Inter-Forces Cooperation Called Key to Downsizing : Military: Commanding general of Marine air stations in West says services must work together as budget cuts force troop reductions.

In these uncertain times of dwindling budgets and fewer troops, the military services will have to learn to train together, fight together and perhaps live together, a top general here says.

“The fact is that on a crowded battlefield, you can’t have too many friends,” said Maj. Gen. P. Drax Williams, commanding general of all Marine air stations in the West. “When you are in a fight, you really don’t care whether the airplane that is delivering the close air support is Marine, Navy or Air Force.”

Williams said the Marine Corps today has more joint exercises with the Army and the Air Force than ever before. “We are learning very, very rapidly to work together . . . to get the job done together.”

But of all the fighting forces in the country, Williams, 53, believes that the Marine Corps, which he called the “nation’s 911 force,” will shine in the coming years. The ‘90s, he says, may well be the era of the Marines.

It is the only force, Williams said, that has ground troops, air support and can move around the world in ships or in the air. As a result, the Marines are needed more now than ever in a world that has become less stable since the demise of the Soviet Union, he said. The Marines can react quickly to trouble spots anywhere in the world with enough supplies to last for 30, 60 or 90 days, Williams said.

The Marines can take a port or an airfield and await the “Sunday punch” of the Army and Air Force, Williams said in his first interview with The Times since he took over command at El Toro 14 months ago.

But he said all the military forces will be smaller, including the Marines, which are expected to trim down from 185,000 men and women nationwide to 174,000 by 1994. By 1997, the Marine Corps is expected to be down to 159,000.

What does all this mean for the Marine Corps in Orange County?

“Things are up in the air,” Williams said. “We could have less airplanes or we could have more airplanes at El Toro. It just depends what happens on the downsizing of the military and how things shake out for the Marine Corps.”

Because of the new era of cooperation, El Toro could even be home to Navy or Air Force fighter squadrons in the near future, Williams said. He said such a move is “possible, but not probable.”

One thing is for certain, he said: the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station, with its 3,500 Marines and 125 cargo helicopters, will shut down by 1997. The troops and the aircraft are to be moved to new facilities at the Marines’ vast training center at Twentynine Palms, northeast of Palm Springs, and to a small existing airfield at Camp Pendleton.

Tustin was one of 47 major bases nationwide that Defense Department officials last year scheduled for closure by 1997, part of a move to shrink the U.S. military by 25%.

“So what’s going to happen in the future?” Williams asked rhetorically. “I wish you would tell me.”

In addition to El Toro and Tustin, Williams oversees air stations at Camp Pendleton and Yuma, Ariz. The bases are the home for the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing and its 15,000 pilots and support personnel headed by Maj. Gen. Harold W. Blot.

Williams came from Washington, where he worked as the Marine Corps liaison to Congress, to take over at El Toro in the wake of a base scandal that led to the suicide of a top officer, the firing of the chief of staff, and the reassignment and forced retirement of his predecessor, Brig. Gen. Wayne T. Adams.

He says the episode is behind him and morale is up.

“They have smiles on their faces, and they are walking tall,” he said of the Marines at El Toro.

Williams also has picked up some unexpected support on the other side of the base’s fence.

Oddly enough, it was won at the height of the military buildup in the Persian Gulf in the fall of 1990, when heavily loaded military transport planes flew in and out of El Toro on their way to the Middle East.

Williams said the rumbling C-5As, C-141s, C-130s and civilian aircraft such as 747s gave those living around the fighter base their first real dose of the noise that can be generated by big transport planes flying over Irvine, Leisure World in Laguna Hills and Laguna Niguel.

It was a preview, of sorts, of what conditions might be like if El Toro were converted into a civilian airport--a perennial idea proposed by those who believe that the air station would make a perfect spot for commercial aviation.

“People said, ‘Well, I’ll be damned, so that is what a civilian airport is going to be like,’ ” Williams recalled in an interview last week.

“Frankly, we now find a tremendous amount of support for keeping the Marines here. We got wonderful friends and allies outside the gate. I really could not be more pleased. I think we are in good shape.”

Because of the uncertain times, Williams was forced to delay until 1995 a new noise imprint around the base that dictates where homes or commercial structures can be built.

“I just don’t know what is happening,” Williams said. “We could get bigger or we could get smaller. It would be immoral for me to put a piece of paper out that shows a noise imprint that would change in one or two years. I said, ‘Let us have a chance to settle down and see what is going to shake out.’

“Everyone is in the same flux, frantically trying to figure out how to downsize and still be ready to go to war in a moment’s notice,” he said.

Williams said no squadrons from Tustin will be moved until they have somewhere to go. He said a group of military personnel and civilians, including 19 Marines headed by a colonel, work full time planning for the closure of the base and the construction of new facilities at Twentynine Palms and Camp Pendleton.

Regardless of what “shakes out” during the coming years, Williams said the Marines will continue to build new housing for 16,000 Marines and their dependents stationed at El Toro. When the Marines sell Tustin, they will keep 500 acres of the 1,572-acre base to build 600 units of housing. Two hundred of them are expected to be completed by next fall.

Many Marines working at El Toro and Tustin commute long distances to Riverside County each day because housing costs in Orange County are so high.

“We have lost on occasion more Marines in a year of commuting back and forth from Riverside than we did in Desert Storm,” Williams said. “We would like a house for every Marine family that desires to live in base housing.”