I want to thank the Air Force Association for being our gracious host these last two days. John [Shaud] and Tom [McKee] and the other leadership of AFA, we applaud your tireless efforts to get the Air Force story out across our nation and also your support for the hard-working men and women of our Total Force in the Air Force.

One of the best things about being the Secretary of all of the Air Force is watching our senior military leadership team in action. They are spectacular, as we have seen both yesterday and today. They really care about the country. They care about the troops, and they are making our Air Force a better place for all of us. They lead from the front and they leave it to me to whine from the front. So, that is what I am going to do today. It truly is an honor to work with all of the folks, particularly the Chief of Staff, General [Michael E.] Mike Ryan, and with all the men and women of the great Total Force.

Yesterday, [Gen. Charles T.] Tony Robertson talked about how great it was to be the clean-up batter. Perhaps that is true in some ways. But I know better. I know I am standing between most of you and your tee times and therefore I had better be brief. As my staff generally tells me, I am brevity-challenged, so I am going to do something today that I don’t ordinarily do and try to stick to a prepared text.

I’d like to talk today about the posture of the U.S. Air Force and particularly the rationale behind its long-range plan and the manifestation of that long-range planning in the FY-01 budget submission. Today I want to start with the punch line and then I’ll go back to the story. To be successful in the future, the Air Force needs a program that is balanced over several dimensions. Several come to mind immediately. There needs to be balance over core competencies. There needs to be balance in its mix of space, manned air and unmanned air. It needs to be balanced by time, and it needs to ensure that key infrastructures on which we rely daily are in place to support capabilities required by the joint team and the nation’s military strategy.

The Air Force budget must also be integrated, and by this I mean we must start from the capabilities the Air Force is required to supply to the nation and work backwards to ensure that we have fashioned a system of systems that will produce these effects. One of the greatest problems we in the Air Force have is the so-called CNN [Cable News Network] Effect. What you see is the last five seconds of a bomb going to target. What you don’t see is everything that goes behind it. So often we have to deal with what I would call, in [Federal Reserve Chairman] Alan Greenspan’s words, “irrational exuberance” about a particular platform that launches a particular weapon. Too often in the Air Force, in the press and on Capitol Hill, we discuss the Air Force budget in terms of those platforms and weapon systems that we see on TV. We argue about bombers versus fighters, Lockheed versus Boeing, C-130J versus C-17. The list can go on and on and on.

I would like to make one point, and that is: these discussions almost completely miss the point. None of our platforms is, must or should be designed to be a Swiss army knife, a self- contained platform that brings all things to the battlefield. My thesis is that the Air Force has today and absolutely needs tomorrow a large core of capabilities from which our strike and mobility assets can draw to complete the missions assigned to the Air Force. Because we had that core in Kosovo, a lot of things that looked really easy were done -- because we had an infrastructure, and it made things that are inherently very hard to do straightforward and simple. So easy, I think, that I have not yet seen a reference in any of the lessons learned to some critical things like the fact that we were able to move forward in a matter of hours and days to establish 21 expeditionary bases where there had been no bases before.

Now to return to the story a little bit. Through the FY-01 budget, we have brought to the table a carefully crafted plan that I think is balanced and integrated to support both the continuing evolution of our Expeditionary Aerospace Force and our broader national security objectives, including defeat of asymmetric threats. It puts people first, because they are absolutely the most critical enabler that we have. It emphasizes readiness and continues our modernization programs. All in the context of responding to the lessons learned that you heard talked about. Or, at least you say, the lessons not yet learned that we’ve seen in Kosovo.

Kosovo is a great starting point. Nothing says more about how far the Air Force has come in the past decade than last year’s air war over Kosovo. “Operation Allied Force” proved that many of the concepts central to our vision of an Expeditionary Aerospace Force in the 21^st Century work the way we plan them to. For example, as I just said, we deployed 21 expeditionary bases. Essentially we set up shop in 21 places where no shops existed. That included not only food and lodging and com [communications], but maintenance and fuel and things that are intrinsically very hard to do in places as different as the Budapest airport -- where we were operating out of an old terminal building with cable glued and taped to the wall all over the place; to Tirana, where we’ve had some pictures showing the mud and the mess and the undeveloped base at which we had to operate.

