Armed Forces: Fighting Brush Fires

Almost unnoticed in the whirl of the week’s news came a U.S. move that could mean muchin the long-run future of the cold war. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara announced the merging of the Army’s combat-ready Stateside troops and Stateside troops and Statesideunits of Air Force’s Tactical Air Command. The new joint command is designed to speed up the airlift of U.S. troops to overseas trouble spots and to guarantee them close aerial support once they swing into action. In particular, the command will aim at fighting limited,brush-fire wars wherever the Communists might strike a match around the world.

McNamara’s plan is a bold attempt to cure a basic weakness in U.S. fighting strength that has existed since 1947, when the Air Force was set up as a separate service. Without its own aircraft, the Army became dependent upon the Air Force for transportation to the fighting front and close tactical support when it got there. But the Army and the Air Force all too often failed to work well together; air-ground teamwork sagged badly, despite the bloody lesson of World War II that the rifleman needed help from the fighter-bomber. Unable to count on TAC airlift for practice jumps, paratroop commanders talked wryly of chartering their own transports.

At McNamara’s request, the Joint Chiefs of Staff last winter began studying the problems of an air-ground merger, gave their enthusiastic approval in a 1¼-in.-thick document stamped top secret. On other projects, the Joint Chiefs have made McNamara and President Kennedy fume with shoddy staff work, but this time their study held up under criticism, was put into effect with few changes.

The new command merges the Strategic Army Corps, composed of the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the 4th Infantry Division, with the F-100 and F-105 fighter-bombers, reconnaissance aircraft and transports of the Tactical Air Command. In an emergency, the long-range planes of the Military Air Transport Service would deliver troops and supplies to a staging area overseas, where they would be shuttled into battle by the shorter-range transports of the new command. The new system, according to Pentagon estimates, will cut overseas deployment time by one-third, fly 1,800 paratroopers some 8,000 miles in 2½ days and put them into action backed up by fighter-bombers.

Named to head the new command, which is unnamed as yet, was the Army’s Lieut. General Paul D. Adams, 54, a West Pointer (’28) who is proud of his rating as both a paratrooper and a combat infantryman. Adams, who will be promoted to full general for the job, commanded the land forces during the U.S. intervention in Lebanon in 1958, and he knows how hard it is to get troops to the right place at the right time. Says he: “The unified command is the only way to get the job done.”