At Your Service
For and about Hawaii's militaryBy Gregg K. Kakesako
See also: For Your Benefit
Hawaii soldiers on 6-month
peacekeeping missionThe first elements of Task Force Eagle, the 25th Division's deployment to Bosnia as peacekeepers for the next six months, left Hawaii last week.
Another 269 25th Division and Fort Shafter soldiers will be on the next chartered jet flight, scheduled to leave Hickam Air Force Base tomorrow night. Task Force Eagle also will be made up of Army National Guard units from Idaho, Montana, Indiana, Wisconsin and South Dakota. Nearly 1,700 Schofield Barracks soldiers will participate in the Bosnia operations.
Bosnia-Herzegovina is divided into three Multi National Divisions: Multi National Division North is the U.S. sector; Multi National Division Southwest is the United Kingdom sector; and Multi National Division Southeast is the French sector. The 25th Division will be assigned to Multi National Division North along with brigades of soldiers from Turkey, Russia and the Nordic countries.
The 25th Division will assume control of the northern sector from the Virginia National Guard's 29th Infantry Division on April 5. The division is expected to be relieved of its peacekeeping duties in October.
The commander of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet says the Navy cannot afford to wait any longer before increasing its shipbuilding rate to sustain a fleet of at least 300 ships. "We need to start building them now," Adm. Robert Natter, who commands all naval units on the East Coast, told shipbuilders, lobbyists, defense officials and members of Congress last week. "If you don't start it now, we'll never get there." President Bush's defense budget request for 2003 calls for buying five ships, or little more than half the number that the Navy says is required each year to sustain today's fleet. A Pentagon shipbuilding study is expected to call for a fleet of at least 340 ships, up from today's 318 ships. And an internal Navy study concluded that the fleet might need to be as large as 375 ships, Navy officials have said.
The Army has decided to name its new 19-ton wheeled armored vehicle that it will be fielding to the new combat interim brigades after two Medal of Honor recipients: Spec. Robert Stryker and Pvt. 1st Class Stuart Stryker. Three hundred vehicles will be assigned to a brigade at the 25th Division. The Stryker can be deployed by C-130 aircraft and be combat-capable upon arrival. The vehicle will have 10 configurations so it could carry soldiers, guided missiles, mortars, wounded people or be used as a reconnaissance platform. It has armor protection and can reach speeds of 60 mph. As an infantry carrier vehicle, it can transport a nine-man infantry squad and a crew of two and has an M2 .50-caliber machine gun or MK19 40 mm grenade launcher.
Robert Stryker, who served with the 1st Infantry Division, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for saving the life of his fellow soldiers near Loc Ninh, Vietnam. Stuart Stryker, who served with the 513th Parachute Infantry, posthumously received the Medal of Honor for leading a World War II attack near Wesel, Germany, that captured more than 200 enemy soldiers and freed three American pilots. The two men were not related.
Adm. Dennis C. Blair says the Asia-Pacific region is "a very unfriendly place for terrorists who may be looking for new homes." The commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command said he has intensified the command's counterterrorism offensive. He talked about the effort in an address at the National Defense University. When President Bush launched the war against terrorism, Blair said, U.S. forces in the Pacific did not take off "from a cold start."
"Based on our previous efforts against terrorism, drugs and other transnational threats, we realized quickly that the key to victory is a sustained, unprecedented, relentless, cooperative effort among all the countries in the region against the common threat," he said.
Command officials created a new counterterrorism division, upped intelligence efforts and began building interagency and international links. They deployed personnel to U.S. embassies in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and India to better integrate operations with interagency country teams.
Gregg K. Kakesako can be reached by phone at 294-4075
or by e-mail at gkakesako@starbulletin.com.
