Defense Week November 4, 2002
Exercise Next Month Could Be Dress Rehearsal For Iraq Attack
BY NATHAN HODGE
In the summer of 1990, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, then head of U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, held a planning exercise called Internal Look.
His timing was prescient. According to CENTCOM's official history, the exercise scenario "eerily paralleled" real events in the Persian Gulf. As Internal Look wound to a close, Saddam Hussein's army occupied Kuwait. The scripted exercise messages resembled real intelligence so closely that they reportedly had to be stamped "Exercise Only." When the command sends staff to the Persian Gulf this December for a week-long reprise of Internal Look, they may be in for a longer stay. Along with staff, CENTCOM is sending a mobile command post that could serve as the nerve center for a possible military campaign against Iraq.
The 1990 Internal Look was the first; this year's exercise is the sixth in the biennial series.
At a briefing last week, CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks told reporters that, this year he will be sending a tactical operations center, or TOC, to the region.
That marks a departure for CENTCOM: Traditionally, the unified commands have not had deployable command-and-control facilities. Although there are some command components in the region, Franks has run the war in Afghanistan largely from a facility at MacDill AFB, in Tampa, Fla.
"Well, over the last year Central Command has built a deployable command and control capability," said Franks. "And what that actually means is containers of communications gear, very large communications pipes that we're able to put in the back of an airplane, fly it a long ways, land it on the ground and then set up a command-and-control complex."
According to Franks, Internal Look is simply an exercise that "gives us the opportunity to deploy that command post. It takes about 600 to 1,000 people to operate it. And the purpose of it is command, control, communications, to be sure that we have the right bandwidth lined up, to be sure that we can talk to our components-by that I mean air component, land component, maritime component and special-operations component. And so that's the piece that will be exercised in early December over in our region."
Franks stressed that sending the TOC to the Persian Gulf did not mean military action was imminent. "It's no more than that [an exercise]. It's no less," he said, although he added: "Does it give us increased capability? You bet."
Asked how long CENTCOM would maintain a forward presence there, Franks said: "Well, we'll make that decision when the time comes."
Setting up shop
Franks said the exercise will take place in a number of countries in the region, although he would not specify where. However, recent reports suggest that CENTCOM headquarters personnel will set up the TOC at Al Udeid airbase in Qatar.
According to a briefing prepared by the Center for Defense Information, a Washington think-tank, that move "would effectively bring the command to a war footing, as occurred when Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf moved the headquarters to Saudi Arabia in August 1990 before Operation Desert Storm."
In fact, senior military planners have already hinted they expect to keep a forward headquarters in the region for some time. In September, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that it "makes sense" that the Pentagon would move a forward headquarters to the region.
The decision to move CENTCOM to Qatar is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's; but Myers made it clear where he stands.
Asked about Myers' comment, Franks said: "I think Gen. Dick Myers' comment was in the category of 'could.' If you look at our footprint in the region-and you're all aware of this-we have had, over the last 12 months, 10 or 15 or 20 different footprints. And when we have this deployable command post established forward, then we have a couple of options. One is we can pack it all up and we can bring it back to Tampa-and we might. Another one is that we could leave it there and leave some people with it, to include some staff officers. That's a possibility. Another is we could leave it there, bring the staff officers home and leave a caretaker detachment with it. And actually, we haven't decided yet which of those courses we'll take."
John Pike, the director of Globalsecurity.org, a defense-research organization, said Internal Look could allow Franks to test methodically the command-and-control capabilities of his subordinate commanders throughout the Gulf states.
"It seems to me this operation is going to take a heck of a lot longer to plan than to execute," he said.
Pike suggested that moving command-and-control facilities from Tampa might also remedy some of the problems encountered during the Afghanistan campaign. According to some reports, there were some problems associated with running the war from a remote location.
"I think that there was some unhappiness about time-zone de-synchronization," said Pike. "They're certainly going to manage to get themselves on the right time zone. They're certainly going to have all their stuff a hop, skip and a jump away."
Copyright 2002 King Communications Group
