GlobalSecurity.org In the News

Washington Post
December 20, 2002
Pg. 45

By Vernon Loeb and Bradley Graham, Washington Post Staff Writers

The U.S. military is poised to begin a rapid and visible buildup of forces in the Persian Gulf early next month involving 50,000 combat troops, aircraft, armor and tens of thousands of reservists, senior defense officials said.

The escalation would give President Bush the option of beginning combat operations in late January or early February, after the United Nations Security Council meets Jan. 27 to hear the first substantive report from Hans Blix, the U.N.'s chief weapons inspector, on whether Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.

One senior defense official said the Pentagon had been moving heavy equipment for months as part of a buildup that was kept low key to avoid alarming the international community and creating the impression that the Bush administration had prejudged the U.N. arms inspection process.

"But without a doubt, within the next week or so, you'll see more muscle movements than you've seen up to now," the official said. "We've been below the threshold of pain of the international community. I think you're going to see a strategy change to one of demonstrated resolve, if not overt coercion."

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the buildup would clearly place added pressure on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to disarm. "There are things you could do in the military that will aid in the diplomacy," Myers told reporters accompanying him on a four-day trip to meet with troops in Qatar, Afghanistan and Kuwait. He spoke last night during a refueling stop at Shannon, Ireland.

Myers said he knows of no timetable for deciding whether to go to war. "The president hasn't given us a hint of any date yet."

In Washington, defense officials said there was far more heavy equipment in the region than has been reported, even with the Pentagon acknowledging the presence of about 60,000 troops and 400 aircraft at bases in Turkey, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain. Two 62,000-ton cargo ships, the USNS Watson and the USNS Charlton, sailed into the Gulf without fanfare within the past 10 days, another official said.

Statistics provided by the Pentagon show that cargo ships have moved almost 1.6 million square feet of materiel from the United States and the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia to the Persian Gulf since Oct. 1, including 1,290 20-foot containers loaded with ammunition, 18,130 tons of ammunition not in containers, tanker trucks, helicopters, bridge sections and watercraft.

But movement from the United States of fighter wings and heavy ground divisions, and the potential redeployment of aircraft carriers from U.S. ports, will be far harder to conceal than the departures of the cargo ships, because they will have immediate impact on thousands of families and dozens of communities, officials said.

The prepositioning that has taken place to date, another defense official said, was designed to reduce the time necessary to assemble an invasion force from four to six months to four to six weeks or less. The official said 200,000 to 250,000 reservists could be necessary, not only to support a military campaign, but also to fulfill security missions at bases in the United States that did not exist during the Persian Gulf War 11 years ago.

"We're flowing forces now," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday on CNN's "Larry King Live." "Every day that goes by, obviously, our capability to move faster and somewhat better improves."

Analysts inside and outside the government expect next month's buildup to use Air Force C-17 and C-5 wide-body airlifters and 41 cargo ships from the Military Sealift Command to move armored, mechanized and air-mobile Army Divisions based in the United States and Germany. A brigade from the 3rd Infantry Division, based at Fort Stewart, Ga., is already in Kuwait, and the division's commander said his entire force was ready to deploy if called.

Army officials in Europe are also assuming that forces from the 1st Armored Division and the 1st Infantry Division, based in Germany, will deploy, in addition to the Southern European Task Force, an airborne brigade based in Italy. "There are certainly some attractive features to the geographic location," one defense official said. "You're halfway there."

The 101st Airborne Division, based at Fort Campbell, Ky., is also likely to deploy with dozens of Apache helicopter gunships and Black Hawk troop transports. "If you're talking about war with Iraq," the official said, "you're going to need a certain amount of mobility and a certain amount of firepower, like the 101st. There is no other division that has the kind of air mobility they have."

The buildup is also expected to involved elements of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, with 17,500 troops, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif. It has been told to be ready to move as soon as the first of the year.

The Air Force is expected to move F-117 stealth fighters, which played a critical role in the opening of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico to Al Jaber air base in Kuwait. The Air Force has already signaled that it intends to use its other stealth aircraft, the B-2 bomber, from new maintenance shelters on Diego Garcia and from bases in Britain. B-52 and B-1 bombers also would fly from Diego Garcia and Britain.

Additional F-16 and F-15 fighter wings based in the United States are also expected to be deployed. One retired Air Force officer said he expected the opening night of any air war that President Bush might order to include 500 to 1,000 sorties, with most aircraft capable of striking multiple targets per mission with precision-guided bombs.

The Navy already has two aircraft carriers deployed, with the USS Constellation in the Persian Gulf and the Harry S. Truman in the Mediterranean. The USS Kitty Hawk, based in Yokosuka, Japan, is within a week's sail of Iraq. But the Navy could have as many as six carriers in the region fairly quickly, most likely basing three in the Red Sea and three in the Persian Gulf. There are 50 fighter aircraft on each carrier, and each aircraft can strike as many as six targets per flight.

The British, meanwhile, are preparing to move forces to the Gulf. The Defense Ministry this week took steps to contract with large merchant ships to carry armored vehicles and supplies. The Daily Telegraph in London quoted defense sources as saying that Royal Marines would be sent to the Gulf in January "amid increasing signs of plans for an amphibious landing in southern Iraq."

One critical aspect of the U.S. military's buildup to date in the Persian Gulf is the presence of numerous headquarters units. While all but about 40 personnel from the U.S. Central Command have returned from Qatar to their headquarters in Tampa after a war-gaming exercise called Internal Look, all of Central Command's mobile headquarters equipment remains operational in Qatar.

The headquarters of the Army's 5th Corps deployed from Germany to Kuwait in October, around the time that the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force headquarters deployed from Camp Pendleton to Kuwait. The Central Command's Army, Navy, Air force and Marine component commanders are all now deployed in the theater.

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