This was truly a very hard, herculean, effort. It was executed so smoothly that it has deserved no mention in any of the lessons learned. This was relatively easy, because we have invested for years in deployable kits of housekeeping, medical, food, communications and industrial equipment that can be moved to austere bases and assembled very rapidly by our combat engineers, the RED HORSE [Rapid Engineer Deployable, Heavy Operational Repair Squadron, Engineer] units, the very units in which we’ve also invested very heavily over the last decade.

For the first time in Kosovo, we routinely used our communications network, again mostly space-based, to reach back to the United States for intelligence and logistics support. For example, intelligence collection from U-2s often made the round trip from Kosovo to Beale Air Force Base [CA] and Fort Meade [Maryland] and back to theater in 10 minutes or less. This concept of reachback going from the forward theater back to the continental United States or to our main bases in Europe or the Pacific is absolutely critical to the future of the Air Force and the future of the AEF [Aerospace Expeditionary Force]. Reachback is important because it reduces lift requirements, reduces the number of airmen who must deploy into harm’s way -- which is absolutely critical as we face the asymmetric threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction -- and it allows our airmen to work at home where, number one, their families are located and, number two, the sophisticated computer gear that makes a lot of this possible is also located.

For the first time ever, we’ve integrated unmanned aerial vehicles, our UAVs, our Predators, into our strike forces. For the first time, we used data from predators to fuse with data from Joint STARS [Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System] and to fuse with national technical data coming down from space. That allowed us to target off of the Predator video, a capability we have never had up to this day until Kosovo. On top of that, we put a laser designator on Predator. We didn’t use it in Kosovo, but we used it out at Nellis [Air Force Base], and we know that you can laser designate from Predator and give our LGBs [Laser-Guided Bombs] the kind of precision they need, even though they are being dropped from above the cloud deck.

We shuffled the B-2 and JDAM [Joint Direct Attack Munition] together and created a very-long-range, all-weather, day-night precision weapons system. B-2 has got a lot of the credit, and it is truly a great airplane. But we also need to recognize that both in the desert and in Kosovo, we demonstrated that the B-1 could also penetrate difficult air defenses, delivering dumb ordnance with great accuracy, thanks to new radars and defensive systems like the towed decoy, many of which died for the B-1. We also showed that satellite-guided weapons, the JDAM and JSOW [Joint Standoff Weapon], worked exactly as they were intended to work. We also employed an extremely effective logistics system. As Tony [Gen. Charles T.] Robertson mentioned yesterday. Ninety-seven percent mission capable rates on forty-year-old airplanes ain’t bad. What is even better is the fact that between Tony’s world-wide express and our depot, and the fact that we got 500,000 extra hours out of our depot workers, 93 percent of replacement parts got to forward bases in just 3.7 days. The forces directly engaged in the fight averaged a 92 percent mission-capable rate, a rate which we have not seen in this country since the early 1990s.

Our C-17 aircraft showed that they could operate day after day without faltering while operating in austere airfields in both Albania and Macedonia. We applied communications systems very effectively, providing classified and unclassified Internet services to and from Europe and various other parts of the field and the United States. In many cases, these services were available to transportable SATCOMs [Satellite Communications receivers] in less than an hour after a C-130 landing. Equally important, our SATCOMs provided e-mail to and from theater and kept our families who were deployed together with the families back home. Very important. Last but not least, thanks to the incredible organization we had in 16^th Air Force, in 38,000 sorties, there was not a single combat casualty and not a single airplane lost in mid-air coming up on a tanker during refueling that was being done in lousy weather and at night.

All of these individual feats, as impressive as they are, don’t tell the whole story. Because many of us, even those of us who were involved, have forgotten how difficult some of these things are. I want to make sure to try to stress and discuss with you how many different consecutive miracles have to happen before some of these events you see in the last five seconds on CNN can come about. From solar weather prediction to food preparation and distribution, to portable shelters, generators and housekeeping supplies to transportable satellite communications, we have built an integrated system of systems upon which an air campaign of the magnitude of Kosovo could be supported. To be sure, there were glitches, but there are glitches in everyday life. But this is today’s capability, and the question I’d like to discuss, and the question the Air Force plan tried to address is, “What will we be able to do tomorrow?” There is one central question that Mike Ryan and I face: Can we sustain this superb force in the face of the highest peacetime op [operations] tempo in the history of the Air Force and the best economy we’ve had in the United States for at least several generations? I think we can, but only if we face many of the tough challenges in front of us. We continue to work the fundamentals that we’ve been working since Mike Ryan and I became a team in the fall of 1997. Lest you think this is easy, let me discuss several key issues.

