Army Plans to Shut Down 50 ROTC Units

WASHINGTON —  The Army said Friday that it would close 50 ROTC units in 27 states as part of a broad plan to reduce the service.

The closings, effective at the end of the 1990-91 academic year, will affect students at colleges and universities mostly in the Northeast and Midwest.

G. Kim Wincup, assistant Army secretary for manpower and reserve affairs, said closing the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps units was deemed necessary in light of the Army’s plan to cut its overall active-duty strength by 20% over the next five years.

“It’s a pretty painful process for the Army,” he said. “We just need fewer lieutenants to come on active duty.”

Wincup said the Army also faces increasing budget pressures as Congress tries to reshape the nation’s defenses in line with a collapsing military threat from the Eastern Bloc.

The elimination of 50 ROTC units will save the Army about $23 million a year, Wincup said, and will cost the jobs of 740 Army personnel.

He said he could not estimate how many cadets would be affected, but he said the Army’s aim was to reduce the total number of graduating ROTC cadets from about 7,800 a year to about 6,000 a year.

After the 50 ROTC units are closed, the Army will have 363 units left in 50 states and the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon was threatened Friday with a 25% cut in the personnel of all its intelligence-related agencies unless it moves swiftly to eliminate duplicate programs, uneven security and inadequate sharing of information.

The Senate Armed Services Committee voted to impose the cut over a five-year period starting in fiscal 1992 to underscore its impatience with rising intelligence costs in the Defense Department and its insistence on significant steps to cut them back by March 1.

In a companion move, the Senate Intelligence Committee assailed wasteful Pentagon intelligence spending in its report Friday on the 1991 intelligence authorization bill.

“Every echelon” from the office of the secretary of defense, to the Army, the Navy and Air Force, to the regional commanders in chief around the globe and the units below them “have their own organic intelligence arms,” the Intelligence Committee said. “For each organization, we need separate buildings, separate administration, separate security, separate communications and separate support services.”