Tomcat Wins Its Toughest Dogfight - Bureaucratic Politics Saves the F-14D.

摘要

The Navy's procurement program for the Grumman F-14D fighter is alive today, albeit it has a terminal disease. The FY-90 defense budget funds 18 Tomcats, but the appropriation legislation includes a 'poison pill' statement that terminates the production when the 18th aircraft rolls off the line. How did the $1.3 billion procurement program get resurrected in the congressional budget process after it had been cancelled by the Department of Defense (DoD) to meet a White House - Congress agreement on defense cuts. Bureaucratic politics saved the F-14D and gave it another life. President Reagan's lame-duck budget, sent to the Hill in January 1989, included funding for 24 F-14Ds. The 5-year DoD plan projected a total buy in excess of 100 aircraft. In April, however, Defense Secretary Cheney cancelled the F-14D under congressional pressure to reduce by $10 billion the FY-90 defense budget he inherited. He proposed instead to upgrade existing F-14s to the more capable 'D' configuration. Cheney's decision ignited an intense debate in congress in which officials clashed, interest groups were mobilized, alliances played heavily, and deals were struck. Cheney was fighting to establish his authority to control the DoD budget; Congress was fighting to exert their independence on budget issues and to save Grumman Aircraft. The House defeated Cheney's proposal and reinstated the aircraft; the Senate sustained his decision. The final funding decision was a compromise, politically engineered by a joint conference committee. It was by no measure an optimum solution. None of the parties could claim total victory, but all could say they didn't lose. The F- 14D debate is a great case study in bureaucratic politics. The author's objectives in this essay are to reconstruct this debate and, using the bureaucratic model, to analyze the decision-making process from the bureaucratic politics perspective.