ARMORY SHOWDOWN BEGINS IN SENATE; BOND FEELS HE HAS THE VOTES TO PREVENT CLOSINGS

WASHINGTON -- Missouri Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond said Friday the "showdown" to save the Missouri Army National Guard's 1140th Combat Engineer Battalion at Cape Girardeau and 30 other national guard units in the state will begin next week in Washington.

In a telephone conference call with reporters around the state on Friday, Bond and Missouri's adjutant general, Maj. Gen. John M. Kiefner, expressed confidence the Senate Appropriations Committee will reject Pentagon attempts to cut the Guard's manpower nationwide by 136,000 men in the proposed 1992 defense department budget.

Bond said hearings before the Senate Appropriations Committee on the proposed defense budget, which includes the Guard cutbacks, will be held Monday and Wednesday.

"I am confident we have the votes in the appropriations committee," said Bond. "We have the support of the chairman and the ranking member of the committee, who are prepared to place a provision in the defense appropriations bill stopping any cuts in 1992."

Bond, who was instrumental in forming a Senate caucus to oppose cutbacks in the National Guard and now chairs that caucus, said the caucus has the signatures and support of at least 70 senators, including Sen. Robert Byrd, chairman of the appropriations committee, who oppose any cuts in the National Guard.

Bond said people of Missouri count on the National Guard for help during a crisis. "Cutting Guard units would cripple our ability to defend our nation and protect Missourians in times of emergency. I've led this fight in the Senate because I believe the Guard is our most cost-effective and efficient military force," he said. "We need to cut our defense budget, but eliminating our most cost-effective force would be shortsighted. The nation relies too heavily on the Guard for it to be disbanded by the Pentagon."

The House of Representatives passed legislation restoring cuts in the Guard for 1992, but it fails to protect the current Guard structure, including the Missouri units, Bond said.

He said the proposed cutbacks in Missouri would mean the loss of 3,100 Guard and 207 federal positions. The annual economic loss to Missouri communities would exceed $28 million in combined federal and state funds, Bond said.

Among the 29 communities in Missouri that would loose all or part of their Guard units are Cape Girardeau, Jackson, Charleston, Farmington, Fredericktown, Perryville, Portageville, and Sikeston.

The 1140th Engineer Battalion is based at Cape Girardeau, with elements of the battalion situated in the other Southeast Missouri towns.

In Cape Girardeau, the 1140th has 183 members and 11 full-time Army or Guard positions. In the 1990 fiscal year, the unit had a total economic impact of over $1.5 million. The Jackson unit has 72 members and two full-time positions and an annual economic impact of just over $600,000.

There are currently 457,000 guardsmen in units throughout the United States. The Department of Defense wants to cut that number to a little over 300,000 in order to reduce the defense budget.

Bond and Kiefner said the proposed cutbacks were made without any thought toward the impact on state and local communities, and the Guard's operational efficiency.

"There is no rationale to the cuts," said Kiefner, who added he was never consulted by the Pentagon on which guard units in Missouri should be eliminated.

Bond said the proposed cuts would wipe out the 1140th Engineer Battalion and its subordinate units in Southeast Missouri. He said the proposed cuts come at a time when there is an increasing risk of a major earthquake occurring along the New Madrid Fault in the next 10-15 years.

Kiefner said the Department of Defense planners selected the 1140th for elimination even though the battalion was praised by the Pentagon for the outstanding performance of its mission last year in Central America.

"When the cuts were made, they took out some of our best Guard units, and eliminated all of the Guard units in Southeast Missouri, at a time when everybody is talking about the next New Madrid earthquake," said Kiefner. "Obviously, the Pentagon planners who thought up these cuts never considered the threat of a major earthquake in this part of the state, or other local conditions."

Bond and Kiefner agreed that some cutbacks in active, reserve and National Guard military units will be necessary in the next several years. But they said the cuts should be made thoughtfully and rationally, with input from the states as to which units should be eliminated.

"We recognize the Guard budget has to be cut," said Bond. "But it is clear from the arbitrary nature of the cuts announced by the Pentagon that they had not thought through the need for the National Guard in the interests of national security, or the needs of Missouri to respond to emergency situations."

Bond said although the breakup of the Soviet Union into smaller republics has lessened chances of a major war in Europe or the Far East, "the recent attempted coup proves that change is still possible, and there is no assurance as the former Soviet Union goes through a breakup that a new threat may not emerge.

"No one can say for sure where the next significant threat will come from," Bond added, referring to such third-world countries as Libya that have a history of terrorism.

Bond said that, as former Missouri governor, he called on the Guard to assist in emergency operations, including ones in response to the February 1979 blizzard that buried most of Cape Girardeau and Perry counties and parts of Scott County under 24 inches of snow. It was guardsmen operating bulldozers, front-end loaders and dump trucks that literally "plowed" their way into the area to reopen snow-clogged streets in Cape Girardeau and rural roads and highways.

Bond said the performance of Missouri guardsmen in Operation Desert Storm "showed very well that what we have worked for the past 20 years, to put Guard and active (Army) components on the battlefield, works."

He said the United States was able to put National Guard units on the battlefield for about one-third the cost of active Army units. "The Guard can play a vital role and mission at much less cost than active-duty units, as far as future cuts are concerned," he said.

Bond pointed out the total National Guard budget is only 10 percent of the Pentagon defense budget.

Following the conference call, a Bond aide speculated the appropriations committee will likely recommend a more modest cutback of about 47,000 guardsmen in the new defense budget. That would reduce total National Guard strength to about 410,000.

Kiefner credited strong grassroots support in Missouri for the National Guard with helping in the fight to save Guard units in the state. "The people knew what was going on, and they told their congressmen," he said.