CHAPTER III

Logistics and Overseas Bases

THE FAMOUS ADAGE that while civilians think strategy, generals think logistics is only a slight exaggeration. Without transportation, bases from which to operate, and support units, combat units are of little inherent use unless a battle comes straight to them and they can fight on their home fields, so to speak. Even then, tactical mobility requires strong attention to logistics.

For some observers, what separates the U.S. armed forces from all others is the large Pentagon budget, making it possible to buy space assets, advanced fighters and submarines, precision munitions, a large nuclear arsenal, missile defenses, and the like. All that is significant, to be sure. But it is arguably the case that what most separates the U.S. military from all others is its ability to deploy, operate, and sustain itself abroad indefinitely. Supply trucks, mobile depots, and ferry-like transport ships are just as important as stealth bombers and laser-guided or satellite-guided bombs. Almost no other country in the world can conduct major operations anywhere except on home territory.

The key elements of a logistics capability permitting operations abroad are threefold. First, the transportation assets to move combat forces promptly and efficiently to where they are needed–ideally even if infrastructure is lacking or damaged at the destination. This capability is needed even when forces are permanently deployed abroad, since most major operations require reinforcements from stateside locations. Second, the base network needed to carry out this deployment and to receive forces once they are deployed. Some of this can be constructed as needed, but that is a slow process. Third, support assets to provide the fuel, food, water, ammunition, equipment repair capabilities, medical care, and other materials or services required by a military at war. And of course, these support assets need to be transported somehow, and based somewhere, themselves. They also should be capable of autonomous operations without the help of indigenous civilian or military infrastructure and personnel. Increasingly, though, they may involve a large role for civilian contractors acting in a quasi-military capacity–a trend in need of greater oversight, to be sure, but one that is probably irreversible as well.

Understanding logistics is crucial to successful military operations. Alas, it is often confusing. The issue is less the conceptual complexity of the subject and more the sheer amount of detail–and huge amount of material–involved in moving large forces. One can get lost in data unless one has a few clear organizing principles, frames of reference, and rules of thumb to provide broad structure to the subject.

To give one example about how difficult logistics can be, the debate about which U.S. forces to send to Central Command, and when, and in what order preoccupied the Pentagon in the winter of 2003 just prior to the invasion of Iraq. Secretary Rumsfeld’s desire to minimize the U.S. footprint and his insistence on continually reexamining the Time-Phased Force Deployment List (or TPFDL, a detailed schedule governing the military’s transport of combat units to the vicinity of Iraq) literally consumed weeks of time for thousands of people.

Getting all the details of actual deployments right–and conducting them correctly–requires lots of computerization, the use of barcodes on supplies, standardization of equipment, and sheer practice. But understanding the basic constraints on what is doable and what is not is less difficult. Fairly simple rules of thumb and careful use of arithmetic can aid in understanding key policy questions, such as how much dedicated airlift and sealift to purchase, which overseas military bases are most important, and which responsibilities to outsource to private contractors.

This chapter is the shortest of the book because it is on a fairly specific topic. But that topic merits a full chapter given its centrality in defense planning for all who do it seriously, and its crucial character in war planning for any military that would like to prevail in combat. It also fits very naturally into a book on defense analysis because many if not most aspects of logistics lend themselves to quantification and structured analysis–with the caveat that like most things in warfare, even the best laid logistics plans and operations never survive contact with the enemy (or even, quite often, contact with natural factors like the weather).

The chapter divides logistics issues into two broad categories: transportation and bases. The former involves moving not only people and combat equipment, but supplies. Moreover, there are several key stages in movement, including the intercontinental aspect of transport and the local matter of keeping units provisioned as they conduct operations and move about. The subject of bases covers airfields, ports, troop barracks and training ranges, supply and maintenance depots, reconnaissance and communications facilities, and the like.

The principal focus here, as in other parts of the book, is on the U.S. military. However, much of the discussion can be easily generalized.

STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL TRANSPORTATION

How does one move the equivalent of a mid-sized city halfway across the world, and do so quickly and with enough care and prudence to avoid possible enemy attack in the process? Then, how does one keep that city functioning as it spreads out on a battlefield and engages with the enemy? These are the typical logistical challenges faced by the United States when conducting combat planning.

The General Challenge of Overseas Military Operations

Other countries sometimes try to move several thousand troops within a period of months–and often face problems in doing so. By contrast, the United States plans to move a quarter million to a half million troops and their associated equipment as well as their human necessities within a similar period of several months. In fact, it has done so twice since the Cold War ended, both times in preparation for war against Iraq. It continues planning so as to be able to do so again if need be in places such as Korea.

The fact that military transportation is difficult should be obvious from the broad numbers–preparing for a major war overseas may not involve building skyscrapers or schools or factories, but it does require relocating most other elements of the equivalent of a mid-sized city like Washington, D.C. (population 550,000). In Operation Desert Storm, the United States moved not only half a million people, and more than 100,000 vehicles, but a total of about 10 million tons of supplies (more than 6 million of which were petroleum products). The numbers would have been even larger absent Saudi host nation support–each day the Saudis provided a quarter million meals and two million gallons of potable water (after four months, that would add up to another million tons of supplies).¹ Regional partners also provided up to 15 million gallons of fuel per day for the Air Force alone (about 50,000 tons).² Indeed, strategic transportation is so difficult that the United States itself, if caught off guard, can have difficulty with even modest movements of troops and equipment–as when it took a month to move twenty-four artillery launchers and backup capabilities into the Balkans during the Kosovo War of 1999.

 

TABLE 3.1
Basic Requirements for Desert Storm

500,000 troops
More than 10 million total tons of supplies
Three million tons of bulk supplies (ammunition, spare parts, vehicles, etc.)
More then 6 million tons of fuel shipped from the U.S., plus 2 to 3 million tons more provided by local partners
One million tons of water

 

This chapter does not provide an actual deployment plan for any concrete operation, of course. Doing so requires detailed examination of which types of ships and planes are available for a given contingency, what supplies and equipment each can hold and in what quantity–not to mention detailed discussion of where supplies will be loaded and unloaded, and what equipment is available to do the loading and unloading. The main purpose here is to provide orders of magnitude. These are useful for estimating the costs of various transportation capabilities, for understanding how to move huge amounts of tonnage over large distances quickly, and for assessing the relative importance of different foreign military bases.

In laying out the basics of strategic transportation, it is useful to focus on a few key numbers. Table 3.1 shows some of the key numbers for Operation Desert Storm.

