GIs, Tanks in Europe Going to Gulf : Military: The Pentagon will send armored divisions and move to a ‘new phase’ in operations.

The Pentagon will dispatch two additional heavy armored divisions to Saudi Arabia in a move that signals a fundamental shift to an offensive military posture in the tense Persian Gulf, Bush Administration officials said Wednesday night.

The divisions will be transferred from Europe and will add as many as 100,000 troops and 700 advanced M1-A1 tanks to the 238,000 American troops and 1,300 tanks already deployed in the region as part of Operation Desert Shield, officials said.

The decision to send the additional troops and tanks indicates that the United States is moving into “a new phase” in the three-month military operation, a senior Defense Department official said. The additional forces “mark a shift toward a more offensive makeup” of the large U.S. deployment in Saudi Arabia and surrounding countries, the official said.

The force now in place is considered adequate to defend Saudi Arabia and smaller Persian Gulf states against a possible Iraqi attack. But U.S. military commanders in Saudi Arabia have advised the Pentagon and White House that they will need at least two more heavy armored divisions to have the punch required to mount an assault on the entrenched Iraqi force in Kuwait.

Officials said that when the new troops are in place, the United States will have 350,000 soldiers, sailors, Air Force personnel and Marines in the region, armed with an array of high-powered weaponry ranging from heavy B-52 bombers to guided-missile cruisers.

The U.S. forces face 430,000 Iraqi troops armed with an estimated 3,500 tanks, 2,200 armored personnel carriers and 2,200 artillery pieces and dug into heavily fortified positions in Kuwait and southern Iraq.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who is expected to announce the new deployments as early as today, has not ruled out sending even more U.S. forces to the region, aides said.

Disclosure of the new buildup has been delayed for several days while Secretary of State James A. Baker III consults with leaders of Saudi Arabia and other allied nations about the Middle East situation.

Baker is in the Soviet Union to discuss U.S. plans in the gulf with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze and President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The Soviet leaders have advised against an American-led attack, advocating instead a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

But President Bush has pointedly refused to rule out an offensive military operation. And senior Administration officials have said that the United States will not necessarily wait for provocation from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before launching a military strike.

No decisions have been reached on which units will be dispatched from Europe. The Pentagon plans to reduce the 300,000 U.S. troops in Europe by about 50,000 over the next several months, and officials have indicated that many troops may “rotate” through Saudi Arabia on their way home.