Military to Widen Drug Fight Role : Narcotics: Cheney will unveil new surveillance policy today. Armed forces will step up patrols off the coasts of Florida and Southeast Asia.

The U.S. military will soon take on a significantly expanded role in the war on drugs, stepping up patrols both close to home and off the coast of Southeast Asia under a package of initiatives to be unveiled today by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

Cheney also will announce that the White House has assigned the Pentagon the lead responsibility to provide surveillance and serve as the intelligence and communications hub linking all U.S. agencies.

The U.S. Pacific Command, previously a bit player in the military’s drug interdiction efforts, will increase its drug patrols in the waters off Southeast Asia. The area is the source of as much as 45% of the heroin now coming into the United States.

Defense officials said interdiction was a possibility but added that the patrols will focus more on gathering and relaying intelligence to forces closer to U.S. shores.

Naval patrols in the Caribbean Sea off Florida also will be increased, and the Pentagon will deploy and man legions of new “eye-in-the-sky” aerostats along the United States’ southern coast.

The plan is slated to go into effect as soon as possible, defense officials said Thursday.

Notably absent from the list of new military actions is a proposal to operate a U.S. naval flotilla off the coast of Colombia in search of drug runners.

In the wake of the U.S. invasion of Panama, Colombian leaders balked at the proposal, which they typified as a “blockade.” Although U.S. ships were already steaming toward the area, the United States quickly withdrew the plan.

Cheney approved the initiatives he will announce today after U.S. regional commanders submitted plans to increase and reorganize their roles in the drug-interdiction effort. Most were drawn up and sent to the Pentagon in October. However, final decisions were delayed because of reviews by other U.S. agencies and by the U.S. invasion of Panama.

The defense secretary already has approved a measure establishing a joint task force that would operate surveillance and patrol along the U.S.-Mexican border out of Ft. Bliss, Tex. Two other joint task forces operate out of Oakland, Calif., and Key West, Fla., coordinating drug interdiction efforts on the West and East coasts, respectively.

In the Pacific, naval forces operating out of California, Japan, the Philippines and Hawaii will ply the narrow straits of the South China and Philippines Seas in search of drug traffickers.

While Pacific naval forces have long monitored drug traffic as it left Southeast Asia and approached U.S. territories, U.S. officials said the new operations would be more aggressive.

“The intelligence they’re going to receive from those operations will be more important,” said one Administration official familiar with the plan. “The patrols are going to be more focused and less oriented to targets of opportunity.”

The stepped-up drug-interdiction efforts in the Pacific come as Soviet naval operations in those theaters have turned down dramatically. As Soviet ships have pulled out of formerly important ports, such as Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, U.S. naval forces have been freed for other tasks.

It also comes as drug production in the “Golden Triangle” of Southeast Asia is sharply on the rise, with Thailand as a key production, smuggling and transit site. Production of opium is also up significantly in Laos and Myanmar.

Beyond the aerostat-lined southern coast of the United States, Air Force Airborne Warning and Control Systems will operate stepped-up patrols. The AWACs provide the ability to monitor air traffic of key areas around Cuba, Mexico and as far south as Colombia.

American officials have said that with the fall of Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega’s alleged drug empire, Cuba could increase in importance as a drug transit site.

The initiatives are all part of the Pentagon’s new-found enthusiasm for the drug interdiction mission. Defense department officials said that in drafting their initiatives, the armed forces were urged to consider “forward leaning” measures that would involve using American military power to counteract drug activity far from U.S. shores.