U.S. takes missiles to Asia

By Inside the Ring

Asian missile buildup

The Pentagon moved several dozen conventional air-launched cruise
missiles to the island of Guam earlier this month. The transfer marked
the first time the precision-guided weapons will be based outside the
continental United States.

The missile deployment to the U.S. island, located in the Pacific
about 1,500 miles east of the Philippines, will likely fuel suspicions
in China about possible U.S. attacks during a conflict between the
mainland and Taiwan, Pentagon officials said.

The forward deployment means U.S. bombers will be able to hit any
place in the Asia-Pacific region within 12 hours with the ground-hugging
warhead, they said.

The deployment was opposed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for years.
The chiefs expressed concerns for the security for a missile regarded as
one of the Pentagon’s premier weapons.

The 3,000-pound cruise missiles were used to such an extent against
Serbia last year that planners worried the Air Force might run out.

The missile deployment was approved after appeals from the U.S.
combatant
commanders, specifically the commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific
Command, Adm. Dennis Blair.

Lights out

When Lt. Gen. Fred McCorkle, the head of Marine Corps aviation,
briefed reporters on the cause of the deadly V-22 Osprey crash, he
adamantly refused to let television cameras record the moment. TV
reporters understandably squawked, but Marines believe Gen. McCorkle was
justified.

He had just finished speaking privately with the wife of the pilot,
Maj. John Brow. For two hours, he explained to the grief-stricken woman
why the investigation blamed her husband’s excessive rate of descent as
the cause of an accident that killed all 19 aboard.

Gen. McCorkle didn’t want the woman’s trauma exacerbated by TV
networks repeatedly replaying the image of a Marine general blaming
another Marine for the tragedy.

Red team leader

The Navy will finish its annual Global 2000 war game today. One
secret scenario: a regional conflict between the United States and a
large Asia nation with a billion people known as Red (communist China).

We were unable to learn the outcome, but if past history is any
measure, China always loses and the United States always wins.

The reason, we are told, is the key manager of the Red forces during
the war games, retired Rear Adm. Eric McVadon, a former attaché in
Beijing and key promoter of the China-is-not-a-threat theory.

Adm. McVadon for several years has taken part in managing the Red
team that plays the game as Chinese military forces against the United
States.

The ex-admiral is the key advocate of China’s military as a “junkyard
army” too weak and backward to be a threat to the United States for at
least 20 years.

The view fits nicely with the Clinton administration’s pro-China
policies that seek to play down the growing threat from China.

A spokesman for the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., said the game
involves some 400 current and former officials and is classified secret
because of “the scenario.”

Adm. McVadon also wields important influence inside the U.S.
government on assessing China. CIA analysts rely on him to bolster their
dovish Chinese views. He is a member of the ongoing “Team B” group of
China experts formed by the CIA. This group was a response to
congressional pressure for intelligence agencies to produce more
realistic assessments of China than those put forth by intelligence
insiders.

Adm. McVadon could not be reached for comment.

“The outcome of the game depends almost completely on the opposing
team,”
said one official.

Ken Watman, director of war gaming at the Naval War College, declined
to say
if a China conflict was one of the war scenarios but he said U.S. forces
usually win.

However, Mr. Watman said this year’s program included between 250 and
300 current and former military and civilian officials and involved
exercises in “network-centric warfare” — the use of computers and
advanced information technology “to revolutionize the way wars are
fought.”

The game also involved “heated arguments” about how to proceed in
conflict,
he said, without elaborating.

Intercepts

  • Two retired Navy four-stars returned to the Naval Academy
    this week to
    honor retiring Rear Adm. Tom Jurkowsky.

    Adm. Jurkowsky ran the Navy’s PR shop. He worked to persuade
    flag-rank
    officers to meet more frequently with reporters. But the two admirals
    who
    showed up to pay homage didn’t always cooperate.

    “Hell with them. We don’t owe them a thing. I won’t talk to them,”
    was the way retired Adm. Charles Larson described his attitude while
    academy superintendent. But he said he often relented at the urging of
    then-Capt. Jurkowsky, who views officers as accountable “public
    servants.”

    Retired Adm. Carlisle A.H. Trost, former chief of naval operations,
    recalled, “He made me talk to people I didn’t want to see.” But Adm.
    Trost said he drew the line on one reporter: Mike Wallace of CBS.

  • Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism expert at the Congressional Research
    Service, has a new take on the activities of super-terrorist Osama bin
    Ladin. In his report, “Terrorism: Near Eastern Groups and State
    Sponsors, 2000,” Mr. Katzman extrapolates that since bin Ladin is
    operating cells in Jordan and Lebanon, his next franchise may crop up
    among Palestinians in Israel.

    Al-Qaida, bin Ladin’s terror organization, “might attempt future
    attacks in Israel with the intent of disrupting the Arab-Israeli peace
    process,” Mr. Katzman writes. “It is possible that some Hamas
    guerrillas, fearing that the Hamas leadership might not vigorously
    oppose a Palestinian peace deal with Israel, are gravitating to bin
    Ladin’s network, although few Palestinians have been associated with bin
    Ladin in the past.”

  • We hear Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has developed a
    gourmet’s taste for Chinese noodles with liver and onions.

  • The U.S. Naval Academy recently purchased two new goats as
    mascots after one died of old age. The goats, named Bill XXXI and Bill
    XXXII, flew in via a C-130 cargo plan. They will be ready for the
    academy’s first football game Sept. 2. Midshipmen have designed an
    elaborate shell game to hide the goats from theft-minded Army cadets
    before December’s Army-Navy classic. The whole thing is top secret.


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