The Defense Revolution: Strategy for the Brave New World.

• Author: Morrison, David C.

The Defense Revolution: Strategy for the Brave New World

Kenneth L. Adelman, Norman R. Augustine, ICS Press, $19.95. Whole herds of hobby horses are ridden to exhaustion in the six chapters of this book expounding on geostrategy and military policy, six "myths" about the defense acquisition system, five "realities" that must be addressed if that system is to be fixed, and seven "memos to policymakers," ranging from George Bush to Mikhail Gorbachev, from the U.S. Congress to the defense industry.

It's no surprise, considering the source, that this book is indignantly supportive of that industry. Augustine is chairman of the defense-industrial titan, Martin-Marietta Corp., and Adelman directed the U.S. Arms Control Agency throughout the Reagan regency. The authors may be right in arguing that changes in budgets, the political climate, and procurement rules mean that defense contracting is now far less of a money lode than it was during the first half of the roaring eighties. It is also true that alleged waste and fraud on such highly publicized items as $7,000 coffee pots do not consume as much of the $300 billion annual defense budget as many critics want to believe.

But the authors also badly overplay their hand. "Actions taken to monitor America's defense industry," for example, are compared to the political terror unleashed by "the Red Guard during its heyday in communist China." Hmmm . . . none of Augustine's colleagues have yet been frog-marched through the streets in dunce caps to be jeered at by the populace. But in the face of such egregious abuses as the one that forced the Marine Corps to stand down Harrier jump jets during the Persian Gulf crisis thanks to fraudulent parts testing by Northrup Corp., Red Guard tactics don't sound all that extreme.

Some readers may also find rather self-serving the discussion of "techflation," the phenomenon by which the mounting unit costs of advanced weaponry far exceed the rate of dollar inflation. (Adelman and Augustine don't address the military's thus far unfulfilled promises that cheaper operating costs for these new weapons will compensate for their much higher procurement costs.) What this means, we are told, is that a no-real-growth defense budget, accounting for both inflation and techflation, must actually increase annually in nominal terms by 7.9 percent. To deal with this steady erosion of buying power, of course, the authors come down firmly in favor of cutting force structure while...