THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 29, 1996 TAG: 9609290061
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A16 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 52 lines
U.S. military leaders must decide in the next few days whether it is necessary to keep two aircraft carriers and their dozens of warplanes in the Persian Gulf area.
American forces were massed in the region during the latest confrontation with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and reached a current high of about 30,000 sailors, soldiers, airmen and Marines.
About 19,000 are aboard 28 Navy and Coast Guard vessels in the gulf, including two Norfolk-based ships: the carrier Enterprise and the fast combat support ship Supply. The number of sailors would be cut by at least 5,000 should the carrier Carl Vinson be allowed to head home by mid-October as scheduled.
Last week, Defense Secretary William Perry said that, barring a new flare-up in the gulf region, the Vinson would be sent home.
The Enterprise, which came to the gulf after pulling duty off Bosnia, is expected to remain. Each warship can launch about 70 aircraft.
Perry says he does not want to extend the traditional six-month deployment time that Navy warships are away from home, but it will be vital to keep an eye on Iraq.
In Kuwait, whose takeover by Saddam instigated the 1991 Persian Gulf War to liberate the emirate, thousands of U.S. Army troops have headed into the desert to conduct field exercises and armored warfare training near the Iraqi border.
In a four-day airlift, about 3,000 soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division from Fort Hood, Texas, flew to Kuwait to reinforce 1,200 of their fellow soldiers who had been holding maneuvers near the Iraqi border since August.
A Patriot missile battery and eight radar-evading F-117 warplanes also were dispatched to the desert emirate.
The soldiers flew in on chartered aircraft, opened Kuwaiti storehouses stocked with supplies, armored tanks and other vehicles, and headed into the open desert - all well ahead of schedule, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Thomas Nickerson said in a phone interview from Kuwait.
``I can't think of a better training environment,'' the spokesman said. ``Texas is not as open as the Kuwaiti desert is.''
They have scheduled several weeks of training to include war maneuvers with their Kuwaiti counterparts and ``live-fire'' exercises in November, the spokesman said.
Tensions have eased in recent days, but there remains ``no doubt in anyone's mind'' that the possibility exists for combat operations during the deployment, Nickerson said.
KEYWORDS: IRAQ PERSIAN GULF U.S.S. ENTERPRISE
U.S. NAVY by CNB