Nation: LAOS: BACKGROUND FOR BATTLE

A Well-Loaded Pistol Is Cocked & Ready Whether the outcome for Laos is battle or bargaining, true Laotian independence depends ultimately on the U.S.’s ability to apply its power on short notice in an awkward area. This is how that power was poised last week.

U.S. military men would as soon use the bow and arrow as fight a war in landlocked Laos. The crooked fingerlike country boasts two roads on dry days, which become a morass of mud during the rainy season, beginning in May. Communications facilities are virtually nonexistent, and jungle trails suffice for railroads. The patchwork of mountains and jungles makes tanks about as useful there as they would be atop Mount Everest; it is guerrilla country, and the shrewd Communist Pathet Lao fighters play it that way.

And yet, if the finger of Laos goes, so too goes the rest of the hand: a complete Communist takeover would endanger Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and South Viet Nam, all of which share Laotian borders (see map). With those countries under the Red flag, India would be dangerously outflanked—pinned down to the east, as it is already bedeviled to the north by Red China. Indonesia, already softened by Communist incursions, would be easy plucking. Malaya and Singapore could become steppingstones for further Communist expansion, to the ultimate peril of Australia and New Zealand.

Pistol Packers. The hurried fleet and troop movements of last week were only the cocking of the pistol over threatened Laos, and the man who held the gun had plenty to back him up. He is Admiral Harry Donald Felt, U.S. Commander in Chief Pacific (CINCPAC), boss of the biggest military contingent in the world (TIME Cover, Jan. 6). At Felt’s call are the 373,000 men. 1,000 aircraft and 400 ships of the First and Seventh Fleets, the Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces, and the Army’s 1st, 7th and 25th Infantry Division. Highly mobile and thoroughly trained, the elements of this mighty force need only hear the whistle to move into direct action. If it blows, Major General Donald Weller, Commander of the 3rd Marine Division and an old jungle fighter, will become Commander of Joint Task Force 116 for Laos, report directly to Felt, who in turn will answer to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Late last week Weller flew into Tokyo for conferences with Vice Admiral Charles Griffin, Commander of the Seventh Fleet, checked up on plans and shot back to his headquarters on Okinawa.

All of CINCPAC’s forces would respond to the shots as Weller called them: ∙Seventh Fleet attack carriers (with 100 jets) under Griffin, are just a few hours off Viet Nam.

∙The 315th Air Division, under Brigadier General Theodore Kershaw, can airlift units of the 3rd Marine Division to Laos from Okinawa in 196 sorties.

∙The 2,000-man airborne 503rd Battle Group, part of General Isaac Davisj White’s Pacific Army command, can move out of Okinawa in two hours. These paratroopers know their way around Laos-like terrain: they recently completed maneuvers in the Philippines.

∙The Thirteenth Air Force, Major General Thomas Moorman commanding, can move forward from the Philippines’ Clark Air Force Base and begin flying its sweeps from five Thai fields in F-100s on only twelve hours’ notice. The Thirteenth has supplies already packed and labeled in order of loading priority—ready for freighting on C-124s and C-130s.

∙The First Army Special Forces Group’s Okinawa-based guerrilla experts are poised to parachute into the interior and to organize guerrilla warriors.

As Task Force commander, Weller can also call on a considerable phalanx of Southeast Asian forces both inside and out of SEATO. The Thais have a sharp, U.S.-trained cadre of 90,000 soldiers equipped with M-1 rifles, and a good air force with F-86s. South Viet Nam’s 150,000-man defense force is available, and so is Cambodia’s army of 28,000, the tough Philippines’ of 50,000, and Pakistan’s soldiery numbering 160,000. Poised for take-off in Malaya are the 2,500 members of Britain’s crack Commonwealth Brigade, composed of British, Australian and New Zealand units.

Focus of Action. As U.S. forces begin the move, Thailand—a fellow SEATO power—becomes the focus of action. With key bases established at Udon, Korat and Bangkok, the West can rake Communist-held portions of Laos with ease. In case of battle, U.S. combat troops would probably not be the first to go into action in Laos. Instead, U.S.-manned helicopters and transports would drop guerrilla forces of Thais, Pakistanis and Filipinos into the fighting sectors while U.S. troops occupied the Mekong River valley towns from Savannakhet through Paksane and Vientiane, up to Luangprabang; this would provide strong defense for the towns while freeing 12,000 Laotian soldiers for action. Meanwhile. U.S. guerrillas would move in and beef up training of the native groups.

Whether this activity will be enough to cut or stall the Communist offensive is something that General Weller and his chief, Admiral Felt, will have to ponder. Soviet supply lines bring 45 tons of materiel into the Pathet Lao armies every day: Gorky trucks, armored cars, assault rifles, carbines, light and heavy machine guns, 105 howitzers, long-barreled 85-mm.

cannon. This kind of firepower might yet require the direct action of the U.S. Marines as well as a sizable chunk of the rest of the U.S.’s ready power.