Specific Rules of Thumb on Transport and Logistics

So much for the broad overview and big numbers. For considering other possible operations, including smaller ones, it is necessary to be able to break down some of these big numbers unit by unit. For example, the key Army formations shown in Table 3.2 have the following rough weights (this data comes from the late 1990s, but for main combat formations, there has been only modest change since):³

Army formations typically consume the amounts of supplies shown in Table 3.3 (Marine Corps units of comparable size, being intermediate in their weight, typically consume quantities of supplies falling between the Army light division and heavy division estimates):

 

TABLE 3.2
Tonnage of Standard American Army Divisions

17,000 tons for a light division (11,000 troops)
27,000 tons for the 82nd Airborne Division (just over 13,000 people)
36,000 tons for the 101st Air Assault Division (nearly 16,000 soldiers)
110,000 tons for an armored or mechanized division (18,000 soldiers)
99,000 tons for an Army Corps structure, for the command and coordination and general support of several divisions in the field (22,000 troops)

 

TABLE 3.3
Logistics Supply Requirements for Forces in Combat

600 tons per day for a heavy Army brigade of 3,100 soldiers in combat (roughly 300 tons of fuel, 130 tons of water, 85 tons of dry stores and 60 tons of ammunition)
300 tons per day for an airborne brigade of about 3,400 soldiers in combat (roughly 85 tons of fuel, 50 tons of dry stores, 145 tons of water, 10 tons of ammunition)
400 tons per day for a Stryker medium-weight brigade of about 3,900 soldiers (110 tons of fuel, 170 tons of water, 70 tons of dry stores, 40 tons of ammunition)*

Source: Robert W. Button, John Gordon IV, Jessie Riposo, Irv Blickstein, and Peter A. Wilson, Warfighting and Logistic Support of Joint Forces from the Joint Sea Base (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2007), pp. 77–85.

* The main equipment in a heavy brigade includes 58 M1A2 tanks, 109 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, 43 armored personnel carriers, 45 HMMWVs, 23 recovery vehicles, 451 utility trucks, and 218 cargo trucks. The main equipment in an infantry brigade includes 75 HMMWVs, 16 heavy trucks, 25 medium tactical vehicles, 13 light tactical vehicles, and 263 utility trucks. The main equipment in a Stryker brigade includes 302 Stryker vehicles, 381 utility trucks, and 158 cargo trucks.

A division typically has three or four main brigades plus various supporting capabilities. So to calculate the daily tonnage requirements for a heavy division, one could start with the brigades: 600 tons per day times three to four brigades per division. There would be another 6,000 to 8,000 soldiers in such a division, not tied to brigades, who might consume roughly half as many supplies per person as those soldiers within brigades proper. So the entire division might use 3,000 tons a day of supplies, in rough numbers.

In rare instances, units in the field can be supplied directly from the United States. However, it is much more common that they require tactical-level resupply operations to reach them wherever they have moved on the battlefield. In other words, the United States would use large intercontinental transport assets to create major rear-area logistics bases in a theater of operations, and then use those main bases to supply forces in the field. Aircraft can help with this job, generally in the form of C-130 propeller aircraft and transport helicopters, but large operations require overland resupply. Most commonly that means trucks. And lots of them.

For the United States in recent operations, moving supplies over desert in situations where it controlled the air, theater resupply operations have seemed relatively straightforward. But this is not always the case. A brilliant study by Joshua Epstein in the mid-1980s, at a time when the Soviet Union still occupied Afghanistan and was feared by some to have designs on Iran as well, underscored the difficulty of supplying large armies over great distances by truck in the face of enemy opposition and in the context of complex topography. Because the region between the Soviet Union and central as well as coastal Iran passed through mountains, the Soviets could not have carried out off-road movements very effectively. They would have been constrained to use a modest number of roads, subject to sabotage and both land and aerial attack, in places that would have had to handle a very large number of vehicles per day. They would also have likely been constrained by the sheer availability of trucks, which not all armies maintain in adequate numbers. This is an example worth bearing in mind for the future, even if battles against Soviet forces in the interior of Asia are no longer so plausible.

As noted, most brigades require several hundred tons of supplies a day, and trucks typically have payloads of five to ten tons. So roughly 100 trucks per day are needed to supply a given brigade in combat, especially once the brigade’s typical support units are also accounted for. A large military operation involving twenty brigades, plus associated support elements, would therefore require 1,000 to 4,000 truckloads of logistics support a day in round numbers, depending on the amount of combat and the amount of movement the typical unit is conducting. If these supplies need to move on roads, given the topography in question, bottlenecks can develop. A single major artery might be able to handle 2,000 truckloads of supplies a day–but only if it is possible to send out a fresh armed convoy including twenty supply trucks every fifteen minutes and maintain that pace continuously. The United States has enough trucks to maintain such a pace in its inventories.⁴ Still, this scale of resupply is generally only feasible if vehicles are in very good shape (since frequent breakdowns will interfere with movement), if roads do not need to be shared with civilian traffic, if key infrastructure like bridge networks is robust (and defensible), if weather is not a major factor, and if engineering and maintenance crews and equipment can keep the roads in acceptable driving condition.

For movement of Air Force units, the lift problem is different because most of the combat platforms themselves are naturally self-deploying. They generally require refueling, in the air or on land bases or both, but one does not focus on the weight of the combat systems when doing the arithmetic of strategic transport. This is not to say, however, that moving air combat wings is trivial. Three types of supplies–fuel, munitions, and base support assets such as fuel distribution systems, aircraft maintenance equipment, runway maintenance equipment, missile defenses, and command and control–can be quite heavy. Spare parts impose additional demands.

In Operation Desert Storm, the United States averaged seventy intercontinental flights to the theater a day. Its average rate of delivering tonnage was 1,700 tons per day for the first month of the deployment and 3,600 tons per day in January of 1991, the peak month.⁵ At that latter rate, it would take about two weeks to deploy the needed support for 800 aircraft–assuming that 25 percent of the lift is devoted to the Air Force, that some munitions are eventually provided by prepositioned ships (and later by sealift), and that a substantial amount of fuel is either predeployed or provided by a regional partner such as Saudi Arabia.⁶ Putting this in terms of the support and supply requirements for a combat wing of seventy-two fighter aircraft (about 1,500 to 2,000 people) gives the following rough numbers shown in Table 3.4.

TABLE 3.4
Key Tonnage Data for a Typical Air Force Combat Wing (72 aircraft)

1,000 to 2,000 tons of ground-support equipment
100 to 200 tons per day of ammunition expenditure
500,000 to 1,000,000 gallons of fuel, or up to 3,500 tons a day

 

What is needed to move all these people and their supplies? Obviously, the two main ways to move intercontinentally are airlift and sealift. Airlift can be subdivided into categories: dedicated military lift for cargo, largely commercial aircraft for people, and tankers for (limited amounts of) fuel. The sealift can be subdivided into two main categories: ships for moving equipment and ships for moving petroleum. The former type of sealift can be further broken down into ships readily available and easy to load (“roll on / roll off ships”), as well as ships that need to be taken out of “mothballs” or rented from the commercial sector (the latter typically require cranes for loading and unloading in port).

Airlift is employed to move people certainly, but it is also frequently used to transport sensitive electronics, helicopters, high-priced and scarce ammunition, and critical spare parts. It is sometimes used for equipment needed promptly, like recently manufactured Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan—several thousand of which were airlifted to the Central Command theater in recent years. (Arguably, not all needed to be airlifted, but there was time pressure to get at least the first batches to the theater as fast as possible.)⁷ Sealift is used to move fuel, water, vehicles, bulk ammunition, makeshift housing, mobile depots and hospitals, and in general the heaviest materials.

The key factors for understanding the respective transport capacities of planes and ships are their speeds, their payloads, their dependability/availability, and their time needed for loading as well as unloading. For all major U.S. planes, average speeds are about 500 miles per hour and average loading and unloading times about three to four hours at each end of operations (with the C-17 slightly faster than others). Average payloads and average aircraft utilization rates per day are shown in Table 3.5.

