Regional Outlook : U.S. Forces Recharting the Pacific : * Loss of Philippine military stronghold spurs a strategy shift. New focus is small posts in several nations and more troops on American soil.

On craggy Orote Point, the scene of a bloody World War II battle, work crews carefully unloaded ammunition this week from the U.S. Navy cargo ship Kilauea, newly arrived from its Subic Bay home port 1,500 miles away in the Philippines.

Inside the windy harbor, sailors refinished the helicopter flight deck of the San Juan and changed anchors on the Niagara Falls, both Guam-based refrigerated stores ships. Other sailors hauled supplies aboard the submarine tender Proteus. Bells clanged atop the empty floating dry dock as a crane suddenly shifted on its track.

Busy as it appears, the activity on Guam is likely to grow substantially as the United States redeploys its military forces and equipment in the Pacific, largely because of the changes the Pentagon now confronts in the Philippines.

For most of this century, the U.S. naval base at Subic Bay and the giant Clark Air Base in the Philippines have been the linchpin of the American military presence in Southeast Asia and the West Pacific. They were also a crucial transit point for U.S. forces moving into the Persian Gulf last year and early this year.

Now, the United States has abandoned Clark because of the damage the base suffered from the volcanic ash of Mt. Pinatubo. And unless the Philippine government changes its mind, the Navy’s 7th Fleet will be forced to leave its long-cherished base at Subic Bay within the next three years.

What will American military planners do to make up for these Philippine bases? Interviews with U.S. officials in Asia and in Washington suggest that the American strategy will be based on two different, somewhat contradictory elements:

* In the future, a greater number of American troops prepared for duty in Asia and the Pacific will be based on U.S. soil--not only here in Guam but in Hawaii, Alaska and California.

* The United States will also seek to cultivate and upgrade its military relationships with many other nations in Southeast Asia, including Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, in the hope that at least some of these countries will provide increased access or transit rights to American forces.

The new U.S. strategy was hinted at last summer in a speech by Carl W. Ford Jr., the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary of defense in charge of Asia and the Pacific.

The United States, Ford said, will be “attempting to achieve greater access for our forces throughout the region (Southeast Asia) at a time when we will actually be stationing fewer forces on a permanent basis” in fewer places.

The movement toward shifting greater numbers of troops onto American soil grows out of a number of factors extending well beyond the specific problems in the Philippines.

For one thing, Pentagon officials acknowledge that it is getting harder to persuade foreign governments to grant the United States the rights for permanent military bases.

As the failed Philippine base negotiations illustrate, there is often considerable domestic political opposition. The United States has less money in foreign aid to offer as a sweetener for military bases and less cash to spend on construction of new military facilities.

Moreover, bases on foreign soil are becoming in some ways less attractive to the American military itself. Problems with security and terrorism have increased.

Even before the volcano at Clark and the failure of the base negotiations, the United States had reduced its forces in the Philippines from 18,000 to about 12,000, and one top Pentagon planner acknowledged that “a lot of that has to do with security,” particularly attacks from the insurgent New People’s Army (NPA). Concerns about AIDS have also made rest-and-recreation junkets for the troops much less carefree than they were a few years ago.

At the same time, U.S. officials say it is now easier than it was in the past to move American troops long distances.

“I think the biggest reason is the same reason that you and I can get on a 747 and fly nonstop from Chicago or even Washington to Tokyo,” the Pentagon official observed. “The distances have shrunk over time. And so the U.S. military is no different. Our planes and our ships have got longer legs than they used to.”

The slow relocation of troops, equipment and facilities to Guam, Alaska, Hawaii and the continental United States is already under way.

About 200 Air Force and communications personnel from Clark have moved to Guam, and more may be coming. Some Military Airlift Command personnel have been shifted from Clark to Hawaii. Last year, Clark’s last two fighter wings were reassigned to Alaska. The Navy is laying the groundwork to rely more heavily on Honolulu and San Diego.

“We’re the American military, and people from Alaska and Hawaii appreciate American servicemen a hell of a lot more than countries where we might have to be based,” one Pentagon official said. “It’s our own people. We’re part of the community.”

Now, one of the most valued of all the U.S. military facilities in the Philippines, the Crow Valley training range at Clark--where military pilots, both from the United States and from such allies as Australia, Japan and South Korea, have practiced combat operations--is being rebuilt in Alaska.

There are even some advantages to Alaska, military planners say. The air is clearer than in the Philippines, and there will be no monsoons to force cancellation of exercises. It doesn’t hurt, either, that the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee in charge of allocating money for military construction is Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).

