After the Combat Troops Come Home

One of the touchstones of Administration policy is that eventually only U.S. support troops will be left in Viet Nam. The prospect seems reassuring, particularly since the numbers and duties of the support troops are purposefully left vague. Last week TIME Correspondents in Washington and Saigon reported that the Administration's present plans, at least at the operational level, call for some 200,000 American support troops to still be in Viet Nam in early 1972. Events could alter those plans, but for the time being the generals in the Pentagon and in Viet Nam look to the following employment of the 200,000 U.S. support soldiers, airmen and advisers:

GROUND FORCES will number about 50,000 (if the military men get their way). The U.S. is likely to keep two airmobile divisions, probably the 1st Cavalry and 101st Airborne, each with about 450 helicopters, on hand after the other fighting units have been withdrawn. These units will serve as "fire brigades," taking advantage of their mobility to rush to any location where it appears that the ARVN (Army of Viet Nam) is in trouble. Even then, they are meant to take no part in the main fighting. Instead, they will free regular ARVN or militia units for combat by relieving them from road or town security duty.

AIR FORCE PERSONNEL will total about 25,000. American pilots now fly two-thirds of all combat missions in Viet Nam, but the U.S.-trained VNAF should be able to handle all preplanned missions by 1972. U.S. airmen, however, will still be needed in case of sudden enemy contacts and to serve as an aerial umbrella for South Viet Nam's cities. COMBAT SUPPORT TROOPS, including artillery and engineer, medical, and even armored personnel, will remain at a level of 20,000 after the withdrawals have been completed. ARVN artillerymen have shown themselves highly proficient with their American-supplied guns, and should be equal to all government needs by 1972. But more time is required to train technicians for the ARVN's engineer battalions, and U.S. personnel will still be necessary to help staff military field hospitals as the ARVN assumes a heavier military burden and absorbs greater casualties. LOGISTICS will require another 30,000 Americans. Most will be involved in supplying the remaining U.S. military personnel. The others, mainly air-cargo units and experts in inventory systems and personnel management, will be needed to help the ARVN move supplies that the U.S. has promised to furnish the Saigon government. ADVISORY PERSONNEL, now numbering nearly 80,000, will be reduced by about half. Most of the cuts will be made at the lower command levels; instead of being assigned to every ARVN battalion, U.S. advisers will no longer operate below the regiment or brigade level. Wherever possible, major generals will be replaced by brigadier generals, brigadiers by colonels. Their staffs will be reduced accordingly. As South Vietnamese commanders become more confident, the advisers' role will also change, and U.S. personnel attached to South Vietnamese units will become liaison officers coordinating the use of the U.S. support forces remaining. GREEN BERET strength, now 3,500, is expected to remain unchanged. The Green Berets have been highly successful in organizing the Montagnards and other ethnic minorities, as well as in the conduct of intelligence operations in Laos, Cambodia and North Viet Nam. Their work will take on increased importance as U.S. troops withdraw. Nor is any reduction likely in the 6,200 military and 1,200 civilian personnel who make up the rural-pacification teams now working in province capitals and district towns. CIVILIAN PERSONNEL will, if anything, increase. The U.S. embassy staff of 270 may be trimmed slightly for budgetary reasons as the U.S. presence in Viet Nam diminishes. But the 900 Americans administering U.S. economic-aid and social-welfare projects are likely to need more help as the U.S. provides South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu with the stepped-up material aid he requested at a press conference earlier this month.

Security will continue to be a problem. One solution, as U.S. units grow fewer and smaller, would be to pull as many Americans as possible into coastal enclaves where they could be more easily supplied and protected. Too much isolation from the South Vietnamese, however, would only diminish the effectiveness of the American troops. Whatever is done, the U.S. forces will be uncomfortably dependent upon ARVN to hold and police the countryside. U.S. military planners are frankly uneasy about the situation. Said former Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Warnke, one of the authors of the withdrawal plans: "The nightmare is that suddenly we look up at the DMZ and there they are, saying 'April fool--here we come again.' "

If Warnke's nightmare becomes fact, the U.S. will be faced with an unenviable choice. With its logistical base already established, it can reinforce its troops and recommit itself to another round in a war that many think has gone on too long already. Or it can evacuate all Americans and let South Viet Nam stand or fall alone. Neither alternative is reassuring to Richard Nixon, the man responsible for extricating the U.S. from its longest war.

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