Quits Pentagon but Not Arms Arena : Richard DeLauer: New Job, Same Bluntness

Until three months ago, Richard D. DeLauer was among the most powerful--and outspoken--of Pentagon officials, overseeing contracts worth tens of billions of dollars to U.S. defense companies and contributing his two cents whenever he saw fit.

After four years as undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, however, the 66-year-old California native resigned, saying that he and his wife wanted to return home “to spend time with our grandchildren.”

But DeLauer, a 45-year veteran of the U.S. military establishment, says he is not about to quit the defense arena. During an interview in his Century City apartment last week, the former TRW Inc. vice president said he has opened a “one-man” consulting firm in Los Angeles and Washington D.C. to advise “friends in the aerospace business” on the “most fruitful areas” in defense markets.

The “friends” who DeLauer says contribute to an already booming business include Pittsburgh-based Rockwell Corp.; Plessey Co. Ltd., a multinational electronics company based in Essex, England, and Matra, a French electronics conglomerate whose major activities are in military and space work.

“You can take DeLauer out of the Pentagon,” he says with a laugh, “but you can’t take the Pentagon out of DeLauer.” With characteristic candor, DeLauer talked about the uncertain future of the controversial Sgt. York anti-aircraft gun, the brighter prospects for getting the MX missile through Congress, the certainty of military spending cuts and a host of other defense issues.

Like scores of others who have devoted their life to defense, DeLauer has been on both sides of the revolving door of the military-industrial complex many times, serving in a variety of private and government jobs. Like many, he is banking that those years of military experience give him the expertise and contacts to become a successful consultant in his retirement years.

DeLauer’s frankness, especially during his latest stint at the Pentagon, distinguishes him from many of his peers, however. In an Administration keen to stifle public exposure of internal dissent and snafus, he became known as an official unafraid to speak his mind or to answer his own telephone, acts unthinkable to most Pentagon officials. Yet, he says he demanded from his own staff “absolute loyalty” and abstinence from public debate.

“My motto is: Ready. Aim. Fire,” he said. “Which is not to say you can’t hit something.”

He has hit plenty. He has publicly disagreed with Reagan Administration officials who want greater censorship of academic research. He has called Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger’s attempt to freeze spending on the Sgt. York gun “an election-year tactic.” He has more than once angered congressmen critical of weapons or overpriced spare parts by responding that they “simply don’t understand what they are talking about.”

Although he rails at dissidents within the Pentagon who have taken cases of mismanagement and overpricing to the public, he has often made Pentagon officials squirm with his public statements. “Weinberger might have thought I was a pain in the neck at times,” he concedes with a shrug.

But he defends his own outspokenness, insisting he never really angered the Reagan Administration or was under any pressure to resign.

“I just tell the truth,” he says. “Everybody has their ego, but I knew more about the procurement and the technical problems in the Pentagon than anybody else. I had more experience.”

As an undersecretary in charge of the Pentagon’s research arm, DeLauer controlled weapons procurement policy and awarded contracts for development of new technology, from artificial intelligence to lethal lasers to nuclear bombs.

He was a key coordinator of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the so-called Star Wars program. He was chief architect of a controversial plan to speed up weapons production by eliminating many of the time-consuming quality-control tests traditionally performed at each step of production.

Views on York Gun

Just one weapon is being developed under the plan--the Army’s politically embattled Sgt. York tank-mounted gun system, a $4.5-billion system being built by a subsidiary of the Ford Motor Co. in Newport Beach--and it has caused a firestorm.

The gun’s ability to protect front-line troops from low-flying aircraft has come under such heavy attack in Congress and the Pentagon, in fact, that Defense Secretary Weinberger last fall froze spending for the program pending further testing this summer.

DeLauer insists that the Sgt. York gun--and the accelerated program--are a success, but he will not speculate on the weapon’s ability to survive the next round of defense cuts.

“I think (Sgt. York) has become a political football, and I don’t know what’s going to happen to it,” he says. Acknowledging that pressure is mounting for budget cuts, he says, “Cap Weinberger, to show that he is really in control, is going to have to kill a weapons system program. People are starting to beat the drum in that direction.”

He says that, if he had the Sgt. York program to start over again, he would change the caliber of the ammunition from the current 40 millimeters to 35 millimeters, which is the standard used in other NATO weapons. The inability of the gun to use NATO ammunition has been a major criticism of the weapon since its inception eight years ago.

DeLauer is more optimistic about the MX missile program, saying he bets that Congress will approve funding for 21 MX missiles under consideration for the current fiscal year. He makes no prediction about the 48 missiles scheduled for a vote next year, however, and instead sounds a warning for the entire weapons industry.

Budget Limits

“I think the biggest problem (facing the defense companies) is that there will be a limit soon to the growth of the defense budget,” he says. With fewer dollars, he says, the Pentagon should reduce spending on airplanes and submarines and concentrate on research for the next generation of technology.

DeLauer says his tenure as undersecretary of defense was a swan song to government. “That’s the freedom of having a terminal assignment,” he said. “I wasn’t afraid of doing something that might preclude me from getting a different assignment. I was interested only in that job and doing the best I could.”

Despite some bruised egos, he says, he believes he was never really at odds with the White House. In fact, he says, he finds President Reagan to have “the most balanced view” of anyone in the military establishment, especially on the matter of Star Wars.

Assailing the “liberal” bias of the media and those within the Pentagon who “snitch” to the public, DeLauer says he thinks the military would be more efficient and the price of defense less steep if the Pentagon weren’t shackled by the cumbersome debate and dissent inherent in a democracy such as the United States.

“(The press) complains that the Pentagon is stumbling all the time,” he says. “If you had tighter control over the organization and over organization loyalty, by God, you could really get on with the job,” he says. “My view is if you don’t like it, quit and then complain.”