U.S. Asks Airlines to Shuttle Troops : Mobilization: Faced with a shortage of transport planes, the Defense Dept. calls on commercial aircraft.

The Defense Department, lacking enough transport planes to fly all the troops and weaponry needed in the Middle East, has asked U.S. airlines to provide commercial aircraft to shuttle thousands of soldiers overseas, military and industry officials said Friday.

The request is one indication of the severe strain the Saudi Arabian mission has placed on the Pentagon’s mobilization capabilities as it faces the most extensive commitment of American troops abroad since the Vietnam War.

Military officials conceded that their airlift capabilities lag far behind what Congress has mandated as the proper level. And outside analysts said the military’s Transportation Command is certain to feel the bite of recent budget cuts.

“In terms of logistics, we have left ourselves short,” declared Robert Costello, a former undersecretary of defense.

The U.S. Military Airlift Command confirmed in a written statement that it requested “additional aircraft” from commercial airlines, which can be mobilized under law to form a Civil Reserve Air Fleet.

The command, located at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, said it plans to charter commercial aircraft under contract rather than to formally activate the reserve fleet, which would be an unprecedented move.

But in interviews, military transportation officials left no doubt that their resources were being pinched by the demands of deploying as many as 50,000 soldiers to the Middle East with little time to lose.

“In a case like this, you will always need more aircraft than you have,” said Air Force Maj. Jim Bates, a spokesman for the Airlift Command.

A 1981 agreement with Congress requires the military to be capable of flying troops and equipment 66 million ton-miles every day, a level that the Pentagon believed was insufficient to meet crisis-level needs. A ton-mile is a unit of measurement used to assess transport capability; a plane carrying 10 tons of equipment for 10 miles would accumulate 100 ton-miles.

But military officials said Thursday that maximum capacity remains at only 47.7 million ton-miles, with nearly one-third of that provided by the civilian fleet.

Neither military nor industry officials would provide details of the projected civilian airlift, and it was not clear when such an operation might begin. But the sources said the charter operation would be extensive, involving dozens of flights, according to one official.

Industry sources said that several major carriers and charter companies already have been approached about carrying military personnel. At Eastern Airlines, according to several employees, pilots and flight attendants have been asked whether they would be willing to staff troop flights bound for the Middle East.

An Eastern Airlines spokeswoman, Karen Ceremsak, confirmed that the Miami-based carrier had been contacted by the government, but said it had not yet flown any charter flights. A TWA spokesman told the Associated Press that the airline did not have any planes available for such an effort. Other airlines declined to comment.

Among the private carriers expected by industry officials to play a principal role in any military support mission is American Transair of Indianapolis, which has a longstanding contract to provide charter services for troops. A company official said he could not disclose whether new flights were being planned.

The urgent demands for airlift in the Middle East crisis are rooted in the need to move large numbers of troops quickly to a theater in which the military has been unable to establish supply stockpiles.

But analysts said that even the use of commercial aircraft will not accelerate a second stage of the U.S. troop buildup that will require tanks and other armored vehicles too heavy to move practically by air. Even fast sealift vehicles will take about three weeks to reach the region, and they will take many days to fully load.

A Pentagon official said Thursday that although it would be theoretically possible to move armored divisions to the region by air, the difficulty of the enterprise would rank “probably up around stopping the rotation of the Earth.”

Military planners have for years warned about a critical shortage of ships and aircraft to move troops and equipment quickly.

The U.S. civilian shipbuilding industry has been decimated over the past two decades, undercut by cheaper, larger and faster ships built in Asia. The bulk of U.S. cargo travels in ships neither owned nor operated by American interests.

As a result, the military cannot turn to its merchant marine to move military forces in the time of national emergency.

Costello, the former undersecretary of defense for acquisition, has urged the military to establish a “comprehensive maritime strategy” that could enable the military to “transport needed troops and supplies to the Mideast in four to five days, not weeks.”

Critics also note that the Air Force is pushing for the costly new C-17 transport, which has experienced numerous technical problems, when it could be buying larger C-5 transports and extending the life of other aircraft.