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Rapid reaction war game { October 9 2003 }

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   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A918-2003Oct8.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A918-2003Oct8.html

NATO Conducts Rapid-Reaction War Game

By T. R. Reid
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 9, 2003; Page A29

COLORADO SPRINGS, Oct. 8 -- A terrorist group armed with chemical and biological weapons attacked the island nation of "Corona" on Wednesday, killing top governmental officials and threatening the entire population -- until a rapid-reaction force from NATO swept in, evacuated the capital city and eliminated the threat.

That, at least, is how the fictional terrorist crisis played out at Schreiver Air Force Base here as military and civilian leaders from all the NATO nations engaged in a "study seminar" to test the impact of a major transformation of the 54-year-old transatlantic defense alliance.

With nearly 3 million military personnel from 19 nations -- plus seven more countries to be admitted next year -- NATO leaders are worried that the huge organization is too sluggish and too poorly deployed to respond to the challenges posed by terrorists and other modern threats to peace.

"We have so many unusable soldiers," NATO Secretary General George Robertson said here Wednesday. "Taxpayers are being ripped off, paying for these soldiers who are configured for the wrong threat."

Accordingly, NATO has decided to mount a new "NATO Response Force," composed of about 20,000 personnel, that can respond instantly to "asymmetric" threats -- in which the enemy is not a national army but a small, loosely organized guerrilla or terrorist force.

Wednesday's war game, the centerpiece of a two-day gathering of NATO defense secretaries and chiefs of staff, was designed to get the member nations thinking about how to react in such cases. The exercise involved a terrorist attack on Corona, a fictitious Mediterranean island nation vaguely near the Middle East. In the attack scenario, the terrorists unleash chemical and biological weapons that threaten to "spill over" and harm civilians on the European mainland.

"This is the type of asymmetric threat that NATO is likely to face in the future," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said.

Robertson and Rumsfeld pronounced the "seminar" a success. Both men said they were excited because the Corona attack was the first NATO exercise in which the "Mods" and the "Chods" worked together. That is NATO-speak for the civilian ministers of defense and the military chiefs of defense. Normally, the Mods and the Chods study their hypothetical wars independently.

A key goal of the exercise was to demonstrate the need to act quickly. "This is an organization of 19 countries, with 19 political officials in charge," a NATO military leader said. "That can make it hard to get a consensus. But in these asymmetric situations, you need a consensus fast."

NATO's new quick-reaction unit -- which has its own abbreviation, NRF, for NATO Reaction Force -- is to be established formally next week. At the beginning, about 6,000 soldiers and sailors will undergo joint training, then return to their national commands to await a call to deployment. Within three to four years, officials said, the NRF should have 20,000 personnel, representing all member nations, on stand-by status.

Robertson, a liberal political veteran from Scotland, noted that far too much of the military strength of NATO's member nations is tied up with administrative and noncombat tasks. "We have 1.4 million non-U.S. soldiers in this alliance. We have just 55,000 of them assigned to field operations, and the members are complaining that they are overstretched."

Even in Colorado Springs, a politically conservative town with a large military population, the NATO ministers and defense chiefs were hounded by protesters everywhere they went. Some of the demonstrators seemed to be against war in general, while others focused specifically on the war in Iraq.

"Rummy lied -- our soldiers died," read one sign.

Rumsfeld arrived Tuesday and addressed soldiers and their families at Fort Carson, an Army base that has sent 12,000 troops to Iraq since winter. There have been about 100 casualties from Carson, the Army said, and 19 deaths. Rumsfeld choked up and had to restart his speech several times as he said thanks to the soldiers and their survivors.



© 2003 The Washington Post Company


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