Number one: For the first time in 20 years, the Air Force in 1999 was unable to fill its recruiting needs. In FY-00, even with our first-ever paid TV advertising and more recruiters’ pay and bonuses, we are still not making our recruiting goals. We have doubled our recruiting budget between FY-98 and FY-01. We will more than double the number of recruiters on the street by the end of calendar 01, but we have not yet seen solid results from these efforts.

Just last month, all of our men and women saw our first installment of the 4.8 percent pay raise, the first piece of a commitment to make pay competitive with the civilian economy. But the number of our commands not reaching their personnel retention goals continues to increase, not decrease. At best we are just seeing the first glimmer of last year’s pay and retirement reforms getting traction throughout the force. Let me give you an anecdote here. Last week, I flew from Washington State to Andrews [Air Force Base], arriving at the wonderful hour of four in the morning. On the crew of my plane, there were six members, three of whom were leaving the Air Force. One of the two pilots is going to Southwest Airlines. A master sergeant crew chief was cutting short a promising career at 20 years to accept a job in an executive aviation company at over $100,000 per year, and a flight steward was leaving short of 20 years because she has been offered a $90,000 a-year job to be a steward at that same company, flying on a Gulf-Stream. This confirms what we know very well: our airmen are absolutely the best, and industry wants them. If we are going to keep them, we have got to reduce optempo and we have to pay them fairly.

We also have a problem on the civilian side. In our laboratories, after a decade of downsizing, 30 percent of our scientists and engineers can retire in the next five years, and only 2 percent are below the age of 30. In fact, the labs are a microcosm of our Air Force civilian work force - increasingly grey and increasingly retirement eligible. We have downsized some of our most promising scientists and other civilians and have been increasingly unable to compete successfully for the best and brightest entry-level workers. I want to assure you that we are not just stewing about these challenges. We are taking positive steps across the board to move the Air Force forward in spite of them. But there are clear challenges; they are things which need national attention.

Let me talk for a moment about some of the positive steps we are taking in terms of the FY-01 budget. As usual, we proposed an absolutely exceptional budget, short about $3.6 billion, but otherwise a great budget. It is balanced and integrated, focusing on our key factors of people, readiness and modernization, and infrastructure. Key words here again are balance and integration. As shown in Kosovo, the Air Force has made the greatest strides by using its assets in an integrated fashion in an integrated campaign where air, space, and unmanned air come together to provide the effects our commanders need. Again, to paraphrase Alan Greenspan, we need to avoid “irrational exuberance” for a particular program or a particular platform. What we need to do is fuse this, and we need to work on command and control.

If I learned anything in the past two years as secretary it is, first, the Air Force song, but second - I was in the Navy. Something about anchors, we don’t have those on planes - but in any case it is really that the Air Force is truly an inter-related entity. Let me just demonstrate that point by asking you to think for a minute about what it takes to send one B-2 from Knob Noster, Missouri, to Serbia. First, of course, there is no point in sending a B-2 without JDAM. They go hand in hand. JDAM’s effectiveness hinges on the availability of a GPS [Global Positioning Satellite] constellation that is, first, fully populated and, second, has better antijam than we currently have. GPS doesn’t work if the satellite constellation is not replenished. These things don’t last forever. They are lasting longer, but certainly not forever. Replenishment requires reliable space launch, and we don’t have that today. Reliable launch requires the perfection of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, coming on board in about the next 18 to 24 months. And before EELV becomes a real proposition and builds on the civil-commercial partnership, we need modernized space ranges, so that the commercial side is cost competitive in the world economy. We are investing in all of these things.

Going back to the mission for a moment. The B-2 takes off half a day before it will drop bombs. During that day, other strike aircraft will hit the targets, better satellite data will come in, and commanders may change target priorities. There is not a great deal of point in sending the B-2 some 13, 14, 15 hours earlier unless we can also re-target the B-2 in flight, which means that we also need additional satellite capabilities. The B-2 is kind of the ultimate SUV [Sports Utility Vehicle]. It doesn’t get very far on a tank of gas. It certainly doesn’t fly for half a day, so there must be tankers. As you saw yesterday, I think we delivered 6 million pounds of gas from our KC-135s stationed near theater into the B-2 alone. Where were those tankers based? In a lot of those 21 austere forward bases which would not have existed but for our ability to create expeditionary fuel distribution depots located forward and to provide the food, housing, SATCOMS and planning equipment that the tanker force needed. Since we’ve cut our overseas bases by two-thirds in the last decade, whether we are operating in Europe or in the Pacific, tanker bases will often be temporary and require a full-range of infrastructure for food, tents, coms, medical support - you name it. None of this works without the highly trained and motivated people that you see in those blue suits all around this room and wherever you go in the Air Force.