TABLE 3.5
Data on Transport Aircraft

23 tons and about ten hours for the (now retired) C-141
61 tons and 8.1 hours for the C-5
45 tons and 12.5 hours for the C-17
33 tons and 8.6 hours for the KC-10

Source: David Arthur, Options for Strategic Military Transportation Systems (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, September 2005), pp. 8, 14; Schmidt, Moving U.S. Forces, p. 13.

 

For shorter-range transports such as the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and CH-53 helicopter, typical payloads are about ten tons.⁸ The payload of the C-130 propeller aircraft, the work horse of intra-theater airlift for the U.S. military, is about fifteen tons and its range varies from 1,200 to 2,000 miles at normal payload depending on the version of the aircraft at issue.⁹

Aircraft range depends on how much cargo is carried. Generally speaking, it is not a matter of cargo physically displacing fuel, in the sense of taking up space that could hold extra fuel canisters, but rather of the aircraft’s maximum takeoff weight requiring a tradeoff between the two. If the cargo in question is made up of bulky, relatively light matériel, there may be no real tradeoff; it might be possible to fill up fuel bays and cargo holds entirely. (At some level, adding any weight to an airplane reduces its fuel efficiency in flight; airplanes are somewhat more efficient when lighter. But this consideration is typically minor; aircraft fuel efficiencies typically vary by 5 to 10 percent depending on weight.) Quite often, however, equipment is heavy enough that a full load of cargo requires some reduction in fuel, so that the airplane stays within maximum takeoff weight restrictions.

As one example, consider these facts and figures for a C-130. Basic rules of thumb for the C-130H variant are that the plane flies 300 knots per hour and consumes 5,000 pounds of fuel per hour. Its weight when empty is 85,000 pounds; its maximum takeoff weight is 155,000 pounds; its maximum fuel loading is 60,000 pounds. So except in the case of very light loads, adding more cargo requires a reduction in fuel–and hence range–in a linear, direct way. For example, if the payload were to weigh 25,000 pounds, 45,000 pounds of fuel could be carried, allowing about nine hours of flight or about 2,700 nautical miles of range. If the payload were reduced by 10,000 pounds, to 15,000 pounds total, then 10,000 more pounds of fuel could be loaded aboard–translating into two more hours and 600 more nautical miles of flight.¹⁰

Relevant data for a few other aircraft are as follows. Maximum takeoff weights (and maximum cargo capacities) are roughly 170 tons (and 30 tons) for the C-141, 290 tons (and 65 tons) for the C-17, 295 tons (and 60 tons) for the KC-10, and 420 tons for the C-5 or a 747B (with respective maximum cargo loadings of 89 and 100 tons). Fuel burn rates are 5.3 tons/hour for the C-141, 7 tons/hour for the C-17, 8.6 tons/hour for the KC-10, and 10.3 tons/hour for the C-5.¹¹ Maximum ranges at full payload are 2,500 miles for the C-141, 2,750 miles for the C-17, 4,400 miles for the KC-10, 7,300 miles for the C-5, and 8,300 miles for a 747-400.¹² This information allows one to do range-payload tradeoff calculations for various planes. For example, reducing the C-17’s payload from sixty-five tons to thirty-five tons allows the addition of thirty more tons of fuel (all within the same maximum takeoff weight ceiling), which allows about four more hours of flight or 2,000 more miles of range.

Roll-on/roll-off ships can be loaded in three to four days and unloaded in two to three. Their speeds vary from 28 to 30 miles per hour for the SL-7 and large medium-speed roll-on/roll-off(LMSR) ships to 18 miles per hour for many ships in reserve. Most roll-on/roll-off ships have average payloads of about 15,000 to 20,000 tons (though their capacity is often constrained more by square footage; SL-7 ships have about 150,000 square feet of space, LMSRs about 250,000). Ships requiring cranes to move equipment on and off (including container ships) can take four to ten days for loading and a comparable amount of time for offloading. Their payloads vary greatly.¹³

Putting all these numbers together, it typically takes two to six large ships to move an entire division, depending on the division’s size and weight. Alternatively, if it is to be flown (virtually never the approach taken for a whole division), the total number of flights required is typically 1,000 to 3,000 (depending not just on the type of division but the type of aircraft utilized, naturally).¹⁴

The United States has roughly 360 large airplanes for carrying troops and equipment (and another 200 quickly available via the civil reserve air fleet program). It also has about twenty large “roll-on roll-off” ships, each capable of carrying 15,000 to 20,000 tons of equipment (equipment and initial supplies for a heavy division weigh about 100,000 tons) as well as various other sealift ships. Altogether, its transportation assets create a theoretical capacity for a sustained average movement of about 30,000 tons of military equipment a day to a typical overseas destination.¹⁵ To put it differently, assuming optimal rates, the United States could deploy about five divisions of ground forces, ten wings of Air Force combat aircraft, and associated initial support and supplies–perhaps totaling one million tons overall–in just over a month’s time (though as a practical matter it would usually take several weeks to reach the level of maximum delivery, meaning closer to two months could be needed).

Constraints and Practical Obstacles

The preceding provides the theory, anyway. But in practice, deployments are often slower. Indeed, they can be much slower depending on the region to which troops, equipment, and supplies are being sent.

Bottlenecks often develop at ports and airfields, particularly abroad. Many airfields have very limited space for loading and unloading aircraft, for example, and perhaps limited refueling capacity as well, severely limiting throughput. Even at reasonably large, modern airfields it is generally difficult to deploy much more than 1,000 tons of equipment and supplies a day.¹⁶ Absent at least three to four ports and airfields in the theater of destination, therefore, maximum deployment rates would not be attainable. In fact, actual deployment rates are often less than half of what is mathematically feasible in the abstract. That means the United States could need a few weeks to deploy a division-sized force and a few months to deploy a large force to most parts of the world.¹⁷

Indeed, transportation throughputs can be much less to certain types of locations. One careful analysis of possible military responses to the 1994 Rwanda genocide argued that it would have been difficult to deploy more than about 800 tons of military equipment and supplies a day to Rwanda using the two major airfields at Kigali and Entebbe, Uganda. The author, Professor Alan Kuperman, also noted possible constraints from issues such as ensuring adequate aerial refueling in the vicinity of Greece for transport aircraft. Factoring in the delays in getting started, and then in moving U.S. forces out of Kigali and about the country, he argued that a minimum of three weeks would therefore have been needed to deploy a reinforced brigade with 10,000 tons of equipment and 6,000 troops–longer than many assumed. Even if his mathematics can be challenged somewhat–for example, on the possible use of additional airfields in the region–the basic point about logistics and transport is correct. It would typically take a couple weeks even to deploy a few thousand troops to distant regions. The only possible exceptions to this general rule would be for cases where major U.S. or friendly bases were located nearby–or for cases where troops could be airdropped (in which case their tactical mobility would typically be very limited and their need for being resupplied could pose challenges).¹⁸

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is somewhat more optimistic than Kuperman in its analysis of a different case. CBO estimated that it could take about twenty-three days to deploy an existing heavy brigade to East Africa if only one airfield were available to receive incoming C-17 flights (the duration of the deployment is expected to decline somewhat, to eighteen to twenty days, if a new type of brigade based on the so-called future combat system and weighing about 25,000 tons is developed). This calculation assumes the maximum number of aircraft on the ground (or MOG) for an illustrative airport would be three, that a C-17 would require just over three hours to unload and get back in the air, that the airfield could be used on average twenty hours a day–and thus that, on average, sixteen flights per day could be handled.¹⁹

A final point: in addition to needing lots of assets, logistics requires lots of people. That is one reason why the Army has about twice as many soldiers dedicated to general support missions as to its main combat formations. In addition, it explains why tens of thousands of contractors are often also needed for large operations.²⁰ Indeed, even though the Army has about twice as many personnel in support as in combat units, its own estimates suggest it should have even more support–about 2.5 soldiers for every one in a combat unit.²¹ The fact it does not is one reason so many contractors have been hired for the ongoing missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

BASING

Understanding the U.S. military network can be daunting, given the dozens of countries and hundreds of facilities involved. But the number of major bases is actually rather modest. And for present purposes, that allows a complex situation to be greatly simplified. Many small American bases abroad are designed to create a symbolic presence, or facilitate a training mission with a host country, or provide a concrete manifestation of the strength of an alliance. In other words, while serving real and important purposes, they are not crucial for creating a global base network to facilitate large-scale military deployments and major regional operations. Only the latter activities are of primary concern here.

