Out of Briefcases & Red Folders, a Classic Show of Power & Speed

THE buildup that, put 5,000 Marines, 1,700 Army paratroops, 70 Navy warships, 270 carrier-based Navy aircraft and 150 Air Force land-based aircraft into the Middle East within 72 hours began just before 2 o'clock one morning last week. Red-alert telephones jangled at the bedsides of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--Chairman Nathan Twining, the Navy's Arleigh Burke, the Air Force's Thomas Dresser White, the Army's Acting Chief Lyman Lemnitzer (his chief, Maxwell Taylor, was on the West Coast on an inspection trip), the Marine Corps' Randolph Pate. The word from the Pentagon duty officers: the government of Iraq had been overthrown. The anticipation--it was almost an assumption--of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: the pro-U.S. government of Lebanon would now request U.S. military protection, would get it.

Hours in advance of the President's decision, a second wave of telephone calls went out from the Pentagon. Before sunup more than 50 plans officers of all services were at their desks. When the Navy's Arleigh Burke steamed into his office at 7:30 a.m., he asked his staff for a full briefing, got it; on an order from Burke his staff began carting in briefcases and red folders containing long-prepared, frequently tested contingency war plans for the Middle East. Outline of the J.C.S. contingency plan for Lebanon: 1) move about 5,000 Marines of the Sixth Fleet into Beirut within hours, 2) move about 25,000 men of all services into the Middle East within a week. Key to the Lebanon plan: the Navy's Sixth Fleet, which had been hovering off Lebanon for three months and patrolling the Mediterranean for eight years to head off just this kind of emergency.

Minuses & the Plus. At 9:30 a.m. the Joint Chiefs met for the day's first joint session. Each officer was aware, out of years of military, diplomatic and economic study and experience, of the minuses of U.S. involvement in the oil-rich but base-poor volatile Middle East. The Air Force had run staff studies on locating strategic and tactical air bases in the Middle East, had come away convinced that the Middle East was so vulnerable to Russia's near-at-hand Ilyushin light bombers and tactical missiles that the U.S.A.F.'s strategic bombers ought to stay back in Spain and Morocco. The Army had weighed several types of Middle East campaigning, had come away impressed by the fact that all of 500,000 French troops had not been able to subdue Algeria even while holding cities, harbors, airfields, rail centers. Even the Navy, as it cruised the Mediterranean at will, had become highly sensitive to the difficulties of supplying the Sixth Fleet across 3,800 miles from Norfolk (sample statistic: 50,000 tons of fuel per month), not to mention the dangers of getting trapped in a landlocked sea in the event of any kind of atomic war (see map). .

But these military minuses notwithstanding, the J.C.S. entertained no military question as to the single necessity of going into Lebanon. Adjusting the contingency war plans to the specifics of the hour, Chairman Nate Twining needed only a 90-minute run-through with the Chiefs before he was ready to report at a National Security Council meeting to the President of the U.S. "Nate," said one NSC observer, "knew exactly what ought to be done and what he could do."

"It Was Ready, Brother . . ." By 1p.m., the J.C.S. got word that Lebanon's anticipated request for U.S. military help was in. The Chiefs held a second meeting that lasted for one hour exactly, then headed back to their desks to alert their forces--all forces. The U.S. military establishment, worldwide, was put into a state of "improved readiness." Leaves were canceled. The Navy was put on a four-hour alert; i.e., all ships not in major repair were to be ready to sail on four hours' notice. The Air Force's Strategic Command needed no particular word. Said one high U.S. officer about SAC: "It was ready, brother, believe me. . ."

At 6 p.m. General Twining brought word to J.C.S. meeting No. 3 that the President's orders were to move into Lebanon, and to move immediately. Twining emphasized that the mission was not to fight Lebanon's rebels, nor to intervene in Iraq, but to secure the Lebanese government and its key centers in and around Beirut, e.g., Beirut International Airport. As Lebanon would be primarily a Navy show, at least at the outset, the J.C.S. executive agent was Admiral Arleigh ("31-Knot") Burke. At 6:23 p.m. the J.C.S. signaled Vice Admiral James Lemuel ("Lord Jim") Holloway Jr., commander of a dormant but newly activated interservice "Specified Command," to begin the deployment. Signaled Admiral Burke to the Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Regiment, 2nd Division, due to land on the Beirut beaches: "As you land, you will be writing another chapter in our country's history. I am confident you will uphold traditions of the Navy and Marine Corps. Good luck!"

To the Shores of ... That night Burke stayed in his office, catnapping every now and then in a big leather sofa, speaking over single-sideband radio to Holloway and to the Sixth Fleet commander, Vice Admiral Charles R. ("Cat") Brown, swamping down coffee, sucking on his pipe, reading the red and yellow dispatches reporting the global deployment of the U.S. Navy. Morning found Burke still in his office, the Navy deployed, the lead battalion of Marines on the Beirut beaches. The Sixth Fleet's 60,000-ton supercarrier Saratoga and support carrier Wasp, with 40-ship escort, were riding offshore. Reinforcements, including the guided-missile cruiser Boston and attack carrier Essex, were steaming up from Greek waters. Sweeps of AD Skyraider and A4D Skyhawk bombers, plus F8U Crusader interceptors, were heading out over Lebanon and Jordan. Burke's follow-through: in Lebanon a second Marine battalion landed, then a third. Back across the Atlantic the carrier Antietam loaded up 1,000 more Marines, assault helicopters, jet interceptors, pulled out of Norfolk with a new-type "fast-landing force" while supercarrier Forrestal pulled into Norfolk to take on some more.

The Air Force and the Army boiled up just that kind of 31-knot pressure, got just that kind of result. General O.P. ("Opie") Weyland's Tactical Air Command sent a well-practiced composite task force of 100-plus B57 and B66 light jet bombers, KB-50 tankers, F-100D and F101 fighter-bombers and fighters out of Langley AFB, Va. and other U.S. bases, staged them across the Atlantic and through Europe to the U.S.-built but rarely used jet base (runway: 12,000 ft.) at Adana, Turkey. Potential of composite task force: nuclear or conventional. And in Germany the Army loaded up 1,700 paratroops of the ist Airborne Battle Group of the 24th Infantry Division--first division into Korea eight years ago--into Air Force C-130 Hercules and C124 Globemaster troop carriers, some of them flown over from Donaldson AFB, S.C., then leapfrogged in airborne-all-the-way style to Adana and on into Beirut.

The Marines even took care of some of their own reinforcement : in a casual yet astonishing demonstration of modern war, they put about 800 Marine "replacements" into Marine R4Q and R5D troop carriers at the Marine air bases at Cherry Point, N.C., flew them by way of the Navy's Port-Lyautey base in Morocco clean into the airfield at Beirut.

Understood, Assessed, Ready. The Lebanon buildup, accomplished and continuing, was thus the best evidence the U.S. had ever had of the "not war but like war" professionalism its force-in-being had built up in the years of the cold war. When the chips were down, there was no interservice wrangling, no competition for headlines, no rows about roles and missions or command. The Navy, Marine Corps, Army, Air Force's TAG, all demonstrated great limited-war capability, and all knew that the big U.S. buildup 500 or so miles from Russia's borders was made possible only by the deterrent thermonuclear power of the Air Force's Strategic Air Command.

At week's end, as the great grey carriers wheeled, and Marines and paratroops patrolled, and sweating Navy yard hands loaded up, and staff officers pored over their plans, the U.S. could take a measure of pride in the fact that the armed forces had measured up in Lebanon in a way that showed they could measure up anywhere, anytime. Said one member of the J.C.S., laconically but not without pride: "It went the way it was planned to go."

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