I could go on and on about this, but I think you see the point. It takes a huge supporting infrastructure to make those last five seconds successful. Let me start by talking about people. The pivotal importance of maintaining our strength and capability is the quality of the team of men and women who make up the active, Guard and Reserve components of our Total Force. Our airmen are committed to serving the common good, preserving our way of life and taking an active role in leading this nation through the 21^st Century. They are individuals who achieve tremendous success through hard work, dedication to duty, and a total commitment to this nation. They want to make a difference in our world; they are making a difference in this world; and they are willing to do that while living in tents, eating MREs [Meals Ready to Eat], and putting service before personal comfort and convenience. And -- perhaps most difficult for General Ryan and myself -- putting the nation ahead of their families. And there is the rub. Since 1989, the Air Force has simultaneously become a married force and a force that has continuously deployed, often on short notice, far from home base. Now, military families expect to see the military member deployed. Most, in fact relish the opportunity to serve their country by employing the skills they have been taught. However, we are now 33 percent smaller and 400 percent busier than we were 10 years ago. There are families who are separated over 200 days a year. We feel lucky if we can get that down to 120 days a year, which is one day in every three. We cannot expect our airmen to stay with us if we continuously put the nation’s needs between them and their families. Nor can we expect our traditional Reservists to stay with us if we frequently put the nation’s needs between them and their employers. Our response has been to create the EAF [Expeditionary Aerospace Force], a rotational structure that achieves several objectives.

First, the Air Force is tasked in every major theater war to engage the enemy early and on very short notice. To do this, we must have the bulk of our forces trained and ready to deploy for wartime tasks. With EAF, only 20 percent of the force is committed to contingency operations, allowing the other 80 percent to train for those wartime tasks. The committed 20 percent can be trained specially for the contingency operation to which they may deploy.

Second, a known and predictable rotation schedule gives all of our airmen predictability and stability in their lives, which allows them to plan time with their families, time for higher education, time for the community, and time for themselves. This is absolutely essential if we are going to keep people for a 20-year career, which to the Air Force is an absolutely essential element of our personnel planning.

Third, the rotational structure of EAF gives us much larger access to our Reserve forces. As every speaker has said, there is no difference today between Guard, Reserve and Active. I was with [Gen.] John Jumper in Incerlik when we dropped in at 5 a.m. on one of the guard posts out on the flight line. There were three security forces people: one from Little Rock, two from the Lincoln, Nebraska, police department. They were magnificent. They were having fun; they were doing the job that brought them to the Guard and the Reserve; and we need to be able to have that kind of force deployed forward. And to do that, we need to make sure that our employers know when people are going to be needed, and that when we take them, we take them for important missions. And that’s one thing that EAF does. To give you an idea of what that does for us, in each 15-month rotation, 25,000 members, out of a total strength of 106,000 in the Air National Guard, will take up an EAF assignment. They provide 10 percent of the deployed manpower requirement using approximately 25 percent of their personnel in every 15-month rotation. That is a remarkable achievement.

But we cannot reduce our individuals’ workload at a time when we can’t recruit our way out of this shortage, simply by rotating them around the world. As I’ve said many, many times and will continue to say, our too few people are spread over way too many bases to be effective and efficient. Another BRAC [Base Realignment and Closure] - I think two rounds sounds pretty good -- would solve a lot of our workload problems and would also allow us to make much more efficient use of our aircraft. One of the things that had become painfully apparent, and that is that 18 PAA [Primary Aircraft Authorized] squadrons simply don’t rotate well -- there’s simply not enough left at home, when you send 10 or 12 jets forward, to continue that wartime training. We have got to get to more efficient squadron sizes. At this pont, we can’t do it without a BRAC. Until we get to BRAC, we must and will continue to look for opportunities to reengineer, to free up military manpower for deployed operations. The basic deal there is, if we free up a military person on our so-called support “tail,” we get to keep that slot and move it to “tooth,” and we’re going to do about 6,000 of those in FY-00 and FY-01.