This section first summarizes the American base network abroad with an emphasis on crucial bases possessing broad regional and global importance. It then considers several policy issues of relevance to the network’s future characteristics.²²

Overview of America’s Global Base Network

Regionally, American forces abroad are concentrated in three main zones–Europe, East Asia and the Western Pacific, and the broader Middle East including the Persian Gulf as well as Afghanistan. As of mid-2007, the United States had some 90,000 uniformed personnel assigned to bases in Europe (though about 10,000 of the total were deployed to the Central Command theater at that time, leaving some 80,000 actually in Europe). That was down from 120,000 in mid-2001 (with most of the largest reductions to date having been in Germany as well as the Balkans).²³

The United States Air Force has a large presence in Europe, with just over 30,000 uniformed personnel employed there. The U.S. Air Force in Europe operates seven main bases along with seventy smaller locations. The main operating bases are the Royal Air Force Lakenheath and Mildenhall Air Bases in England; Ramstein and Spangdahlem Air Bases in Germany, Aviano Air Base in Italy, Lajes Air Base in the Azores, and Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.

Incirlik in south central Turkey, after having hosted U.S. combat aircraft and more than 3,000 Americans during no-fly-zone operations over northern Iraq (Operation Northern Watch), has been downsized since the invasion of Iraq to a total of some 1,500 Americans that primarily support logistics and resupply flights. It is still a busy base given the amount of U.S. traffic going eastward from Europe, but on a substantially smaller scale than before.²⁴ In Germany, Ramstein Air Base is also a logistics hub, with an airlift wing as its core permanent unit.²⁵ Spangdahlem Air Base hosts F-16 and A-10 combat aircraft.²⁶ In Italy, Aviano Air Base hosts several dozen F-16 combat aircraft (it was critical in the air war against Serbia in 1999).²⁷ Lajes Field in the Azores Islands of Portugal is an important transit hub for many military aircraft crossing the Atlantic.²⁸ Finally, in the United Kingdom, Lakenheath is home to F-15 combat aircraft and Mildenhall to refueling aircraft.²⁹ Several hundred tactical nuclear weapons are still believed to be in Europe as well, distributed across bases in the U.K., the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Greece, and Turkey.³⁰

U.S. naval facilities in Europe are found primarily in Spain and Italy (there are smaller capabilities in Germany, largely to help with port operations for loading and unloading forces, as well as Greece and Iceland). In Spain, the key facility is U.S. Naval Station Rota, on the Atlantic Ocean side of the Straits of Gibraltar. It is a support base for resupply, repair, and related activities for the Sixth Fleet. The Sixth Fleet headquarters is in Naples, Italy and another support base is found on the Italian island of Sicily.³¹ A similar type of logistics hub is in Greece at Souda Bay.³² There are all told about 8,000 U.S. sailors in Europe at these facilities.

The U.S. Army presence in Europe involves dozens of bases, many of which are being downsized or closed. Its drawdown in Europe is about halfway done. The number of soldiers was about 64,000 early this decade; it is down to about 45,000 now, and reportedly headed to 28,000 under current plans, though that figure seems likely to increase somewhat at least for a time, given the planned expansion in the Army.³³

The Army is planning to deploy about a brigade’s worth of troops to Eastern Europe at any given time, spread between Romania and Bulgaria on temporary deployments. A total of seven bases, all relatively near the Black Sea, would be available for such purposes in the two countries, under the framework often-year agreements signed in 2005 with Romania and 2006 with Bulgaria. Smaller Army deployments have begun in 2007 (indeed, several U.S. Air Force combat aircraft deployed temporarily to Romania in 2006).³⁴

In the Asia–Pacific region, the United States had about 74,000 uniformed personnel in mid-2007, down from a total of roughly 92,000 in mid-2001, with reductions in Korea being the most important change to date.³⁵

This is the region where American forces are the most evenly balanced by service, relative to other places with a large U.S. overseas presence–that 74,000 figure includes about 21,000 soldiers, 15,000 sailors, 16,000 Marines, and 22,000 Air Force personnel.³⁶

In the Asia–Pacific theater, the dominant locations of American forces are in Japan and South Korea. Each has a formal countrywide U.S. military headquarters. The Pentagon’s regional posture also includes important access to sites or collaborative training in Australia, Singapore, the Philippines, and elsewhere.³⁷ As for the main sites, U.S. Forces/Korea is focused virtually exclusively on the defense of the Republic of Korea; U.S. Forces/Japan is, by contrast, a regional and global hub.

In Japan, key Air Force bases reside in the north on the main island of Honshu (Misawa Air Base), as well as Yokota near Tokyo (home to the so-called Fifth Air Force) and Kadena Air Base on the island of Okinawa. The U.S. combat aircraft in Japan include the most modern variants of the nation’s F-15 and F-16 fighters.³⁸ The Navy stations an aircraft carrier and air wing in the general vicinity of Tokyo (with ships at Yokosuka Naval Base and aircraft at Naval Air Facility Atsugi). That carrier is the only U.S. Navy aircraft carrier homeported abroad. More than 15,000 U.S. Marines are usually located on Okinawa, with key facilities including Camp Courtney, Camp Schwab, Camp Foster, Camp Butler, the Northern Training Area, and the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, as well as Iwakuni on the main island of Honshu.³⁹ Major changes are planned for those Marines, such as moving about half of them (including those in the headquarters of the 3^rd Marine Expeditionary Force [III MEF]) to Guam and relocating the Futenma Marine Corps airfield to a different and less populated part of Okinawa. (The Guam relocation plan is in its very fledgling stages, and is not due to be completed until 2014.)⁴⁰

U.S. capabilities in Korea are focused primarily on the Air Force and Army, organized respectively into what the United States for largely historical reasons calls the 7^th Air Force and 8^th Army. The former has two main combat bases, Osan Air Base (only fifty miles from the DMZ, and home to the 51^st Fighter Wing) and Kunsan Air Base (further south on Korea’s west coast, and home to the 8^th Fighter Wing). Kunsan features primarily F-16 aircraft (being upgraded from the so-called Block 30 to the more modern Block 40 configuration).⁴¹ Osan has both F-16 and A-10 aircraft. Together, they host about 10,000 U.S. uniformed personnel.⁴²

The other almost 20,000 American troops in Korea are mostly Army, centered on the 2^nd Infantry Division (which despite its name is actually fairly heavy in terms of vehicles and armament). But other key units include the 19^th Sustainment Command and Logistic Support Element Far East (both of which would help with the flow of hundreds of thousands of additional U.S. troops to the peninsula in an all-out war), as well as special operations forces and the 35^th Air Defense Artillery Brigade (which fields Patriot missile defense systems among other capabilities).

