Expect Long Duty Tours, Troops Told

Troops deployed in the war against terrorism should expect to be away from home longer than military personnel have at any time since World War II, senior Pentagon officials are cautioning servicemen and women stationed around the world.

In a radio address broadcast Wednesday night on military networks, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon is likely to discard the personnel rotation schedule used in peacetime that limits the time troops are separated from their families.

Defense officials refused to say publicly whether or when U.S. ground troops might join the battle in Afghanistan.

But the Washington Post and Reuters news service quoted unidentified defense officials as saying that U.S. special forces have begun operating in small numbers in Afghanistan and that more troops might be deployed soon. The Post said the mission in the nation’s south is designed to expand a CIA effort to encourage ethnic Pushtun leaders to break away from the Taliban militia.

“We are prepared to use the full spectrum of our military capabilities,” Myers said. “Obviously, that’s not just bombers, that’s just not carrier-based aircraft, that’s other assets as well.”

In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair hinted that the campaign is nearing a new phase that would involve broader use of the military. “I believe that the next few weeks will be the most testing time, but we are on track to achieve the goals we set out,” he said. “I don’t think we have ever contemplated this being done by air power alone.”

While a transcript of Myers’ radio address was not made available, a defense official said the Joint Chiefs chairman told troops, “We’re going to do everything we can to manage this thing, but we’re in a brand-new situation, so buckle your chin straps.”

The rotation schedule was adopted in the early 1970s--when the military was having trouble retaining its recruits--as a way of making life in the armed forces more palatable. It limits the time that Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines personnel customarily are deployed to about six months. Longer deployment requires special orders from a four-star general.

“I firmly believe that this is the most important tasking the U.S. military has been handed since the Second World War,” Myers said at a Pentagon briefing Thursday. “And what’s at stake here is no less than our freedom to exist as an American people, so there is no option but success.”

The statements are a sign of how thin the armed forces may be stretched as the Pentagon settles into what Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld on Thursday called a “long, unrelenting, global war on terrorism.”

The prospects of extending troop deployment came as U.S. airstrikes continued to pound Afghanistan, targeted because it is a host to the terrorist network Al Qaeda. More than 90 aircraft bombed troop garrisons, Taliban missile storage sites and guerrilla training camps of Al Qaeda, a defense official said.

The heavy strikes included bombs dropped from about 80 F/A-18 and F-14 tactical aircraft based on three aircraft carriers, six to eight B-1 and B-52 bombers based on the British-owned island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and two AC-130s--immense cargo planes that fly low and spray heavy munitions fire.

There were also reports that a remote-controlled aircraft had fired missiles at targets in Afghanistan, which would mark the first time such a pilotless plane had been used in an airstrike.

Rumsfeld declined to confirm the report but said, “We may find that there are a variety of unmanned vehicles . . . that will be used . . . for a variety of purposes that previously had been solely conducted by human beings.”

There were conflicting reports about the fighting in Mazar-i-Sharif, but it appeared that Taliban forces launched an assault on positions held by the opposition Northern Alliance in hills on the southern side of the city.

Northern Alliance officials in Moscow and Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, denied reports from residents of Mazar-i-Sharif that alliance troops had been forced to retreat.

The alliance had hoped to take Mazar-i-Sharif this week following U.S. airstrikes on positions held by the Taliban. However, the Taliban showed that it remains a formidable opponent and rushed reinforcements to the city Wednesday, bringing tanks into battle to face the lightly armed alliance forces.

Mazar-i-Sharif is strategically important because it is close to a potential supply route from nearby Uzbekistan and has two airports that could be used by the U.S. military if the city is wrested from the Taliban.

Rumsfeld said “snippets of intelligence” suggested that the intense strikes of the last four days were making the Al Qaeda network more vulnerable to attack and sparking defections of fighters from Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban.

“We are seeing some people . . . starting to decide that they would prefer not to be part of Taliban. And we have seen some movement of what we believe to be the Al Qaeda forces--and they have been specifically targeted while they were moving,” he said.

Rumsfeld, addressing growing concerns about civilian casualties, said in an interview on CNN that U.S. planes have been “focused totally on military targets, almost overwhelmingly outside” of the cities.

“To the extent that there have been significant military targets in areas that do have population nearby, they have almost always been targeted with a weapon that has a high degree of precision so that there will not be a high amount of collateral damage,” he said.

Times staff writer Richard C. Paddock in Tashkent contributed to this report.

*

RELATED STORY

Media rules: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld accepts guidelines on access to troops. A10

Anxious Farewells: The destroyer John Young departs from San Diego amid tearful goodbyes. B8