Making the Sand Bounce

The scene in the barren Egyptian desert resembled an elegant military safari from the country's British imperial days--until the explosions began. A mixed group of some 300 U.S. and Egyptian army officers and accompanying gold-braided foreign military attaches lounged under black and red cloth tents in the chilly winter air near Wadi el Natrun, an oasis about 78 miles northwest of Cairo. Turbaned waiters, wearing flowing, blue-gray robes, or gallabiyas, served coffee, tea and box lunches.

Then there was an ominous rumble in the east. Slowly, one after another, six B-52 bombers came thundering out of the bright sun, flying only 600 ft. above the desert floor. Just a mile from the audience, each warplane sent 27 Mark-82 bombs, weighing 500 lbs. apiece, crashing onto a mock airstrip. Pillars of fire and black smoke billowed into the translucent sky. Minutes later, the aircraft wheeled to the west, starting their 7,000-mile nonstop flight back to the U.S.

So began, last week, the grand finale of Operation Bright Star, a 45-day complex series of exercises involving 6,000 U.S. military personnel who worked with the armed forces of Egypt, Sudan, Somalia and Oman. The aim of the maneuvers: to test the slowly evolving ability of the U.S. to carry out the vows of Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan to help the states in the oil-rich Persian Gulf area resist a Soviet-launched invasion.

After the bombing run and a tactical air-firepower demonstration, some 90 U.S. and Egyptian paratroopers charged through the dust, firing machine guns and antitank rockets before "securing" the site. Afterward, the U.S. forces hailed the Egyptians with cries of "Mazal lat!" (paratroopers), while the Egyptians responded with the traditional shout of their American counterparts: "Airborne!"

A gaudy show it was, and the maneuvers, on the whole, were pronounced a success by both Egyptian and U.S. military officials. But the U.S. is still years away from reaching its goal of being able to send into the gulf region as many as 200,000 members of the Rapid Deployment Force with only 48 hours' notice.

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