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Nickles Questions Rumsfeld on Crusader WASHINGTON - The second-ranking Senate Republican, whose home state of Oklahoma would have assembled an $11 billion artillery system the Pentagon wants to kill, said Sunday that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has not justified his decision about the Crusader program. 2002-05-12 Pentagon Kills $11B Army Program WASHINGTON - The Pentagon killed the $11 billion Crusader artillery program Wednesday, a major step in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's effort to weed out Cold War-era weapons projects in favor of more-futuristic arms technologies. ``This decision is not about any one weapon system, but merely about a strategy of warfare, a strategy that drives the choices that we must make about how best to prepare our total forces for the future,'' Rumsfeld said. Some members of Congress said they would fight to revive the program, but Rumsfeld predicted his decision would prevail. ``When the dust settles, we'll find that Crusader has been ended,'' he told a Pentagon news conference. It is the first major weapons program Rumsfeld has decided to kill, although others may be in jeopardy. They include the Army's Comanche helicopter and the Marine Corps' V-22 Osprey aircraft. The Army fiercely opposed killing Crusader, a 40-ton artillery cannon designed to close what the Army calls a capabilities gap between its heavy artillery and that of China and North Korea. It is not yet in production, and the first Crusader systems would not be in the field until 2008. Army Secretary Thomas White, the service's top civilian official, has called Crusader critical to the Army's future. His job appeared in jeopardy early this week when it was revealed that someone at Army headquarters had lobbied Congress to save the program after Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told White that Rumsfeld intended to drop it from the budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1. Rumsfeld exonerated White on Tuesday, and the Army secretary appeared at Rumsfeld's news conference to say he would support the Crusader decision. The preliminary finding in an Army investigation was that a midlevel official in the Army's office of legislative affairs sent written arguments, or ``talking points,'' to members of Congress last week that included an assertion that failure to field Crusader would cost American lives in combat. That official, whose name was not disclosed, offered his resignation to White on Wednesday, according to another official close to the situation who spoke on condition he not be identified. White publicly disavowed the materials. ``The comments in the talking points were offensive to me, offensive to the United States Army, did not reflect our position at all, and when we complete the report and discuss it with the secretary of defense, appropriate action will be taken,'' White said. The fate of the Crusader has not been White's only battle. He is under investigation for his contacts with former colleagues at Enron Corp., where he served as a senior executive before taking the Army job, and for his use of a military plane to conduct personal business. Asked Wednesday whether in hindsight he would have acted differently in those cases, White replied, ``I guess I would have, yes.'' The debate over Crusader is emblematic of tensions between the military and its civilian overseers on the difficult question of how, and in what form, the nation's armed forces should adapt to meet post-Cold War challenges. The military is wary of giving up too much in near-term modernization for the sake of investing in technologies that may not become available for a decade or more. ``This is a good choice,'' Rumsfeld said. ``We will see it through to the end.'' Some in Congress whose states stand to benefit from Crusader outlays have promised to fight Rumsfeld's decision. ``Our uniformed soldiers' testimony has been unambiguous and voluminous: Crusader is required for protecting ground forces,'' said Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla. ``We fully plan to press ahead with the legislative fight to save the Crusader,'' said a spokesman for Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. Crusader was to have been assembled in Oklahoma and based there at Fort Sill. The contractor on the project is United Defense Industries Inc., controlled by the Carlyle Group Inc., an investment firm led by Frank Carlucci, a former defense secretary. About $2 billion has been spent on the project so far, and plans were to have spent an additional $9 billion. Dan Goure, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, a think tank, said, ``I would bet that Rumsfeld will win out, but I think it's going to be a fight.'' Bush put $475 million for the Crusader in his proposed 2003 defense budget, and Rumsfeld said his decision to cancel the program means he and the Army must figure out how to spend that money elsewhere. AP On the Net: Crusader: http://www.teamcrusader.com/ 2002-05-08 Headlines Nickles Questions Rumsfeld on Crusader 2002-05-12 Pentagon Kills $11B Army Program 2002-05-08 Most-viewed

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