Beyond Japan and Korea, American capabilities in Alaska and Hawaii, while of course on U.S. territory, also occupy a hybrid status of sorts–constituting forces on U.S. territory that are also to some degree forward deployed. That is also true for the growing presence on Guam, which is soon to feature three attack submarines, up to forty-eight fighter aircraft, up to ten Global Hawk spy planes, special forces, tanker aircraft, Navy vessels known as Littoral Combat Ships, and those 8,000 Marines from Okinawa.⁴³ Many of these aircraft may also have hardened shelters built for them (and over time, hardened runways are a possibility, too, depending on how the theater evolves). It also has the capacity for massive reinforcement; up to 170 B-52 bombers at a time operated there during the Vietnam War.⁴⁴

The United States is losing an air base in Ecuador that has been used by several aircraft such as AWACS to maintain surveillance over and near that country (including over ocean waters) as part of the drug war. The loss of this base is potentially significant, to be sure–but for its direct localized effects on narcotics interdiction, not for broader or larger military operations in the waters around Ecuador or beyond. As such, it is a secondary matter in the context of this analysis of America’s global base network and how that allows power projection around the globe.⁴⁵

Moving to the Middle East, U.S. military capabilities are of course found overwhelmingly in Iraq at present. There were about a dozen very large bases, and some forty-five major bases overall, as of the peak of operations in 2007. Counting forward-operating bases and combat outposts, the number of installations exceeded 100. The larger bases include Camp Victory at the Baghdad Airport, where the main U.S. military headquarters as well as two American divisions were located (as of 2007), Camp Anaconda/Balad Air Base north of Baghdad (home to the 332^nd Air Expeditionary Wing, the only Air Force wing in Iraq), and Camp Speicher near Tikrit.⁴⁶

Kuwait hosts the second largest U.S. capability in the region, with some 20,000 troops. Roughly sixteen bases are currently used to support this presence.⁴⁷ Bahrain is notable for providing a home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, with more than 1,000 American sailors located there. Qatar is a major logistical hub as well as the regional headquarters for Central Command (the main headquarters for which are in Tampa, Florida) and command center for the main U.S. regional command airbase (Al Udeid); several hundred Americans are stationed in that country. Egypt, a major non-NATO ally, allows invaluable air and naval transit for U.S. forces through the Suez Canal. It is also home to the biennial BRIGHT STAR multinational training event for CENTCOM. Some 400 U.S. personnel are in Egypt, mostly airmen and airwomen. Also key in the war on terror is a combined joint task force operating out of Djibouti for the Horn of Africa. Almost 1,500 U.S. troops are stationed there, apportioned roughly equally among the military services.⁴⁸ About 1,000 U.S. personnel are also found on Diego Garcia, a British-owned territory in the Indian Ocean, a major logistical hub.

The United States has about 2,400 uniformed personnel in sub-Saharan Africa (as of mid-2007), up substantially from the 300 there in mid-2001.⁴⁹ There were thirteen cooperative security locations in Africa under EUCOM jurisdiction prior to the creation of AFRICOM. With that command’s creation, the cooperative security locations switch to its jurisdiction–though the fact that AFRICOM is based in Europe, with an uncertain political status and acceptability in much of Africa itself, provides more questions than answers about the future of U.S. capabilities on that continent.⁵⁰

Normally, the Army has two brigades’ worth of prestationed or prepositioned combat equipment in Kuwait as well. However, ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have largely made use of these (as well as two brigade sets typically on ships, one at Guam, the other on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia). Of the Army’s normal allotment of five prepositioned brigade sets of equipment, only the set in South Korea is roughly complete at present.⁵¹ For these reasons, rather than being able to make several brigades operational within as little as five to ten days (as troops were airlifted to join up with their equipment), the United States would have to load up equipment from the United States and then ship it across the oceans, necessitating a month or more even if equipment was promptly available for loading. This situation would have posed a substantial risk in the decades when North Korea’s military was stronger than South Korea’s; it is probably less worrisome now, but still a strategic constraint on prompt American responsiveness to various places.

The Marine Corps has a policy of keeping a brigade’s worth of prepositioned equipment afloat at Diego Garcia, a second in the Mediterranean, and a third at Guam. The Air Force keeps ammunition ready to move quickly on ships at Diego Garcia; the Army also keeps support equipment quickly deployable on Guam.⁵²

Purposes and Functions of Major Bases

How to understand the various roles played by these bases? Even among the major facilities, there exists a wide range of main missions and objectives. They include:

• Combat bases for tactical aircraft (as in Japan and Korea)
• Ground combat bases (Iraq and Afghanistan and central parts of Korea)
• Ports for ships (as in Japan and Guam, and to a lesser extent Bahrain, Diego Garcia, and Italy)
• Major logistics hubs for equipment repair, storage and transshipment of supplies and equipment, refueling of aircraft (as in Germany, Kuwait, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Diego Garcia, southern Korea and again Guam and Japan)
• Ground force bases focused on maintaining a forward presence for general deterrence and for alliance exercises (Germany and Okinawa)

Which of these functions are most significant? It is important to ask in case choices might have to be made about which to keep (should a host nation, for example, ask for a smaller U.S. footprint due to domestic political realities). It is also important to develop backup options for those bases that are truly crucial. Moreover, which bases are most likely to survive in the face of a possible enemy attack? This is a growing worry in an era of increasingly precise ballistic and cruise missile inventories for many countries.

Working through the same list, combat air and ground bases are clearly quite important if one anticipates the real possibility of fighting a major war (or deterring it) in a given region. That makes combat air bases in Japan and Korea quite important but suggests that remaining tactical air bases in places such as Germany and Britain are less important, given the stable character of contemporary Western Europe. For tactical combat aircraft, it is optimal to have bases within about 500 miles of where they are likely to conduct war time operations; facilities in Japan and Korea are within that distance of North Korea and the Taiwan Strait, whereas those in Western Europe probably are not close to any likely future combat theater.

How many air bases are needed in a given location? It is generally difficult to operate more than a wing of aircraft (about seventy-two planes) from a given base, based on historical averages and air traffic practicalities. So several major air bases, say at least ten, would ideally be available for a major operation given the experiences of the Iraq wars.

This might seem a fairly straightforward number to have available, as the world inventory of runways of at least 6,000 feet with sufficient strength to handle at least a fighter jet exceeds 2,000 (roughly 300 in Asia, 150 in the Persian Gulf and Middle East region, 400 in Western Europe, 600 in North America, and about 550 in the rest of the world combined). But they are, of course, unevenly distributed. Many countries only have one or two (and those with hardened shelters for aircraft that might be attacked are far fewer).⁵³ Moreover, the United States only has about fifteen major air bases abroad in a total often countries now. So there is a premium on retaining access to these facilities.⁵⁴ Aircraft carriers, and improvised use of commercial airfields or other countries’ military airfields, can clearly help in crises if available. But they are generally less optimal for sustained combat operations.

