Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
Q:
There were some problems, I think, with the long-range security program at this point. So,
you didn't have too much relationship with those problems or knowledge about them?
A:
I went to a meeting where there was a lot of hollering and cussing back and forth between
EUCOM and EUD. My recollection of that was thinking that people from EUCOM at that
time were rather unrealistic in their expectations and demands. They had a responsibility as
the user and they were reflecting narrow user views without accommodating practicalities
and changes. In other words, if something wasn't going to work, they had a requirement to sit
down and interact with EUD as part of the modifications to the concept so that it would be
something that would work, as opposed to just staying out of the issue and then criticizing
EUD for something that wasn't going to work. That was a very complicated arena with lots
of different issues, many of which were site specific. So, there was EUD and EUCOM and
ISAE who would go site-by-site and look at the problems and try to work out solutions.
Q:
Was that program, the security program, primarily for nuclear weapons, or did it have other
components as well?
A:
I think the answer is yes, primarily for nuclear weapons. It may have had other components
as well, but I'm really not positive.
Q:
Of course, this had a lot of visibility because of the German terrorists during that time and
the anxieties about storage of U.S. nuclear and conventional weapons too. There's another
program I've run into called the Facilities Modernization Program. Are you familiar with that
program?
A:
That was a program that, I believe, if I have the right label, started with using facilities
modernization funds, German funds, and put them into barracks to fix them up. We had
talked about a facilities modernization program from the standpoint of rolling all things in
just to focus on modernizing everything that needed to be modernized, and we tied that in
with the master restationing plan, as well. So, we tried to package everything that had been
there before and to call it the Facilities Modernization Program.
With the way you're using the term, I'm not sure if you're really addressing the earliest
attempts called Modernization of U.S. Facilities, which was a program of its own, or how
modernization programs later were amalgamated and brought together. By the time I had
gone back as DCSENGR in '87, facilities modernization had many components--had a
maintenance shed component, had a "get the tanks out of the mud" component--that is, pave
motor pool areas. So, it was a way of addressing what was a number of programs and
deficiencies, trying to allocate funds against them, so much each year, so that we could be
working against the backlog.
We could always represent to our higher-ups in the Department of the Army and then to
Congress that, "We have so many square meters of motor pool space that need to be paved.
Right now, it's on gravel and mud. We are programming this next year for this many at this
many million dollars, so we will accomplish 3 percent of it," or whatever. Then we would be
able to show progress against a backlog, whereas before we were just out saying, "We got to
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