Moreover, Pentagon officials say they also hope to strengthen the connections between troops in Alaska, Hawaii and California--both active-duty and reserve units--and those that are “forward-deployed” in Japan, South Korea or elsewhere in Asia.

“If there were a crisis in Korea, forces in Japan, Alaska and Hawaii would all be ticketed to get into Korea very early on,” a U.S. defense official said. He suggested that U.S. units could be sent to Korea to take part in the annual Team Spirit military exercises.

No one is suggesting that the United States will pull out of its bases in Japan and South Korea, although there have been small reductions in the number of American forces in both countries.

In fact, the United States may transfer a few units from the Philippines to the existing American bases in these two countries. Some military airlift personnel may go from Clark to Japan, and a Special Operations Wing may be shifted to South Korea.

U.S. officials emphasize that they need to maintain at least some “forward-deployed” forces in Asia, despite the reduced military threat from the Soviet Union.

In Singapore last month, Adm. David E. Jeremiah, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said America’s military commitment and presence in the Pacific is “separate and isolatable” from the end of the Cold War and from the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

These days, the justification for keeping U.S. forces overseas in Asia and the Pacific has changed. American officials say U.S. forces are important in helping to preserve stability, guaranteeing that other Asian powers such as China, India and Japan will not vie for military supremacy. They also point to possible regional conflicts in places such as the Korean Peninsula, and to the importance of preventing North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.

U.S. officials often try to play down the significance of the ongoing relocations and troop reductions because they do not want it to appear that the United States is retreating from Southeast Asia or reducing its political and diplomatic commitments in the region.

“Obviously, one of our major concerns is whether people will think we are walking away from Southeast Asia,” a Pentagon source said. So while the United States has been pulling units out of the Philippines, it is also seeking to increase military involvement with other Southeast Asian countries.

“In the event we must withdraw from Subic, we recognize that our military contacts and defense cooperation with other countries in the region may well become the most meaningful sign of our continued engagement in the region,” Ford, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary for Asia, told Congress last month.

Singapore, for example, signed a still-undisclosed agreement last November to allow increased access to its air and naval bases by U.S. fighter jets and warships and to allow ship repairs at its Sembawang Shipyard.

About 140 U.S. military personnel have since moved to the strategic island state, which sits astride the main sea lanes between the Pacific and Indian oceans.

Washington also is seeking greater access to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia, but no deals have been announced. Tiny Brunei has offered help but has few facilities.

“It’s probably the best of all possible worlds,” said Richard Halloran, director of special projects at the East-West Center, a nonprofit research center in Honolulu. “You reassure your Asian friends that you can get there in a hurry and do the job. And you reassure them that you can go away.”

Still, U.S. officials and analysts reluctantly admit that none of these other countries will ever provide a replacement for Subic.

“Maintaining the same level of naval presence in the region will likely mean that some repairs will be delayed and training will be reduced, taking a toll, over time, on operational readiness,” one Pentagon official admitted in congressional testimony last month.

With its huge storage and ship-repair capabilities, an experienced work force and a large air station, Subic can support combat operations of several carrier battle groups operating in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean.

The problems in replacing Subic are evident here in Guam, America’s westernmost territory, which is 5,400 miles west of California and is the largest landmass between Hawaii and the Philippines.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and other U.S. officials have pointed to Guam as a prime fallback if U.S. forces are compelled to withdraw from Subic.

But the military facilities here are surprisingly limited. In Guam, unlike Subic Bay, an aircraft carrier cannot tie up to the dock. It cannot even enter the 30-foot-deep inner harbor. Nor can a battleship or Spruance-class destroyer. The outer harbor is deeper, but waves break over several treacherous reefs and shoals. And it is much smaller than Subic’s majestic bay, where scores of ships can anchor with ease.

Subic has three huge floating dry docks; Guam has one, and at 19,000 tons, it’s too small for most modern warships. Cranes, combat systems support equipment and other repair facilities are far smaller. The Navy hospital here has 55 beds; Subic’s has 143. The naval supply depot and ammunition dumps have about the same capacity as Subic, but the 1.3-million-barrel fuel depot is only half as big.

Given enough money, the harbor could be dredged, the hospital expanded and a Shell Oil tank farm used for fuel storage. But large-scale combat training, both for pilots and ground troops, is impossible on a heavily populated island only 32 miles long and eight miles across at the widest point.

At Subic, Marines practiced landings at huge beaches code-named Red, Green and White. During the Persian Gulf crisis, Subic was the staging site as the Marines prepared the largest amphibious task force since the Korean War. Guam’s jungle warfare school for Army Special Forces and Navy Seal commandos is busier than before, but the limits are clear.

