"Reshuffling the U.S. military in Asia"
Mike
HONOLULU - The plan to realign U.S. military forces in Asia and the
Pacific would enhance the roles of Hawaii and Guam, tighten the
alliance with Japan and streamline the posture in South Korea.
Changes over the next three to five years are intended to
strengthen the operational control of the U.S. Pacific Command, based
in Hawaii, over Army, Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy forces and
enable them to undertake expeditions swiftly to contingencies
throughout the region.
American and Japanese officials cautioned that no firm decisions
have been made, but the proposed realignment looks like this:
Army: Headquarters in Hawaii will become a war-fighting command to
plan and execute operations, rather than to train and provide troops to
other commands as it does now. The four-star general's post in Korea
will be transferred to Hawaii.
I Corps at Fort Lewis, Wash., will move to Camp Zama, southwest of
Tokyo, to conduct smaller operations and forge ties with Japan's ground
force. Japan will organize a similar unit, perhaps called Central
Readiness Command, to plan and conduct operations with the U.S. Army.
Japanese officials are considering elevating the Self-Defense
Agency to a ministry and renaming Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force
(GSDF) as "the Japanese Army" and similarly for the Maritime
Self-Defense Force (MSDF) and Air Self-Defense Force (ASDF). Shedding
those postwar names would reflect Japan's emergence from its pacifist
cocoon.
The U.S. plans to disband the 8th Army, which has been in South
Korea since the 1950-53 war, to relinquish command of Korean troops to
the Koreans and to minimize or eliminate the United Nations Command set
up during the Korean War.
A new tactical command will oversee remaining U.S. forces in South
Korea, which will be down to 25,000 in 2008 from 37,000. That may be
cut further, because Seoul has denied the U.S. the "strategic
flexibility" to dispatch U.S. forces from Korea to contingencies
elsewhere.
Marine Corps: The Marines, who have a war-fighting center in
Hawaii, will move the headquarters of the III Marine Expeditionary
Force (III MEF) from Okinawa to Guam to reduce the friction caused by
the U.S. "footprint" on that Japanese island. How many Marines would
move is not clear, but combat battalions will continue to rotate to
Okinawa from the United States.
Some U.S. officers are displeased because local politics, rather
than military necessity, dictated the move. They asserted that the
Japanese government, despite its desire to "reduce the burden" on
Okinawans, has blocked U.S. attempts to move forces to other bases in
Japan.
Other officers saw an advantage to having III MEF in Guam, which is
U.S. territory. If a Japanese government sought to restrict the
movement of U.S. forces on its soil, III MEF would be able to operate
without reference to Tokyo.
Air Force: The 13th Air Force moved to Hawaii from Guam in May to
establish a war-fighting headquarters like those of the other services.
Gen. Paul V. Hester, commander of the Pacific Air Forces, was
quoted as saying, "We're building an air operations center and
war-fighting headquarters that serves the entire Pacific region."
The Air Force plans to establish a strike force on Guam that will
include six bombers and 48 fighters in rotation for several months from
U.S. bases. In addition, 12 refueling aircraft, which are essential to
long-range projection of air power, will be stationed at Andersen Air
Force Base there.
Also based on Guam will be three Global Hawk unmanned
reconnaissance aircraft, which can range 12,000 miles, at altitudes up
to 65,000 feet, for 35 hours. This means the aircraft can cover
mainland Asia from Bangkok to Beijing with sensors making images of
40,000 square miles a day.
In Japan, the Air Force is willing to share Yokota Air Base, west
of Tokyo, with Japan's Air Self-Defense Force, but has resisted opening
the base to civilian aircraft, citing security concerns. Tokyo Gov.
Shintaro Ishihara has demanded such rights.
Navy: Kitty Hawk, the conventionally powered aircraft carrier based
at Yokosuka, on Tokyo Bay, is slated to be replaced by 2008. The United
States wants to station a nuclear-powered carrier there, while some
Japanese politicians want the last of the conventionally powered
carriers, the John F. Kennedy, to be chosen.
The Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, whose war-fighting element is
Joint Task Force 519, has moved three attack submarines to Guam to base
them closer to operating areas and probably will be assigned an
additional carrier from the Atlantic Fleet to be based at Pearl Harbor