- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
aircraft carrier Constellation with 72 warplanes aboard will head for the
Gulf on Nov. 2, the latest piece in a quiet U.S. buildup off Iraq, Navy
officials said on Friday.
-
- The 88,000-ton Constellation, based in San Diego, will
be the third U.S. carrier in the region. It was sticking to a schedule
worked out at least nine months ago, and not being accelerated due to the
Iraqi crisis, the officials said.
-
- Two other U.S. carrier battle groups -- the Abraham Lincoln
and the George Washington -- are already in striking distance of Iraq.
A fourth carrier, the Harry S. Truman, is to head out in early December
from its homeport in Norfolk, Virginia.
-
- A fifth, the San Diego-based Nimitz, could be deployed
as early as late December and a sixth, the Yokosuka, Japan-based Kitty
Hawk, also could be brought to bear quickly, said Patrick Garrett, who
is tracking deployments for <http://rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/nm/ts_nm/inlinks/*http://GlobalSecurity.org>GlobalSecurity.org,
an Alexandria, Virginia-based research group.
-
- Citing security concerns, a spokeswoman for the Navy's
San Diego-based 3rd Fleet, Commander Jacqueline Yost, confirmed only that
the Constellation battle group had begun final pre-deployment war games
off the U.S. West Coast and would head out by year's end. The deployment
date was first reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune.
-
- The Constellation is due to relieve the Lincoln; the
Truman to replace the Washington. But the carriers' normal six-month deployments
could be extended to boost U.S. firepower off Iraq if ordered by commanders,
Navy officials said.
-
- "We no longer want to use the Gulf war method of
buildup," Navy Rear Adm. Stanley Szemborski, deputy director of the
Pentagon office overseeing U.S. military modernization, told a conference
on national security on Thursday.
-
- The Pentagon took more than six months to assemble its
forces before launching the U.S.-led war that drove Iraqi invaders from
Kuwait in 1991.
-
- "We want our forces and our capabilities to be forward,"
Szemborski said at the conference sponsored by Tufts' University and the
U.S. Marine Corps. "From this forward posture, we want our forces
to be able to transition rapidly to an effects-based campaign in order
to either swiftly defeat or decisively defeat."
-
- DIFFERENT LEVELS OF SUCCESS
-
- An "effects-based" campaign is jargon for precision-strike
capabilities designed to take out targets while minimizing spillover to
civilians. 'Decisively defeat' means to bring about a regime change. 'Swiftly
defeat' stops short of occupying territory or doing away with an enemy
government.
-
- While Szemborski was speaking about a generic buildup,
his remarks illustrated the thinking behind military preparations for fighting
in Iraq if ordered to do so by President Bush.
-
- "All this is to say there have been significant
changes in the strategy and in the planning which will have real impact
on the way we fight," he said.
-
- In other recent movements, headquarters units of the
Army's Heidelberg, Germany-based V Corps have been ordered to Kuwait along
with a tank-killing AH-64 Apache unit and an aviation task force.
-
- "Select forces" from the First Marine Expeditionary
Force are also deploying to the region in support of the U.S. war on terror,
said Marine Major Jeff Nyhart, a spokesman at Camp Pendleton, California.
-
- The Marines will take part in a biennial exercise, dubbed
Internal Look and run by the U.S. Central Command, which would coordinate
any U.S. attack on Iraq.
-
- The command-post exercise, to begin next month, will
test communications and control among component commanders, said Navy Lt.
Cmdr. Nick Balice, said a spokesman for the Tampa, Florida-based Central
Command.
-
- The Central Command has moved its deployable headquarters
to Qatar. The U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters is in Bahrain. The Air
Force has a command center at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
-
- The Constellation is exercising with its escorts -- the
cruisers Valley Forge and Bunker Hill; destroyers Kinkaid, Higgins and
Milius; frigate Thach and the fast-attack submarine Columbia.
-
- The Constellation's air wing includes F/A-18 Hornet and
F-14 Tomcat fighters plus radar-jamming EA-6B Prowlers and SH-60 Foxtrot
multi-mission helicopters.
-
- Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited
without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable
for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance
thereon.
|