“There is some room for growth,” one officer said. “But not much.”

Like Subic, Guam’s military bases--nearly one-third of the footprint-shaped island is under military control--support the forward deployment of 7th Fleet ships and operations. The Pentagon keeps about 20,000 people here, including 7,300 active-duty Navy personnel and Marines, 2,200 Air Force personnel, 5,500 civilian employees and dependents. Total population of the island is 140,000.

And like the Philippines, the military is no longer entirely welcome here. The reason is simple: Tourists pay more. Last year, tourism--mostly Japanese--brought in $800 million; the military, long the mainstay of the economy, brought in $500 million. Thanks to the tourist boom, unemployment is below 3%. Indeed, Guam Gov. Joseph Ada says he is the only governor trying to close a military base.

“We feel in order to have a strong economic base, considering recent military cutbacks, we have to plan for the future,” he said. “So we have to go from a military-based economy to a private-sector economy.”

Ada has asked Congress to close the naval air station, which abuts the overcrowded commercial airport, and let the three Navy squadrons fly from the underutilized Air Force base 10 miles north. The Pentagon has agreed but says it will cost $298 million to make the move. So far, the money is not available.

Ada said he would welcome additional ships and troops from Subic Bay, as long as they did not overtax the already overburdened infrastructure. Traffic jams are common, schools are overcrowded, and raw sewage frequently fouls tourist beaches.

An influx of American troops from the Philippines is not expected any time soon. That is because it is not clear just when the United States must quit the Philippines. On Oct. 2, President Corazon Aquino announced she would negotiate a three-year withdrawal, a decision Washington reluctantly agreed to.

But Aquino’s three-year plan has bogged down in political bickering in the Philippine Senate, which previously rejected a proposed 10-year agreement. Even if the deal is made, base supporters hope Philippine elections next May will provide a more hospitable political climate, and perhaps a longer lease, for the Americans.

Drogin reported from Guam and Mann from Washington.

Shipping Out U.S. military presence in selected Pacific Rim locations. Figures are for active-duty personnel as of June 30, 1991. Map shows predicted movement of U.S. troops as a result of Philippine base closures. ABOARD SHIPS: In U.S. territories and special locations: 185,382 In East Asia and Pacific: 122,675 Total in region: 308,057 ALASKA: Army: 9,740 Navy: 1,930 Marines: 187 Air Force: 9,771 Total: 21,628 Some Bases: * Eielson (Air Force) * Elmendorf (Air Force) * Ft. Greely (Army) * Ft. Richardson (Army) * Ft. Wainwright (Army) * Adak Naval Air Station CALIFORNIA:* Army: 20,300 Navy and Marines: 103,300 Air Force: 45,900 Total: 169,500 Some Bases: * San Diego Naval Station * Alameda Naval Air Station * Travis (Air Force) * Vandenburg (Air Force) * Ft. Ord (Army) * Camp Pendleton (Marines) * El Toro Marine Corps Air Station GUAM: Army: 34 Navy: 4,314 Marines: 373 Air Force: 2,191 Total: 6,912 Some Bases: * Andersen (Air Force) * U.S. Naval Forces, Marianas command HAWAII: Army: 18,727 Navy: 12,172 Marines: 9,100 Air Force: 5,115 Total: 45,114 Some Bases: * Hickam (Air Force) * Wheeler (Air Force) * Barbers Point Naval Air Station * Pearl Harbor (Navy) * Schofield (Army) * Tripler Army Medical Center * Kaneohe Bay Marine Corps Air Station JAPAN: Total U.S. Military Personnel: 40,541 Some Bases: * Yokota Air Base * Kadena Air Base (Okinawa) * Misawa Air Base * Atsugi Naval Air Facility * Camp Zama (Army) * Marine Corps Air Station, Iwakuni PHILIPPINES: Total U.S. Military: 12,511 Some Bases: * Clark Air Base: Headquarters of the 13th Air Force. Home of the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing. Now being phased out as a result of damage from Mt. Pinatubo volcano. * Subic Bay Naval Base: Primary logistic, maintenance and training support base for the 7th Fleet, which operates in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean. SOUTH KOREA: Total U.S. Military: 43,799 Some Bases: * Osan Air Base * Kunsan Air Base * Camp Hialeah (Army) * U.S. Army Garrison, Seoul * Camp Casey (Army) Locations where the U.S. military maintains a relatively small presence includ AUSTRALIA INDONESIA MALAYSIA SINGAPORE THAILAND SOURCE: U.S. Department of Defense * California figures are for 1990