Airborne troops, fifth carrier sent to Gulf

U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed orders on Thursday sending the Army's 101st Airborne Division and the USS Kitty Hawk, a fifth Navy aircraft carrier, to the Gulf, both major steps toward deployment of the full force necessary for a war against Iraq, defence officials said.

Coming a day after Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation on Iraqi arms violations to the Security Council, Rumsfeld's moves put the Pentagon's steady buildup of forces into a final, climactic phase.

More than 125,000 U.S. forces are now in the region, a number expected to increase sharply by mid-February, one defence official said.

While the Army, Navy and Air Force are still three to four weeks away from completing what the three services consider to be optimal deployment levels, defence officials said it would be a mistake to assume military operations could not be begin before then, if President Bush decides to forcibly disarm Iraq.

They noted that the Pentagon's war plan has always envisioned a "rolling start," with military operations commencing with forces still flowing into the region. "We could go today if somebody told us to - we could carry out a pretty good effort along the lines of the (full invasion) plan," said one official.

"Do we want more (forces)? Sure. But sometimes it's better to go early ugly."

"The way it's being done," added another official, "allows you to ramp up quickly, if the circumstances demand. It's much more of a running start."

Rumsfeld's deployment of the 101st Airborne gives U.S. commanders a critical piece of an invasion force, capable of staging 100-mile air assault missions involving 4,000 soldiers in a single operation.

With a total force of more than 15,000 soldiers, the air mobile division is equipped with 270 helicopters, including more than 100 Blackhawk and 40 Chinook troop transports and 70 Apache gunships armed with laser-guided Hellfire missiles.

Rumsfeld has already deployed two 7,000-member Marine amphibious task forces and the Army's 3rd and 4th Infantry Divi-sions, mechanised units equip-ped with hundreds of M1 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

Defence officials and analysts also expect the 1st Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Texas, and parts of the 1st Armoured and 1st Infantry Divisions, based in Germany, to be deployed.

Rumsfeld's order to the USS Kitty Hawk, now in Japan, will put five aircraft carriers in the Gulf region within weeks, defence officials said.

The USS Lincoln is now in the Arabian Sea, the Constellation is in the Gulf, the Truman is in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Roosevelt just left Puerto Rico en route to the Mediterranean.

As part of the order deploying the Kitty Hawk, Rumsfeld also ordered the USS Carl Vinson to the western Pacific, taking the Kitty Hawk's place for immediate response to any needs that might arise involving North Korea, which recently expelled international nuclear inspectors and restarted a nuclear plant capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.

"The Central Command has now determined they need five carriers," said one defence official, referring to the U.S. military command that would oversee a war with Iraq.

The carriers, with 50 strike aircraft each, will be accompanied by their full battle groups, which means there will be more than 30 surface ships and submarines in the Gulf region capable of firing a total of more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles at targets in Iraq.

The Air Force is still 125 to 150 planes short of its full force in the region and probably won't have them in place until the end of February, one defence official said.

Thus far, five fighter wings, including a dozen F-117 stealth fighters, and a B-1 bomber wing have been deployed. But more than 130 strike aircraft have been in the region patrolling "no-fly" zones over Iraq.

Those planes, coupled with carrier-based aircraft and dozens of F-16 and F-15 fighters recently deployed, give the Pentagon a potent air arsenal now, with every Air Force and Navy plane capable of dropping precision-guided bombs.

"Clearly, people in senior levels in the Iraqi regime are realising what's going on and having second thoughts," said one administration official.

"I don't want to say we think a coup is imminent, but clearly people are seeing the effect of all that's going on." The official did not elaborate.

But one senior defence official doubted that Iraqi President Saddam Hussain would grasp the significance of five aircraft carriers, three Army divisions, two Marine task forces and hundreds of warplanes amassing just beyond his borders.

"I don't know what else we could have done," the official said. "He's going on history - that he's always been able to find a way to survive. We're going to put the entire force into the region. We've gotten down to the point where there are two choices: disarm or be disarmed."