It is also unclear whether the Air Force also plans to transfer some B-52 bombers to reserve units.

THE POTENTIAL IMPORTANCE OF BOMBERS

The Department, according to recent news media accounts, has tentatively decided it must retain the capability to deal successfully with two more-or-less simultaneous contingencies. Under these circumstances, it would appear that a substantial bomber force would be highly desirable. With air refueling, bombers can be over any point on the globe in less than a day, and therefore, can shift operations rapidly from one theater to a second. However, to be effective in stopping, for example, a surprise armed incursion into the territory of a friendly nation, bombers require more than mere range and payload. They must be able to find targets whose location and disposition may be imprecisely known. Having located their targets, the bombers must be able to engage them with highly-effective munitions, while also surviving whatever array of air defenses the enemy invaders may be able to mount. The bombers must then be able to return to bases which may be distant, and be rapidly refueled, rearmed, and prepared for new sorties. Previous studies of similar scenarios involving incursions by multi-division armored and mechanized forces have suggested the need for some 60 to 100 B-2 equivalents in order to halt the incursion through attrition losses within a week's time and with less than 100 miles or so of enemy penetration into friendly territory. Since it requires multiple sorties by B-1 or B-52 bombers to produce the effectiveness of a single B-2 sortie, this clearly implies a requirement for large force levels of non-stealthy bombers.

The committee judges this to be the most demanding scenario for bomber employment; indeed, for coalition defense. Given a wellplanned surprise attack, the defenders' plight could be far more severe than that encountered in the war with Iraq, often assumed to be the "most stressing scenario." Iraqi forces stopped advancing after seizing Kuwait, leaving a superb but lightly-defended military infrastructure in Saudi Arabia undamaged for allied forces to utilize. Nonetheless, from the invasion date, 19 days elapsed before the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Central Command announced that enough military force had arrived to defend Saudi Arabia from attack. In a variant of that scenario, if friendly ports and airbases in the theater have been severely damaged in the initial surprise attacks, friendly tactical air forces may not even be able to_generate enough sorties to provide reliable fighter air escort for longrange bombers arriving in the theater. Unfortunately, there are virtually no credible analyses of the capabilities of the heavy bomber force the Air Force will actually possess to meet the requirements of these demanding scenarios, or even whether the Air Force's "roadmap" plan, if fully implemented, would be adequate to those needs.

UNCERTAINTIES ABOUT THE AIR FORCE'S BOMBER MODERNIZATION

ROADMAP

The committee is concerned that the Air Force, in its bomber modernization roadmap, appears to be emphasizing its past successes during Operation Desert Storm, preparing to roll back an enemy force that has already stopped and gone on the defensive, rather than designing a plan for developing enhanced bomber capa