We must also resist further reductions in active duty manpower. This year, General Ryan and I went to the mat with OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] to get 3,000 additional manpower slots, and we won. We’ve commissioned a major manpower study, and we are committed to getting the manpower that study shows we need.

A further retention issue concerns our civilian workforce, which is not constructed to meet today’s or tomorrow’s mission. To sustain a force, we need the right mix of new, mid-level, and senior employees, with a currency of skill in our high-tech areas. In the last nine years, we’ve seen a 62 percent drop in employees with less than eight years of service, and 10 percent of our employees are today eligible to retire. In five years, over half our civilian workforce will be eligible for either optional or early retirement, and the next cadre of people coming in is half the size. Without an accompanying increase in new employees with current, state-of-the-art skills, our acquisition, technical, and scientific workforces are not sustainable. Last year, we sought legislative relief to try a test program to designed to remedy some of those personnel imbalances. We didn’t get it. We’re trying again this year.

I cannot stress enough that the age and experience imbalance in our civilian workforce is a time bomb waiting to go off on the 20^th and 21^st secretary of the Air Force.

On readiness, as General Ryan discussed yesterday, our missiles and aircraft are 20 years old and will be 30 years old in a few years. The fighters turn around only if we get F-22 and Joint Strike Fighter in the numbers currently predicted. For all other forces, the fleet will age two-thirds of a year for every calendar year from now until well beyond any planning period we have. Obviously, as planes get older, they break more often, need more parts, and increase the cost of maintenance and operation in ways which affect modernization. In fact, the O&M [Operations and Maintenance] budget continues to climb one to two percent in real terms, year after year when compared against the number of people in the active force.

Unfortunately, in the mid-1990s, we had a parts holiday. Starting in late 1997, with the help of Congress, we have new spare parts funding from a low of 80 percent of the requirement to full funding in 1999, FY-2000, FY-2001 and for every year that we currently have on the books. We have also added over $500 million to the spare parts inventories since the middle of 1999. At the same time, we’ve moved depot maintenance funding back to required levels, and we are consolidating our depots, some with real disruptions, with a real demonstrable increase in MICAP [Mission Capable] rates, but we are doing it and when it is done, we will have a much more efficient and effective depot structure. It remains very hard to turn dollars into parts at the moment because our suppliers -- many of whom are here today -- and their suppliers -- many of whom are here today -- are already working at close to full capacity. It can take up to 24 months to turn money into parts. We think we are about to get the beginning part of that $500 million. We got about $60 million in deliveries, and we think the drip is going to become a fairly good stream over the next several months. The other thing that Air Force Materiel Command has done -- and they have been led superbly by [Gen.] George [T.] Babbitt, who has been absolutely demanding in trying to get more efficient and more effective -- George and his folks have driven down backlogs by over 50 percent in this calendar year - last calendar year -- alone.

On the modernization front, I have been in enough C-130s now to know that duct tape is a critical part of that weapon system. But you can’t put duct tape on C-130s forever. At some point, you have to replace whole subsystems or even whole aircraft. We are biting the bullet on this, and we are doing that. We know that dated equipment not only performs less efficiently, but is more costly to maintain, and loses over time its interoperability features, a critical shortcoming, and its industrial base, another critical shortcoming. Dated equipment draws from an ever-diminishing pool of technicians as they are lost to the appeal of new technology. We have balanced our modernization program in FY-01. Thirty-six percent of it is going to what I would call attack platforms, including things like AWACS [Airborne Warning and Control System] and the ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance] that goes with attack platforms. Thirty-one percent is going to space, and 26 percent is going to airlift, with the remainder primarily to weapons development and fielding of new weapons like JDAM, JASSM [Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile] and those kinds of weapons.

Modernization of our KC-135 tankers and reconnaissance aircraft is our single largest weapons system modification program in FY-01, and C-5 modernization is the fourth. C-17 is our largest new procurement program, and it is proceeding very well. Lest I be accused of ignoring space, the Minuteman modernization is our number two upgrade program in terms of dollars being put into the budget. In fact, we are funding replacements and upgrades for every single one of our existing satellite systems. We are also fixing the cockpits and avionics of every single one of our heritage aircraft. We are also bringing a whole new generation of weapons to bear, not only CALCM [Conventional Air-Launched Cruise Missile], which we shot a lot of during Kosovo, but JDAM, JSOW, WCMD [Wind-Corrected Munitions Dispenser], JASSM, LOCAAS [Low-Cost Autonomous Attack System], -- the list goes on and on for new, precise weapons.

