Defense ‘Hole’ Seen in Loss of Jets From Spain

The United States will reluctantly withdraw 72 F-16 jet fighter planes from Spain within three years under an agreement announced Friday, a move that Pentagon officials said would “leave a hole” in the defense of southern Europe that will not be filled any time soon.

The United States is removing the planes--which constitute the 401st Tactical Fighter Wing--at the insistence of Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, who was fulfilling a domestic political pledge to reduce the highly visible U.S. military presence in Spain in exchange for the country’s continued membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The agreement in principle on the jet fighters was announced by officials at the State Department who attempted to present the issue in a favorable light, saying that resolution of the F-16 issue opens the way for a broader eight-year agreement on rights for U.S. bases in Spain.

‘The Spaniards Insisted’

“It is a fact that we disagree with the Spaniards on the withdrawal of the 401st Tactical Fighter Wing,” said State Department spokesman Charles Redman. “But the Spaniards insisted on the withdrawal, and we are complying with their sovereign decision.”

The move “points toward a new defense agreement that will have important positive elements for the United States and Spain and for allied defense and security,” Redman continued. “ . . On balance, it could be said that the agreement in principle is good for all concerned with that one substantial exception”--the removal of the warplanes.

But the expulsion of the fighters is clearly a diplomatic and military blow to the United States at a time when the nation is entering critical base rights negotiations with Portugal, Greece, Turkey and the Philippines.

“That is really a major consideration,” said a senior Pentagon official who asked not to be named. “What kind of an example does this set for the other countries?”

Although State Department diplomats said that the United States would discuss the relocation of the planes elsewhere in Europe, U.S. military officials all but ruled out the possibility. “I don’t know of any realistic relocation site in Europe. It’s just not in the cards,” a senior Pentagon official said.

Dates from Franco Regime

The 401st Tactical Fighter Wing has been based at Torrejon Air Base, a joint U.S.-Spanish installation about 15 miles northeast of Madrid. The United States has operated from Torrejon since 1953 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Spanish dictator Francisco Franco negotiated the first bilateral military treaty.

The planes, which can fly at twice the speed of sound, have since been a noisy affront to Spanish nationalist sensibilities and an unwelcome reminder of Franco’s repressive reign.

Gonzalez, the current Socialist premier, promised the Spanish electorate early in 1986 that he would expel the U.S. warplanes if voters would back him on Spain’s membership in NATO. Gonzalez has been inflexible on the F-16 issue since then in negotiations with the 1433299316current military pact, which expires in May.

Under the agreement announced Friday, the United States will continue to operate smaller air bases at Zaragoza in northern Spain and Moron in the south, a large naval station at Rota near the Strait of Gibraltar and nine communications posts scattered around the country.

Officials said that the agreement covered most of the major points of the overall basing pact and that U.S. and Spanish negotiators will meet Feb. 3 and 4 in Madrid to iron out final details on renewal of the 35-year-old treaty.

4,000 U.S. Servicemen

The U.S. operations at the Torrejon base have about 4,000 U.S. servicemen and about 1,000 Spanish workers. The total local economic impact in 1986 was more than $45 million, including $9.5 million in payroll for Spanish employees and $15.6 million in payments to local contractors, according to the Air Force.

A Defense Department spokesman said that the fighter planes and most of the U.S. support personnel probably would be returning to the United States over the three-year withdrawal period. The Pentagon said it has not decided whether to maintain the U.S. communications unit and air transport facility at the base.

The future of the advanced warplanes is uncertain. Congress specifically has barred any funds for building a new facility for the jets in the current fiscal year, and the Air Force said it does not know where it will assign them when they return to the United States.

Pentagon officials said that the cost of relocating the planes--and building all the necessary support facilities--elsewhere in Europe would be prohibitive and could cause similar political problems.

Carrier-Based Fighters

Also, defense officials said, moving the planes to Germany, Holland or Belgium, where the United States already has several fighter wings, would not help close the air defense gap in southern Europe caused by the loss of the Spain-based F-16s. For the foreseeable future, they said, the United States will have to rely on aircraft carrier-based fighters to protect NATO’s Mediterranean flank.

While the Pentagon is unhappy to lose the Spanish site, it is even more concerned about what it means for future talks with other nations where the United States maintains important military bases. Military officials complain that their access to foreign bases is shrinking at a time when the need for the facilities is growing.

“It does foreshadow problems. We’re going into a decade where we have to go through a series of difficult base access negotiations,” said James R. Blaker, director of national security studies at the Hudson Institute. The Spanish action could set a “precedent or chain reaction” that would make carrying out the U.S. military strategy of forward deployment of troops difficult, Blaker said.

Blaker, who recently completed a classified study of U.S. military bases abroad for the Pentagon, said that, since the postwar high of 1,500 foreign bases, the overseas network has shrunk to 750 installations.