One reason to have a certain number of dedicated military airfields concerns airbase survivability. Aircraft, runways, and the people working on airplanes or flying them are increasingly vulnerable to precision weapons and submunitions (not to mention attacks by special forces, which have damaged or destroyed more than 2,000 aircraft since 1942, according to Alan Vick of RAND).⁵⁵ Israel proved this even in 1967 when it destroyed 300 Egyptian aircraft within five hours. The Israelis had time for a second strike in 1967 because in their first wave of attacks they had also used runway-penetrating weapons that prevented Egypt from moving its surviving aircraft.

Runway repair equipment and multiple runway surfaces can help address the vulnerability problem by making it easier to restore flight operations quickly. Hardened facilities and shelters for tactical aircraft can help too, as Egypt proved in 1973. Of course, to have hardened shelters and repair equipment available requires planning and a political environment in which such preparations are possible. Accordingly, while some 1,400 hardened shelters lie in Asia, almost half (some 640 as of 2002) are in the Republic of Korea and are not necessarily available for conflicts beyond the peninsula. Also, about 100 hardened shelters are in Japan, at least 200 in Taiwan, just over 200 in India, and just under 200 in Pakistan–but which if any would be available to U.S. forces in a crisis or conflict is hard to say, and most would be well out of range of any given conflict.⁵⁶ Moreover, these shelters are expensive, to the tune of about $4 million a piece typically (with costs for construction of an entire modern air base likely to reach $1.5 billion or more, and the time period for construction likely to reach into many months at a minimum). Although modern precision weapons make many shelters vulnerable to direct hits in ways they were not years ago, shelters are still generally a great aid to aircraft survivability.⁵⁷ And repair equipment can keep runways and taxiways functioning. Such survivability assets are generally much easier to build and operate at dedicated military bases than elsewhere.

What about the Navy? Of course, American warships do not require coaling stations to operate globally any more. But they can maintain deployments more efficiently if homeported abroad. Such stationing reduces time wasted in transit; it also allows a given vessel to be essentially “on call” at all times, even when in port. This means, for example, that there is a huge benefit to the use of ports in Japan in particular (that is the main place where American warships are routinely home-based). By some estimates, to achieve the same continual level of presence and deterrence in a place like the Persian Gulf or Western Pacific, it could require four to six times as many ships operating out of American ports as operating from a well-positioned forward homeport.⁵⁸

Logistics hubs are quite important, especially in regions where huge numbers of personnel and supplies might need to be surged in a major crisis. As noted, ports and airfields in combat theaters often get clogged up during big deployments; they can also be vulnerable to attack. And as with any base, access to it may be denied by a host government in a given crisis or war. All these factors place a high premium on having a number of bases available; they also place a premium on being able to set up infrastructure such as underground fuel storage facilities in advance of any crisis. Having logistics hubs where large ships and planes can be unloaded and supplies transferred to smaller, more manageable vessels and aircraft is critical for reducing bottlenecks and increasing safety in major deployment operations.

What about the last bullet point from the previous list, the symbolic value of bases? While not trivial, it is not generally the most important reason to have bases. There usually are alternatives to stationing large ground force contingents overseas if their main purpose is to show the flag and conduct exercises with allies. Forward presence is important, but it is also largely an intangible, and as such modest reductions in a given capacity can often be tolerated if need be.

 

QUESTION 11: For global use, which is a better place for the United States to station Army forces, Texas or Germany?

 

ANSWER: The key point to recognize in answering this question is, as shown in Table 3.1 and 3.2, that heavy forces are quite massive. They almost always require movement by sea; only small elements of them can realistically be delivered intercontinentally by air. The practical importance of this fact is that one must think through the steps of loading and sailing ships, not just look at a map and think of distances as the bird flies, when evaluating transportation options.

Seen in this light, having U.S. ground forces in Western Europe in the modern era may be of little benefit, even though those forces are closer to likely trouble spots in the Middle East than if based in Texas or Georgia or North Carolina or California. This is because the most efficient deployment path from Germany to the Persian Gulf is via rail to ports in the Baltic Sea, and then over the Atlantic Ocean and into the Mediterranean. Despite the fact that Germany has an excellent infrastructure and tends to facilitate the movement of American forces through its territory (even in the runup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when the German government opposed the war), that trajectory is little better than a deployment from the United States (and it is worse than starting from the central or western United States if the goal is to reach East Asia). Perhaps three days of sailing time would be averted en route to the Gulf, at most; other timelines, for loading forces on trains and moving them to ports, as well as loading and unloading ships, would be essentially unchanged. In fact, deployment from Europe could actually be slower unless sealift ships were already on hand in Europe when a crisis began and the clock started ticking.

It is important to understand, in considering such options, that the savings associated with basing forces in the United States rather than abroad are generally modest. Costs to purchase equipment, train, pay salaries, and the like are comparable whether forces are stationed at home or abroad; some base costs may also be partially covered by allied nations (Japan is especially generous in this regard). As such, bringing home 50,000 soldiers from Europe and South Korea (the total number deployed in those two countries as of 2004, before recent reductions began, was 80,000) would save about $1 billion a year in annual operating costs once implemented (about half in base operations, half in personnel costs for purposes such as moving people about and running schools abroad). The bases themselves that would be rendered unnecessary by such a change are worth billions. But they would generally revert back to their host nations rather than be available for sale by the United States. In fact, if replacement bases had to be rebuilt in the United States, costs for stationing more forces in the United States would be greater than those for keeping them abroad for a time. That fact helps explain why the U.S. military is now slowing its reductions in Europe, since its recent decision to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps makes available basing back home somewhat scarce and would necessitate the construction of more facilities for returning units.⁵⁹

 

QUESTION 12: Which U.S. bases in Japan are most important?

 

ANSWER: It is useful to break this question down into two main parts: the large (and controversial) U.S. military presence on Okinawa, and the presence on the main island of Honshu (focused on the homeporting of a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group in Yokosuka, though there are other important U.S. military capabilities on the main islands, too, including more aircraft in the north of Japan and Navy ships near Nagasaki).

Tactical air bases are extremely important in Okinawa, and in Japan and Korea more generally, to reach potential combat zones in North Korea and the Taiwan Strait. There are only two main U.S. tactical air bases on Okinawa–Kadena for the Air Force and Futenma for the Marine Corps–underscoring their importance. (Some of that extreme importance may have been mitigated by recent U.S.–Japan agreements to make available Japan’s own military and civilian airfields in the event of a crisis, but these facilities are less well prepared for supporting combat operations.) The other alternative, in the event of war, would be to build new air bases in the course of conflict. While bulldozing and paving can be done fairly fast, within weeks perhaps under some circumstances, construction of the vast underground fuel and ammunition storage facilities needed for such operations as well as hardened shelters for the aircraft themselves realistically requires months. Not having immediate access to air bases thus makes forward defense less credible and weakens deterrence.

The U.S. Marine Corps presence on Okinawa, by contrast, is more a matter of convenience than of military necessity–as evidenced by the fact that the United States is now willing to bring half of those Marines to Guam to reduce the associated political burden on Okinawan and Japanese politicians. As noted, the Marines do not fight on Okinawa; they would have to load up on ships to deploy in substantial numbers with their equipment (and there are only enough amphibious ships in Japan to deploy about 2,000 of them with their combat equipment at a time). Aerial transport can move modest numbers of Marines, but equipment and supplies are so heavy that the throughput capacity would be limited, as Tables 3.2 through 3.5 underscore. Okinawa for the Marines is mostly a staging base, not a combat base. The Marine Corps presence on Okinawa may have important symbolic virtue, but its military necessity probably does not rival that of the Air Force Kadena base there.

