"The Idea Is to Intimidate"

The President made it sound routine. "We're conducting exercises such as we've conducted before," he said. But Pentagon officials who were eager to explain, though not to be identified, said one purpose of the imminent U.S. naval maneuvers off both coasts of Central America was to rehearse a possible quarantine of Soviet and Cuban weapons into the region. The U.S. naval display will be accompanied by U.S. and Honduras army maneuvers near Nicaragua's border. "The idea is to intimidate," a Pentagon official said in reference to Nicaragua, "and see if we can have a real effect on the flow of arms" to insurgents in El Salvador.

The exercises at sea look like old-fashioned gunboat diplomacy on a far grander scale. The U.S. aircraft carrier Ranger had been diverted from a scheduled tour of the western Pacific and was heading from San Diego into Pacific waters off Honduras and Nicaragua. It carries more than 70 aircraft. Its battle group includes seven other ships: a cruiser, a guided-missile destroyer, two standard destroyers, a frigate, an oiler and a fast support ship. The battleship New Jersey, now off Southeast Asia, may join the Ranger in about three weeks.

Meanwhile, another battle group, headed by the carrier Coral Sea, which is in the Mediterranean, will take up a station off the Caribbean coast of Honduras and Nicaragua. Other battle groups may rotate with the first two in the naval exercises, which are scheduled to continue through January. That is much longer than previous "routine" exercises. No actual interdiction of ships carrying arms to Nicaragua or El Salvador is planned, although suspect vessels will be watched and photographed. The highly publicized preparations contrast sharply with the private observations of some U.S. military officials in El Salvador that stopping the influx of weapons into the nation would have little immediate impact, since both sides have more than sufficient arsenals.

The land maneuvers are expected to involve up to 5,000 U.S. Army and Air Force personnel. Joint Chiefs Chairman John Vessey was to visit Honduras this week to coordinate the plans. The operation apparently will first involve sending Army engineers to Honduras to enlarge several airstrips so that 250-ft.-long C-5A Galaxy transport planes can fly in U.S. Army troops (345 in each C-5A). This would demonstrate how quickly Honduras could be aided by the U.S. if

Nicaragua invaded. Individual U.S. units are not expected to stay in Honduras for more than three weeks at a time, but rotating groups would take part throughout six months or so.

Secret plans also involve placing large supplies of military equipment in Honduras. Construction reportedly will soon begin on a $ 150 million air and naval base on the country's Atlantic coast. Radar and electronic listening posts will be established at undisclosed sites in Central America. A high national security official was quoted as saying: "We have developed a program for a significant and long-lasting increase in the U.S. military presence in Central America."

That presence in Honduras already includes 57 U.S. Air Force technicians who man a radar station on a mountaintop 23 miles southeast of Tegucigalpa. In operation only since last month, it was ostensibly erected to monitor some 55 U.S. military support flights in and out of Honduras each month. In fact, the unit's radar can watch air traffic above all of Nicaragua and El Salvador.

In addition, 126 U.S. Special Forces experts at a new "regional training center" in Puerto Castilla,

Honduras, are instructing a 1,000-man battalion of Salvadoran troops in fast-reaction techniques to counter guerrilla attacks. Later this year the Green Berets will train four 350-man Salvadoran battalions in cazador (hunter) tactics to seek out rebel units. Seventy-three U.S. trainers in Honduras are split into mobile teams to provide expertise sought by the Honduran military.

The "covert" U.S. support of the contras operating in Nicaragua involves a large logistics and communications operation in Honduras directed by CIA experts. They use unmarked supply planes as well as surveillance aircraft.

In El Salvador, 42 U.S. military trainers mostly teach special skills and tactics to government troops; some advise senior army commanders. At the U.S. embassy in San Salvador, five officers supervise military aid programs. This total of 47 is under the Administration's self-imposed limit of 55.

The largest U.S. military contingent in Central America is based in Panama to protect the canal. It includes 9,000 Army, Navy and Air Force personnel, who man an infantry brigade, a squadron of A-7 light attack jets and a Special Forces airborne battalion. Although these forces could be carried by C-130 troop transports to Honduras or Nicaragua in less than two hours, security of the canal presumably would be of great concern in a military crisis in Central America. Any responding American troops would probably be airlifted from the U.S. in the manner soon to be rehearsed. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.