3% MILITARY PAY RAISE PART OF SPENDING PLAN\Defense-budget proposal to be unveiled Monday.

Byline: Associated Press 

While putting off increased weapons spending for several years, President Clinton's $243 billion defense budget includes a 3 percent military pay raise for 1997, according to documents obtained Friday.

Service personnel also would get raises of 3.1 percent in subsequent years under the Pentagon budget plan that Clinton is scheduled to unveil Monday.

Documents obtained by the Associated Press indicate that Clinton will continue, even as overall defense spending declines, to emphasize combat readiness and improved quality of life for soldiers, sailors and airmen.

The documents show two conflicting figures for defense spending for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1: $243.4 billion and $242.6 billion. That compares with $246 billion that Clinton requested for this year and $253 billion that Congress authorized.

Defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the lower figure is more accurate because it excludes some spending not traditionally counted as part of the defense budget.

Under the plan for the fiscal year that will begin Oct. 1, military manpower would decline by a relatively slight 25,000 to a total of 1.46 million. That would leave an additional 39,000 to be cut in future years to reach the floor of 1.42 million under the military's strategic blueprint.

Selected reserve strength would drop by 30,000 to 901,000. Department of Defense civilian employment would drop by 34,000 to 807,000. The documents indicate that long-planned military manpower reductions are all but complete. But the Pentagon plans to cut civilian employment by a further 79,000 after 1997.

In 1997, the budget will support 10 active-duty Army divisions, four Marine Corps divisions, 357 ships, 20 Air Force fighter wings and 11 aircraft carriers and one on reserve.

Clinton seeks $1.1 billion for ongoing military contingency operations, including $590 million for operations over northern and southern Iraq and $542 million for operations in and around Bosnia.

Among quality-of-life initiatives, the budget seeks funding to build, replace or improve 42 barracks and 6,400 housing units for military families.

Other major requests in the Clinton defense budget plan include: $2.8 billion for ballistic missile defense; $2 billion for continued development of the F-22 fighter; $600 million for continued development of the Joint Advanced Strike Technology fighter; $2.6 billion for 12 upgraded Navy F-18 E and F model fighters; $1.1 billion for four V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft for the Marine Corps; $800 million toward a new attack submarine; $2.3 billion for eight C-17 Globemaster cargo planes; and $3.4 billion for four DDG-51 Aegis-class destroyers.

Reached Friday, Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Clinton appeared to be ignoring Congress, which added $7 billion to this year's defense budget. Thurmond predicted that Congress would add $14 to Clinton's 1997 plan.

"I am concerned that last year's defense budget gains, enacted by Congress, which restored and maintained the current and future readiness of our armed forces, have been traded off," Thurmond said.

Weapons spending would remain at a 45-year low, while spending for research and development would decline until almost the end of the decade under Clinton's proposal.

"Defense spending will continue to decline for the foreseeable future," predicted Andrew Krepinevich, director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington-based think tank that examines defense policy.

A fairly rapid decline in defense spending since the peak years of the Reagan buildup "is beginning to bottom out, but not this year," he said.

But with Clinton's plan laying out only slight defense spending increases beginning in 1999, the Pentagon faces a problem.

"How do you keep the . . . force level, keep readiness up, while also increasing weapons procurement?" Krepinevich asked.

Brookings Institution defense analyst Lawrence Korb, who has criticized defense spending as excessive, said the $7 billion added to this year's defense budget by the Republican-controlled Congress finances weapons that Clinton had planned to buy in later years. As a result, Clinton can afford to ask for less in those years because the Republicans have provided it in advance.

Others, however, predict a crunch, probably after the November election.

"I suspect these guys are going to try to slide by the election," said Baker Spring, a defense budget analyst with the Heritage Foundation. He said the issue probably will become major in the post-election budget presentation.