Moving to the aircraft carrier issue, consider the hypothetical of the homeport being lost. In that situation, the most straightforward (though expensive) response would be to build a larger Navy to compensate and base the ships in the United States. Then, the same number of days per year of needed forward presence could be maintained, but only by virtue of having more ships share in the task. Typically, for ships homeported in the United States, the Navy will be able to maintain a ship forward deployed and on station about 20 to 25 percent of the time. It will use another 25 percent for training, perhaps 10 to 15 percent for moving the ship to and from the overseas theater in question, another 25 percent for rotating crews and allowing recovery time on shore, and an average of another 10 to 15 percent for major ship overhaul every few years. So a forward presence of one carrier in the Western Pacific could be maintained either by one carrier homeported in Japan (and considered to be on station at all times) or about five carriers sharing the job and based back in the United States. Given the costs of aircraft carriers (see Table 1.5), the difference could be as much as $25 billion a year, if it really was necessary to construct a larger Navy to compensate for the loss of Yokosuka.

NOTES

1. Department of Defense, Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, April 1992), pp. F-1, F-2, F-26.

2. Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, Gulf War Air Power Survey Summary Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1993), p. 210.

3. Rachel Schmidt, Moving U.S. Forces: Options for Strategic Mobility (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, 1997), p. 80.

4. Frances M. Lussier, Replacing and Repairing Equipment Used in Iraq and Afghanistan: The Army’s Reset Program (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, September 2007), pp. 1–5.

5. Rachel Schmidt, Moving U.S. Forces: Options for Strategic Mobility (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, February 1997), p. 48.

6. David A. Ochmanek, Edward R. Harshberger, David E. Thaler, and Glenn A. Kent, To Find, and Not to Yield (Santa Monica, Calif.; RAND, 1998), p. 27; Christopher Bowie, Fred Frostic, Kevin Lewis, John Lund, David Ochmanek, and Philip Propper, The New Calculus: Analyzing Airpower’s Changing Role in Joint Theater Campaigns (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1993), pp. 30–33; Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, Gulf War Air Power Survey Summary Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1993), pp. 210–13; and Christopher J. Bowie, The Anti-Access Threat and Theater Air Bases (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2002), pp. 15–16.

7. Personal communication with Lt. Col. Chris Patterson, U.S. Air Force, Scott Air Force Base, U.S. Transportation Command, Belleville, Illinois, February 21, 2008.

8. Button, Gordon, Riposo, Blickstein, and. Wilson, Warfighting and Logistic Support of Joint Forces from the Joint Sea Base, pp. 99–101; and Colonel Timothy M. Laur and Steven L. Llanso, Encyclopedia of Modern U.S. Military Weapons (New York: Berkley Books, 1995), pp. 116–20, 150.

9. U.S. Air Force, “Air Force Fact Sheet: C-130 Hercules,” May 2006, available at www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=92 [accessed December 14, 2007].

10. Conversation with Lt. Col. William Knight, U.S. Air Force (and Congressional Research Service fellow, 2007–2008), January 2, 2008.

11. Typical cargo loadings are about two-thirds of the theoretical maximum; tons here are short tons, or 2,000 pounds. See U.S. Air Force, Air Mobility Planning Factors, Air Force Pamphlet No. 10-1403 (June 1997), available at www.fas.org/man/dod-101/usaf/docs/afpam10-1403.htm [accessed February 19, 2008].

12. See Federation of American Scientists, “C-141B Starlifter,” Washington, D.C., 1999, available at www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/c-141.htm [accessed February 19, 2008]; U.S. Air Force, “Fact Sheet: C-17 Globemaster III,” Washington, D.C., May 2006, available at www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet_print.asp?fsID=86&page=1 [accessed February 19, 2008]; U.S. Air Force, “Fact Sheet: KC-10 Extender,” Washington, D.C., September 2006, available at www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet_print.asp?fsID=109&page=1 [accessed February 19, 2008]; U.S. Air Force, “Fact Sheet: C-5 Galaxy,” Washington, D.C., August 2007, available at www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet_print.asp?fsID=84&page=1?fsID=84&page=1 [accessed February 19, 2008]; and AerospaceWeb.Org, “Boeing 747 Long-Range Jetliner,” February 2008, available at www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/jetliner/b747/ [accessed February 19, 2008].

13. Arthur, Options for Strategic Military Transportation Systems, pp. 5, 8, 14.

14. Schmidt, Moving U.S. Forces, p. 80.

315. This estimated capacity for sustained delivery from airlift and sealift together is not to be confused with a metric commonly used for airlift in particular, million ton miles per day (MTM/D). The United States presently has nearly sixty MTM/D of airlift capacity–defined as the sum of all airlifters’ payload, times their average speed, times their average number of sustainable hours of flight per day, all divided by two to account for the fact that the planes must fly back empty (more or less) to load up again for another trip. See David Arthur, Options for Strategic Military Transportation Systems (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, September 2005), pp. 8–9.

16. Schmidt, Moving U.S. Forces, pp. 48, 54, 80–81; and Department of Defense, Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, April 1992), p. F-26.

17. Arthur, Options for Strategic Military Transportation Systems, pp. x, xii, 3, and 5.

18. Alan J. Kuperman, The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 2001), pp. 54–77 (especially pp. 60–61).

19. Frances M. Lussier, The Army’s Future Combat Systems Program and Alternatives (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, 2006), pp. 31, 36, 53, 71–72.

20. Matthew Goldberg, Logistics Support for Deployed Military Forces (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, October 2005), pp. 2–5, 17. The Active Army in 2005 had 151,000 soldiers in main combat units, 79,000 in combat support (capabilities such as air and missile defense), and 92,000 in what is termed combat service support (such as rear-area logistics). For the National Guard, the respective numbers were 169,000, 67,000, and 89,000. For the Army Reserve, they were 14,000, 40,000, and 84,000. Overall totals for the entire Army were thus 334,000 in combat units, 187,000 in combat support, and 265,000 in combat service support. And for contractors, in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm more than 60,000 contractors were employed in the theater (for maintenance, cargo trucking, engineering, fuel supply, and other purposes). In Operation Iraqi Freedom, nearly 200,000 have been employed, including non-Americans.

21. Frances M. Lussier, Structuring the Active and Reserve Army for the 21^st Century (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, 1997), pp. 10–11.

22. Some of the ideas in this section first appeared in Michael E. O’Hanlon, Unfinished Business: U.S. Overseas Military Presence in the 21^st Century (Washington, D.C.: Center for a New American Security, 2008).

23. Department of Defense, “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country,” June 30, 2007, available at siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MILITARY/history/hst0706.pdf [accessed October 30, 2007]; and Department of Defense, “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country,” June 30, 2001, available at siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/M05/hst0601.pdf [accessed June 30, 2007].

24. U.S. Air Force, “Incirlik Air Base,” available at www.incirlik.af.mil/units [accessed June 26, 2007]; and Alparslan Akkus, “Incirlik Shop Owners Moved to U.S. Base in Iraq,” Turkish Daily News, April 28, 2007, available at www.turkishdailynews.com/tr/article.php?enewsid=71815.

