Troops Gear Up for Phase 2 of War

“I’ll be home for Christmas,” Bing Crosby crooned in a hit song from the World War II years, “if only in my dreams.”

The song reflects a sentiment embedded so deeply in the American psyche that, even today, Pentagon planners try to make that dream come true. This year, a decline in the fighting in Afghanistan made that possible for a surprising number of men and women in the armed forces.

Yet the reality of what defense officials have spent the holidays doing is quite different: Quietly, with little attention at the national level, they have been marshaling the forces they expect to need for Phase 2 of the war on terrorism.

And if the size and time frame of the mobilization are any indication, few in the Pentagon expect their next mission to be small or short.

President Bush has not yet indicated where the anti-terror campaign will go next, but military planners want to be ready. As a result, though many members of the armed forces managed to get home for Christmas, far larger numbers have been dispatched overseas or told they will be embarking soon.

Today’s armed forces represent a complex mix of weapons and intelligence systems, of combat arms and support specialists, regular troops and Reserve and National Guard personnel. As the Afghanistan conflict demonstrated, they can be stunningly effective, but deploying them is not easy.

It is logistically complicated. There are gaps to plug and shortages to work around. There are also policy concerns to keep in mind that the public rarely thinks about. And there are costs--in dollars and disrupted lives.

The officers and enlisted personnel of the attack submarine Key West were among the lucky ones. The sub nosed into its slip in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 16, after a five-month cruise that included launching Tomahawk missiles against Afghan targets from a station hundreds of miles away. The Key West had been on routine patrol in the North Arabian Sea on Sept. 11.

According to Navy sources, it was the first U.S. warship to move closer to Afghanistan. When the bombing started, families feared that their loved ones would surely miss the holidays, but the sub returned to port only a few days behind schedule.

Getting the Key West home reflected more than Christmas spirit. There has been an increased effort in recent years to ease the personal burdens of long overseas deployments. Especially in the Navy, which routinely sends crews to sea for five or six months, the damage to families can be acute. In an era of volunteer professional services, the Pentagon cannot safely ignore those issues, even in wartime.

The Air Force also has been getting ready to shift gears. Recently, it quietly announced the halting of its humanitarian airdrops. With ground and air access to Afghanistan now open, other organizations could take over the job. The sigh of relief in the wild blue yonder was almost audible.

For 74 days, C-17 Globemaster IIIs left Ramstein, Germany, and flew 16-hour missions that carried them over Eastern Europe and half a dozen former Soviet states to drop food, clothing and winter supplies for Afghan civilians. To get to Afghanistan, the C-17s had to top off their fuel tanks both going and coming. They would meet up with two sets of air-refueling planes operating out of two unlikely locations: Bulgaria and Uzbekistan.

At Burgas International Airport in Bulgaria, on the shores of the Black Sea, the 351st Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron has flown regular flights in support of the humanitarian missions. The base is the first for the United States in that former Warsaw Pact stalwart.

Few members of the 351st are going home, but stopping the humanitarian flights gives them badly needed respite nonetheless. The United States has fighters and bombers galore, but aerial tankers and other logistical support planes are in short supply. Since Sept. 11, in fact, the entire tanker fleet has been spread thin.

This should come as no surprise in a war fought thousands of miles from the United States, by aircraft flying from distant bases in Europe, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.

Typical of the rotation is the 92nd Air Refueling Wing at Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington state, where about 80 crew members returned home last week from an unidentified base in Southwest Asia.

Some air crews are fortunate enough to be home with their families for the holidays, but the bulk of the wing’s tankers remain deployed in support of ongoing Afghan missions. Others are on temporary duty at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, where they support fighters patrolling Iraqi skies.

In an age of sophisticated weapons and career soldiers, the image of the citizen-soldier of World War II, Korea and Vietnam may seem anachronistic. In reality, today’s armed forces are highly dependent on what are essentially volunteers: the National Guard and Reserves.

As of this week, the Pentagon said, 61,912 members of the Guard and Reserves--contingents from all 50 states--were on active duty. That’s a huge number: enough men and women to fill four divisions. They, too, constitute an asset that must be managed.

On the East Coast, for instance, New Hampshire and Massachusetts-based tanker crews, including the 157th Air Refueling Wing, were rotated home for the holidays. Members of the Air National Guard, they had been activated for a year. They turned in flak vests, supplies and medical records, but they will be eligible for another rotation in 90 days.

The Wyoming Air National Guard’s 153rd Airlift Wing was activated just eight days before Christmas. And a detachment of the 20th Special Forces Group of the Kentucky Army National Guard was notified just before Christmas that it will be activated.

And the beat goes on. About 2,000 members of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit at Camp Pendleton set sail on four ships from San Diego on Dec. 1 to replace forces already in the theater.

“The deployment comes more than a month earlier than originally scheduled as part of . . . long-term participation in the global war on terrorism,” the 3rd Fleet said.

Although it may seem random, military planners in Washington say there is both rhyme and reason to the replenishment of military forces in such places such as Egypt, Kuwait and Oman. One is the new requirement by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the Navy to sustain two aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf.

To meet that requirement, the carrier John C. Stennis deployed two months early and is slated to be away until May. The carrier John F. Kennedy was ordered to get ready for sea duty two months ahead of schedule. Its sailors were supposed to get Christmas leave before departing, but the ship recently failed an inspection and its captain was relieved of duty. So the crew has orders to return as quickly as possible to help get the ship ready.

For all the progress in Afghanistan, officials in Washington are proceeding on the assumption that the campaign there is far from over.

The aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk was among those arriving home for Christmas after serving as a staging platform for special operations into Afghanistan. Home in this case is Yokosuka, Japan.

But the home leave is likely to be only temporary. The Kitty Hawk is expected to be deployed again for the second phase of the war on terrorism. “That’s being discussed at very high levels,” said Rear Adm. Steven A. Kunkle, the battle group commander.

The “where” may be yet to be decided. The “what” is not in doubt, the Pentagon believes. As Adm. Robert J. Natter, commander of the Atlantic Fleet, put it, “Sailors know this will be a long war.”

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William M. Arkin is an adjunct professor at the U.S. Air Force’s School of Advanced Airpower Studies, a consultant to nonprofit organizations and academic institutions, and the author of several books on military affairs.