http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001228/pl/bush_defense_dc_1.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When George W. Bush becomes president and commander-in-chief of the U.S. military on Jan. 20, he could quickly find that putting new muscle in an overworked armed force is more easily promised than done.

Analysts say the current $310 billion defense budget will increase under Bush, but it is unlikely he can add perhaps hundreds of billions over the next four years for new arms, more troops and higher pay while giving Americans a tax cut and building a costly, unproven National Missile Defense (NMD).

The military of the world's only remaining superpower has shrunk from 2.1 million a decade ago to 1.4 million today, and the top brass are warning that growing non-combat missions such as Balkans peacekeeping are sapping U.S. readiness to fight two wars at once.

``Even in good financial times, it磗 going to be tough to get any big increases in military spending while there is peace and no unbeatable enemy on the horizon,创 said former Assistant Defense Secretary Larry Korb, now with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Some Pentagon leaders say that as much as $100 billion extra a year may be needed for the defense budget in order to replace aging Cold War weapons and get the force in trim to carry out the Pentagon's current two-conflict mandate.

Bush campaigned on promises to raise spending on high-tech weapons, give troops better pay and conditions and push an ambitious NMD program to protect the United States and allies from missile attack by ``rogue创 nations, even if it means scrapping the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.

That missile defense, bitterly opposed by Moscow and Beijing and causing major concern among European allies, would cost well over $60 billion. Meanwhile, two of the previous three attempts to shoot down test missiles have failed.

Rumsfeld Well Placed

Bush's choice to be the next defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, is well placed to deal with the thorny question of deploying a missile defense. He headed a bipartisan commission that in mid-1998 concluded that U.S. intelligence had underestimated the missile threat to the United States. As defense secretary, he will work closely with the rest of a Bush national security team that masterminded the U.S.-led victory in the 1991 Gulf War under the president-elect's father, former President George Bush.

Vice President-elect Dick Cheney was defense secretary and Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell was chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff during the war.

Powell told reporters after his nomination as secretary of state was announced that ``we will defend our interests from a position of strength,创 especially against nations that pursue nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

``We will not be afraid of them. We will not be frightened by them. We will meet them. We will match them. We will contend with them,创 he said.

Bush and Cheney won a close election partly on a promise to curb U.S. peacekeeping, humanitarian and other non-combat military deployments and re-hone the force for its traditional tasks of fighting and winning wars.

Bush charged that ``our military has been over-extended, taken for granted and neglected创 in eight years under President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. But the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army Gen. Henry Shelton, warned in a recent speech that it was ``naive创 to believe that America could stop taking part in peacekeeping and other efforts if America was to retain its global authority and influence as a superpower.

Instead, Shelton and other military leaders have tentatively called for increases in the number of troops -- a move which would greatly boost basic costs in, pay, arms, logistical support and health care. One major immediate task faced by the new defense secretary will be the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, or ``QDR,创 a study undertaken every four years to make sure that strategy and forces are well-matched.

The study, beginning in January, will determine if the current policy of being prepared to win two major wars virtually at once should be retained or modified.

Money Needed

Bush and Cheney promised only $54 billion in total extra funding for the armed forces over the next decade, a figure far short of what many defense experts say is needed.

The spending problems are certain to be complicated by an even split between Bush's Republican Party and opposition Democrats in the Senate and a wafer-thin Republican plurality in the House of Representatives after the November election.

The Texas governor has not openly challenged the ongoing permanent deployment of 100,000 U.S. troops in Europe and 100,000 in the Asia-Pacific, but has vowed to stop using the military for what he calls ``nation-building创 abroad.

Such a reversal, including the president-elect's call for removal of 12,000 U.S. peacekeepers from the troubled Balkans as soon as practical, has raised concerns among NATO allies about alliance-backed stability in Kosovo and Bosnia.

But Bush has more recently softened that threat, indicating that his national security team will work closely with the allies in both peace and conflict.

Despite promises to quickly improve U.S. fighting readiness, Bush and his team suggested during the campaign that it might be smart to skip the next generation of planned Pentagon weapons -- ranging from warplanes to submarines -- and instead vault ahead to even more futuristic arms.

Bush did not make clear what such a move -- certain to be opposed by military leaders -- would entail.

That could call into question the Pentagon's $200 billion Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, a plan to build up to 3,000 new attack jets for the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and British Royal Navy.

U.S. aerospace giants Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co are fighting to win the JSF contract, which could be awarded as early as next year, but Bush advisers have suggested that his national security team will completely revisit expensive new aircraft programs.

Another planned $40 billion military program currently in trouble is the V-22 tilt-rotor helicopter, built jointly by Boeing and the Bell Helicopter division of Textron Inc .

Two Marine Corps versions of the revolutionary aircraft have crashed this year, killing 23 Marines and causing an indefinite delay in any decision to go forward with initial full-scale production of the swivel-engine aircraft.