In addition to that, we have accelerated the funding of UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles]. We have obviously fielded Predator. We are going to continue that. We are going to begin building a Global Hawk fleet in FY-01. Finally, we have put our money into a combat UAV demonstrator so we can get the persistent, unmanned supervision of the battlefield that is necessary to combat a modern integrated air defense system [IADS].

We are also working command and control hard. We need a modern aerospace operations center, as many people have said from this stage in the last two days, with fused decision-quality information -- coming from air, space, unmanned air -- turned into the format which our air component commander can use to direct and integrate this incredibly powerful force we have. As has been said over and over again, the essence of effective command is the ability to marshal information from our multiple sensor systems and use that information to make an integrated battle plan, complete with audibles at the line of scrimmage. We are funding significant new data fusion information support tools, and we are exercising those tools in events like JEFX [Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment] and soon in our Flag exercises at Nellis [Air Force Base].

That data doesn’t do us very much good since it all comes over networks, and until our networks are safe, we are putting a lot of money into public key encryption. In fact we are the first service to fully fund what we think is an important test program on public key encryption: and we have committed to have smart cards, which is the essence of public key encryption, in a secure and safe system in the next 18 months, networking up to about 700,000 people. On top of that we continue to deploy our various defense-in-depth software tools and hardware tools.

We would like to buy the F-22, and not because we are madly focused on fighter jets, but because, as you’ve heard here, F-22 is a critical enabler for everything else we are doing. You cannot put modern assets like C-17 or JSTARS or B-2 near a battlefield if an enemy aircraft can come up and shoot them down. That is a fundamental fact of life and one with which we have simply got to come to terms. The F-22 is the only game around. It is the only platform we have that will meet and beat the air and ground threats of the next 25 to 30 years. As General [John P.] Jumper puts it so eloquently, why do we want to win 51-49 when in the past we’ve won 100-nothing? It is the 100-to-nothing fight that we need for this Air Force.

I know the F-22 is expensive. But I ask, what is the alternative? The venerable F-15 simply will not go into the 2025 time period without extremely expensive modernization and SLEP [Service Life Extension Program] programs. The Joint Strike Fighter is optimized for air-to-ground. Sure, it has some air-to-air capabilities, just as the F-22 has some air-to-ground capabilities. But JSF is intended to continue our high-low mix -- one platform optimized for air-to-air, the other for air-to-ground that has served us so well throughout the history of the Air Force. It is something we ought to continue.

The bottom line is, there is no inexpensive alternative. Let me say that again: there is no inexpensive alternative, and none of the alternatives offer the leap-ahead technologies that the F-22 puts together. We have got to continue it.

Finally, on the infrastructure side. Many of you may have seen in the paper that I was out at McChord [Air Force Base, WA] last week and a very smart wing commander out there, who is already on the one-star list, had me talking on the stage with water dripping right in front. We were in a hanger, and that water was coming through the roof. I said to the men and women out there, “You can blame me for that, and General Ryan for that, because we are in fact borrowing money from infrastructure because it is the only shock absorber we have.” We have taken $500 million out of infrastructure, real-estate infrastructure, this year to pay for the programs that I’ve just described. We can do this for a bit longer, but we can’t go on forever. We have a $4 billion backlog of real property maintenance, much of which must be addressed if we are to provide the facilities that mean so much to the quality of life of our people -- modern housing, dormitories, fitness and child-care centers, and modern, efficient and dry places to work.

To do this, we need two more rounds of BRAC [Base Realignment and Closure]. We need it because it will help us save money, but most importantly, we need it because we simply are never going to have the kind of real property money we need to keep as many bases in operation as we have today. They are an impediment to the optempo and an impediment to efficient air operations. We need to cut bases. The challenge of our future will be to make some really hard choices and to work with Congress and with the American people to make sure they understand where the choices are, why they are hard, but why they must be taken. That is what we are trying to do in the Air Force, and certainly that is the message that General Ryan and I have been carrying to Capitol Hill.

I am very proud to be in our great Air Force family. I did in fact finish within the 30 minutes I was allotted but cut the question and answer period down to a very short period of time. I thank you all for coming, and happy golf!