25. See U.S. Air Force, “Ramstein Air Base,” available at www.ramstein.af.mil/units [accessed June 27, 2007].

26. See U.S. Air Force, “Spangdahlem Air Base,” available at www.spangdahlem.af.mil/units [accessed June 27, 2007].

27. U.S. Air Force, “Aviano Air Base,” available at www.aviano.af.mil/units [accessed June 27, 2007].

28. U.S. Air Force, “Lajes Field,” available at www.lajes.af.mil/units [accessed June 27, 2007].

29. U.S. Air Force, “Royal Air Force Mildenhall,” available at www.mildenhall.af.mil/units [accessed June 27, 2007]; and U.S. Air Force, “Royal Air Force Lakenheath,” available at www.lakenheath.af.mil [accessed June 27, 2007].

30. Natural Resources Defense Council, “U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe: A Review of Post–

Cold War Policy, Force Levels, and War Planning,” New York, NY, February 2005, Appendix A, available at nrdc.org/nuclear/euro/euro_app.pdf [accessed November 2, 2007]. NRDC estimates that the United States had a total of 480 nuclear weapons in Europe in early 2005.

31. Sandra Jontz, “Navy Base at La Maddalena May Close Months Earlier,” Stars and Stripes, January 21, 2007, available at stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=41844&archive=true [accessed July 10, 2007].

32. See U.S. Navy, “Welcome to Rota,” available at www.rota.navy.mil/navsta/welcome/virtual_tour/text_only.html [accessed June 27, 2007]; Charlie Coon, “Transformation: Navy Shifts Its Priority Away from the North Atlantic,” Stars and Stripes, June 28, 2007, available at www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=1048article=543798archive=true [accessed June 28, 2007]; and Ben Murray, “Navy Readies Closing of U.K. Command,” Stars and Stripes, July 25, 2007, available at stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=52316&archive=true [accessed July 26, 2007].

33. Leo Shane III, “Transformation: Stateside Bases Prepare for Influx,” Stars and Stripes, June 20, 2007, available at stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=54363&archive=true [accessed July 14, 2007].

34. Charlie Coon, “Soldiers in Italy, Germany Bound for Romania,” Stars and Stripes, July 10, 2007, available at www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=54789&archive=true; and Bryan Mitchell, “USAFE Strengthens Partnership with Romanians,” Stars and Stripes, July 11, 2007, available at www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=148&article=53654&archive=true [accessed July 27, 2007].

35. Department of Defense, “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country,” June 30, 2001, available at siadapp.dmdc.osd. mil/personnel/M05/hst0601.pdf [accessed June 30, 2007].

36. Department of Defense, “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country,” June 30, 2007, available at siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MILITARY/history/hst0706.pdf [accessed October 30, 2007].

37. Statement of Admiral William J. Fallon, United States Navy, and (then) Commander, United States Pacific Command, before the House Armed Services Committee, March 7, 2007.

38. John A. Tirpak, “Comeback in the Pacific,” Air Force Magazine (July 2007), p. 26.

39. See Department of Defense, “Welcome to U.S. Forces, Japan,” and “USFJ Fact Sheet,” available at www.usfj.mil [accessed May 15, 2007].

40. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Minister for Foreign Affairs Taro Aso, and Minister of Defense Fumio Kyuma, “Joint Statement of the Security Consultative Committee, Alliance Transformation: Advancing United States–Japan Security and Defense Cooperation,” May 1, 2007; and U.S. Forces, Japan, “Welcome to U.S. Forces, Japan,” [accessed May 15, 2007].

41. John A. Tirpak, “Comeback in the Pacific,” Air Force Magazine (July 2007), p. 26.

42. See, for example, U.S. Air Force, “7^th Air Force,” available at www.7af.pacaf.af.mil/units [accessed May 18, 2007].

43. Christian Caryl, “U.S. Military Embraces Guam,” Newsweek International, February 26, 2007, available at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17202830/site/newsweek.

44. Tirpak, “Comeback in the Pacific,” pp. 26–27.

45. Joshua Partlow, “Ecuador Giving U.S. Air Base the Boot,” The Washington Post, September 4, 2008, p. A6; and Kintto Lucas, “Ecuador: Manta Air Base Tied to Colombian Raid on FARC Camp,” IPS News, March 21, 2008, available at http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41687 [accessed September 4, 2008].

46. See U.S. Air Force, “Air Force in Iraq, 332^nd AEW,” April 2007, available at www.balad.afnews.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=4032; Friends Committee on National Legislation, “Iraq,” October 27, 2005, available at fcnl.org/iraq/bases_text.htm [accessed July 12, 2007].

47. Krepinevich and Work, A New Global Defense Posture for the Second Transoceanic Era, p. 149; and John Pike, “Kuwait Facilities,” June 20, 2005, available at www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/kuwait.htm [accessed August 10, 2007].

48. Statement of Admiral William J. Fallon, United States Navy, and Commander, United States Central Command, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, May 3, 2007.

49. Department of Defense, “Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country,” June 30, 2001, available at siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/M05/hst0601.pdf [accessed June 30, 2007].

50. Statement of General Bantz J. Craddock, U.S. Army and Commander, United States Europe an Command, March 15, 2007, before the House Armed Services Committee, pp. 16–25.

51. Ann Scott Tyson, “Military Is Ill-Prepared for Other Conflicts,” The Washington Post, March 19, 2007, p. A1; and Government Accountability Office, Defense Logistics: Improved Oversight and Increased Coordination Needed to Ensure Viability of the Army’s Prepositioning Strategy, GAO-07-144 (February 2007), p. 17.

52. Schmidt, Moving U.S. Forces, pp. 36, 40; and Eric Labs, The Future of the Navy’s Amphibious and Maritime Prepositioning Forces (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, November 2004), p. 6.

53. Christopher J. Bowie, The Anti-Access Threat and Theater Air Bases (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2002), pp. 17–18, 25, 46, 71–72.

54. Bowie, The Anti-Access Threat and Theater Air Bases, pp. 17–18, 23–24, 31.

55. Alan Vick, Snakes in the Eagle’s Nest: A History of Ground Attacks on Air Bases, MR 553-AF (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1995).

56. Bowie, The Anti-Access Threat and Theater Air Bases, pp. ii–iii, 5–6.

57. Ibid., pp. 42–46, 54–55.

58. See Michael O’Hanlon, “Restructuring U.S. Forces and Bases in Japan,” in Michael M. Mochizuki, ed., Toward a True Alliance (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1997), pp. 149–78

59. Frances M. Lussier, Options for Changing the Army’s Overseas Basing (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, 2004), pp. xiv, 43, 52–54.

KEY REFERENCES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Arthur, David, Options for Strategic Military Transportation Systems (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, September 2005).

Bowie, Christopher J., The Anti-Access Threat and Theater Air Bases (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2002).

Button, Robert W., John Gordon IV, Jessie Riposo, Irv Blickstein, and Peter A. Wilson, Warfighting and Logistic Support of Joint Forces from the Joint Sea Base (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2007).

Labs, Eric, The Future of the Navy’s Amphibious and Maritime Prepositioning Forces (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, November 2004).

Lussier, Frances M., Options for Changing the Army’s Overseas Basing (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, 2004).

Schmidt, Rachel, Moving U.S. Forces: Options for Strategic Mobility (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, 1997).

Vick, Alan, Snakes in the Eagle’s Nest: A History of Ground Attacks on Air Bases, MR 553-AF (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1995).