THE RISING EAST
 |
By Richard Halloran
They call it the "tyranny of distance," and it ranks up there in U.S. strategic thinking with conventional threats like that from North Korea and unconventional dangers posed by terrorists in Southeast Asia.
In this day when American forces are spread thin around the world, projecting power across the vast Pacific and onto the shores of Asia takes extensive planning, complicated transport and logistics, and not a few buckets of sweat.
U.S. Marine Corp photo
To train for this mission, an exercise called Balikatan has just been completed in the Philippines. There, the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Brigade from Okinawa provided the nucleus of a task force formed with the Philippine Western Command to maneuver on the islands of Luzon and Palawan.
U.S. Marine Sgt. Kevin Kottke of Toledo, Ore., and Lance Cpl. Jennifer Vasquez of Houston, recover a parachute after a jump during training with Philippine troops in Exercise Balikatan 2004. The exercise included command and control drills, field training and humanitarian-relief operations.
From the United States, Army, Navy and Air Force units were brought from 10 Mainland states plus Alaska, Hawai'i and Guam. The Marines, compressing 12 months of planning into five, choreographed the movement of 2,600 people, 90 pieces of rolling stock and 2,473 tons of cargo to three airports, two seaports and a landing beach in the Philippines.
There, they formed a task force that included the Philippine 7th Infantry Division, 51st Elite Brigade and two fighter wings plus an aerial rescue unit, naval construction battalion, landing team and special-operations forces or commandos.
Said a senior Marine officer in the Pacific: "Any logical East Asian strategy we pursue should include the capability to do combined operations like this with our allies and friends, both to meet conventional threats from North Korea and to strike against unconventional dangers from terrorists in Southeast Asia."
Last fall, U.S. forces joined with Australians for Exercise Crocodile in Australia.
In May, the Army's I Corps from Fort Lewis, Wash., will lead U.S. forces in an exercise in Thailand called Cobra Gold, with Thai and Singaporean forces. Similar training either has or will take place with South Korean and Japanese troops.
Longer range, the United States has stationed bombers on Guam in a not-so-subtle warning to North Korea. Two attack submarines have been moved to Guam from Pearl Harbor to put them closer to possible contingencies. The Navy is planning to base another aircraft carrier in the Pacific to bring the total to seven. And the U.S. Army's 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea will be prepared to deploy elsewhere in Asia.
Although U.S. military leaders try to stay out of political hot water by saying their training drills are aimed at fictional adversaries, Balikatan was clearly weighted toward defeating terrorists. Part of Balikatan, which means "shoulder to shoulder" in Tagalog, took place on Palawan, where terrorists have operated.
Earlier, the U.S. military trained Filipino troops for counterterrorist operations in the southern Philippines. The commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, Adm. Thomas Fargo, has said that U.S. alliances in Asia more and more "are focused on guarding Southeast Asia from terrorism, piracy, drugs and other transnational threats."
This exercise was divided into three phases that went on simultaneously.
U.S. Marine Corp photo
The first trained leaders and staffs to control operations in seven locations spread over 700 miles. A second was field training that included parachute jumps, live fire on ranges, amphibious landings and strenuous patrolling.
A U.S. Marine rappels from a CH-46 helicopter as part of a Tactical Recovery of Aircraft and Personnel training exercise on March 1 at Clark Field in the Philippines.
The third focused on humanitarian operations — combined U.S. and Philippine medical teams treated 24,700 Filipinos in 10 days, and engineers built an 850-gallon storage tank for a school that had been without water for 10 years, and added five classrooms to a high school and an elementary school.
Col. Michael Dana, chief of staff of the expeditionary brigade, told a Marine newspaper: "This is the most complex operation that I have ever been involved with." On a particular day, according to an after-action report, the Filipinos and Americans were engaged in three live-fire drills, convoy training, close air support, rappelling at night from helicopters onto an airfield, parachuting a communications team onto a field and carrying out five engineering projects.
Even with the emphasis on training, the real world was never far away. When a ferry from Manila to Bacolod in the central Philippines caught fire, Maj. Antonio Rosario of a Philippine marine reconnaissance unit asked for assistance.
The U.S. Navy's Underwater Construction Team 2, from Port Hueneme, Calif., launched two inflatable boats to help rescue survivors. The Americans had been in training, diving with Filipino counterparts, when the call came.
For a swift response that helped save 420 lives, the team's executive officer, Lt. Gregory Miller, was awarded the Military Merit Medal by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
