Military Grapples With New Role in Homeland Defense

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 29, 2001; Page A01

As the U.S. military moves ships, warplanes and Special Forces units overseas for the looming battle against Osama bin Laden and his allies, the Pentagon is confronting the broader question of how to reorganize the armed forces for the other side of that campaign: defending the continental United States.

Under a proposal sent to the Pentagon leadership yesterday, the Marine Corps would establish a new, brigade-size counterterrorism unit that would be larger than any such unit in the military. It would be able to pour more than 1,000 specially trained troops into missions both overseas and at home, Marine officials said.

The plan is the first stage of what is likely to become a significant restructuring of the armed forces in the aftermath of this month's terrorist attacks as the Pentagon seeks to improve its ability not only to fight terrorists abroad, but also to defend the country against assaults at home.

The Army is considering the creation of a command for homeland defense. The Air Force is mulling whether it will have to permanently provide personnel and airplanes to help the Air National Guard carry out the combat air patrols being flown over New York, Washington and other U.S. cities. The Navy might be asked to occasionally deploy Aegis cruisers to provide antiaircraft defenses along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as it did immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The campaign against terrorism has inverted the traditional division of labor within the military in which conventional forces focus on fighting wars while smaller, specialized units carry out missions such as fighting terrorists. President Bush alluded to this change yesterday, saying that "it is very hard to fight . . . a guerrilla war with conventional forces." He declined to discuss details but said, "Make no mistake about it -- we're in hot pursuit" of terrorists.

The Pentagon has already deployed troops, including Special Forces units, to Pakistan and the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in central Asia. Special Forces are expected to carry out many of the ground missions in any war against bin Laden, Defense Department officials said.

Pentagon spokesman yesterday refused to comment on reports that Special Forces units were already operating in Afghanistan, and Defense Department officials denied a report in USA Today that they were on the ground actively hunting for bin Laden.

Defense of the homeland, the other front in the counter-terrorism war, has not been a worry for the armed forces since the height of the Cold War, when more than 250 Army batteries of Nike nuclear-tipped guided missiles ringed Washington and other U.S. cities.

The biggest changes are probably in store for the ground forces, officials said. According to one proposal, the Army's new command for homeland defense would report directly to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, one official said.

The Air Force also is going to have to consider whether to commit active-duty forces to helping the Air National Guard execute combat air patrols over the continental United States, an official said.

The change that appears furthest along is the Marines' proposal to create a big, new anti-terrorism unit. "We think we can jump-start this thing right now," a Marine official said yesterday. He said that if Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approves the concept, which the Marines think could happen this weekend, the Corps will immediately begin setting up the unit.

The unit would be headquartered at Camp Lejeune, N.C., and would be built around an existing infantry battalion. It also would include three other existing Marine organizations trained in security-related missions -- the Marine Corps Security Force Battalion, which has two elite companies that provide anti-terrorism security to deployed Navy ships; the Marine Security Guard Battalion, which provides internal security at U.S. embassies; and its small Chemical/Biological Incident Response Force, which was created several years ago in response to worries about terrorism.

To carry out those units' current missions and also take on the new mission of responding quickly to major terrorist attacks, the Marines would have to increase the size of those units, the official said.

Also, he said, the Marine Corps would need to spend about $21 million to supplement the infantry battalion's equipment, buying additional communications gear as well as more night-vision devices. Giving the unit specialized training and maintaining the extra gear would cost about $10 million a year, he said.

Once fully outfitted and trained, the unit would be able to deploy a company within 24 hours, and the full brigade within 72, he said.

The new Marine brigade would not be included in the Pentagon's lengthy review of how to change the military to meet new threats, called the Quadrennial Defense Review, which will be released next week. That report was largely completed before the attacks.