Move Widens Range of U.S. Offensive Options : Strategy: It’s also an acknowledgement that Iraq’s forces cannot be defeated by air power alone.

The stunning decision to roughly double the U.S. deployment in the Persian Gulf allows for a range of offensive strikes on multiple fronts that would have been impossible with the current 238,000 U.S. troops, defense officials said Thursday.

The move represents an acknowledgement that Iraq cannot be defeated by air power alone and that large numbers of tanks, artillery, infantry and Marines will be required to break through elaborate Iraqi defenses if a war is launched.

Military commanders in Saudi Arabia told Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that while they could adequately defend Saudi Arabia with the current force, they would need a huge increase in ground, air and naval forces to confidently launch an attack on the 430,000 Iraqi troops entrenched in fortified positions in Kuwait and southern Iraq.

Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the senior commander in Saudi Arabia, told Powell two weeks ago that he wanted “overwhelming force” before contemplating an attack on the Iraqi army to minimize U.S. casualties, defense officials said.

In fact, senior military officers in Washington said, Schwarzkopf had warned that the current allied force could be defeated or suffer unacceptable losses if it were to stage an attack without substantial reinforcements.

Cheney said the additional troops, including 4 1/3 new divisions of ground troops and Marines, “clearly will give us the ability to conduct offensive military operations.”

The addition of three aircraft carriers and another battleship strike force will permit the United States to wage continuous air operations and shore bombardment against Iraq and Kuwait, naval officials said Thursday.

“This force now has incredible offensive punch,” a senior Army officer said. “It’s fast, it’s well-equipped, it’s well-led. It has the capacity to punch through Iraqi defenses and bypass and cut off Iraqi forces in short order.

“There’s no question: Once this force is assembled . . . it is going to be up to the task.”

Another consideration behind sending the massive reinforcements, which is whispered in the Pentagon but not spoken aloud, is that U.S. military leaders do not believe they can rely on the majority of the military forces sent by allied nations.

Serious command and control problems remain unresolved. Also, the troop deployments by the other two dozen nations in the anti-Iraq alliance, numbering now more than 100,000, not including the Saudis, are for the most part symbolic at this point, officials have said.

Powell tacitly acknowledged these problems when he said at a Pentagon news conference Thursday that “once a political decision is made (to attack Iraq), I’m confident that military command and control arrangements would fall into place.”

Pentagon officials did not say how many of the troops already in Saudi Arabia might be coming home as part of a rotation policy once the new forces begin arriving.

Cheney and Powell did not rule out the dispatch of even more forces once the new deployment is complete, sometime in January. Cheney also said that additional Air Force units likely will be sent to bolster the 450 combat jets now in the region, although he did not announce any new deployments.

“We’ve never put an upper ceiling on the deployment,” Cheney said. “We’re not putting an upper ceiling on the deployment now.”

The new deployments include:

A full Army corps from Europe, including two armored divisions and an armored cavalry regiment. A corps comprises roughly 110,000 troops, 1,000 tanks and several hundred armored personnel carriers.

The Army 7th Corps, which is being sent from Germany, will deploy with air assault helicopters, hundreds of artillery pieces and a broad range of support troops and equipment.

An additional mechanized division from the United States, the 1st Infantry Division from Ft. Riley, Kan. The unit will bring about 400 tanks and armored personnel carriers and about 16,500 soldiers to Saudi Arabia.

Three brigades of Army National Guard combat troops, each comprising about 3,000 men and several hundred tanks and armored vehicles. The troops will be sent to Ft. Irwin, Calif., for training and evaluation before the Pentagon decides whether to dispatch them to the gulf.

Cheney and Powell have expressed doubts about their combat readiness, and this deployment essentially will be a test of the military’s increasing reliance on the guard and reserves.

Three aircraft carrier battle groups, each including a carrier and about seven escort and support ships. There are already three carriers in the region--one in the eastern Mediterranean, one in the Red Sea and one in the Persian Gulf or the northern Arabian Sea. A carrier has a crew of 5,500 men and an air wing of about 80 jets, including F-14 fighters, F/A-18 fighter-bombers and A-6 bombers. The escort ships generally include a guided-missile cruiser and several destroyers or frigates.

The battleship Missouri and its escorts, which will complement the battleship Wisconsin, now in the region. The World War II-vintage battleships are manned by 1,500 sailors and carry nine 16-inch guns, cruise missiles and a variety of other weapons for attacking shore targets.

The 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force from Camp Lejeune, N.C., and the 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade from Camp Pendleton--a total of about 60,000 troops. The new troops will reinforce the 46,000 Marines already in the theater, bringing the Marine total to 106,000. The figure is more than half the total 197,000-troop strength of the Marine Corps.

They will be joined by a squadron of supply ships sailing from Norfolk, Va., which will allow the entire force to fight for 30 days without additional ammunition, food, fuel or other supplies, Marine Corps officials said.