(Q&A Session)

General Shaud: We have the councils meeting here, to include the Enlisted Council and others. Concerning the increase in this basic allowance for housing and the way that was distributed, in some places it goes down and evidently in some places up. The question is whether that actually came out of base pay, and whether there was some kind of zero-sum game. Please explain this.

Secretary Peters: We are not going to let it [housing allowance] go down anywhere, as Secretary [of Defense William] Cohen announced this week. The surveys, which were done without the participation of any of the military services, are seriously flawed. They would have people live -- I know at McChord, one of the areas they surveyed, they thought it was just fine for enlisted housing to be in the area that has the highest number of child molesters in the United States, according to the wing commander. I don’t think that is where we ought to be putting our people. This is behind us. It was never intended to be off-setting. It did in fact leave a very sour taste in people’s mouths, one we are going to have to get through. I think we may have taken defeat from the jaws of victory here with this one. But we are in fact going to get that fixed. We are going to the Congress and get the pay done retroactively. We are not going to take down the money in the places it went up, but we are going to reestablish the status quo so we can make sure that we have surveys that are done properly.

General Shaud: In a nutshell, what is going on with the ABL [Airborne Laser]?

Secretary Peters: The ABL is a program which has three kinds of supporters: those who don’t support it at all; those who think it is the greatest thing since sliced bread; and those somewhere in between. Capitol Hill seems to be divided roughly that way. The Air Force thinks it is one of the greatest things since sliced bread, but unfortunately, we don’t make the final decision on the budget. We have delayed the important shootdown test on ABL from FY-03 to about FY-05. We are continuing to fund the program fully in FY-00. We did that to meet an accommodation with those who must be obeyed elsewhere in the Department of Defense, and we did it to make ends meet, because we had to buy some other very important assets like another JSTARS. Balance is the key. ABL is an important asset, but no “irrational exuberance.” We also have to pay our people, who are absolutely our highest priority. We have got to fix LDHD [Low Density/High Demand] and we are working on that. ABL may well be a terrific weapon system, probably will be a terrific weapon system, but something has got to give. We are $3.6 billion short, and ABL is one of those things that gave.

General Shaud: What is your view on anthrax shots?

Secretary Peters: I have had my six shots, too. I have gained some weight, but I don’t think that is from anthrax. I’ve lost some hair, but that was from the hats I wore in the Navy. I think anthrax is not a joking matter. It is one of the most serious problems we have, particularly in General [Anthony C.] Zinni’s AOR [Area of Responsibility] and a number of other places around the world. We know that there have been efforts to weaponize anthrax, to put it in aerosol form, where it can get into the lungs. We know that some of those efforts have probably been successful. It is not easy to do, but it is not beyond the range of capabilities of many countries and many terrorist and other types of groups around the world. If you get exposed to anthrax today, there is over a 99.5 percent chance you will die. In essence, the best medical care is not enough to save your life. If we had better point detectors, which we are working on; if we had some way to know that people had been exposed to anthrax; we do have a course of medical treatment, and that is heavy antibiotics coupled with the very same shots we are asking people to take today. The anthrax vaccine has been proven to be potent, safe, effective. There is a lot of disinformation out on the Web. I agree completely with those who are saying we are facing an information warfare campaign on anthrax. We have bent over backwards. This is a decision that was made only after years of study by people who are our most important military and civilian leaders. It is absolutely essential that people get the shots. Let me say one other thing: it has become popular on some parts of Capitol Hill, but not on others - we have supporters there, too - to suggest it ought to be voluntary, but that is like suggesting we ought to send out those 13-man rifle companies where half the people don’t have helmets on. You can’t do that if you are going to have a team that won’t function with half of its members injured or dead. That is exactly the problem with anthrax. We fight in the Air Force as teams. We must have one team. We cannot have individual members of that team disabled by anthrax. We cannot have team members trying to care for them and not doing the jobs that are otherwise required. I think it is absolutely essential. We are going to continue with the program which makes sure that people going into critical areas of the CENTCOM [Central Command] AOR and Korea get the shots. We are waiting for Bioport [Michigan-based vaccine manufacturer] to come back up on line before expanding that program. But we have enough vaccine that has been proven and reviewed repeatedly, and is safe, effective and approved by FDA [Food and Drug Administration], recommended by Centers for Disease Control, recommended by World Health Organization, to do the trick. And we are going to continue.

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