Peacekeeping is a bit like fighting forest fires. If you can pile on the fire before it has a chance to spread, it's a lot easier to put out. Fires, like unrest in far off places, spread unexpectedly. Getting there fast may not be fast enough. Unless you use the air freight approach.

The U.S. Army has decided that 96 hours is fast enough, at least to get a medium brigade of nearly 4,000 troops and their wheeled armored vehicles anywhere in the world. Makes sense. Crises in places like Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and Somalia would have turned out different with the timely arrival of an American brigade. But not so crises in places like Korea, Taiwan, the Balkans or the Persian Gulf. These areas contain large numbers of more heavily armed bad guys. Not to worry, for the new plan also calls for a full division to be on the spot within 120 hours.

As with most plans, there are a lot of troublesome details. For example, the current medium brigade has over 300 LAVs (Light Armored Vehicles, all with wheels), plus other equipment, weighing 10,504 tons. The newest transport aircraft, the C-17, can carry six LAVs each. So you need over 50 C-17s just to carry the armored vehicles

By 2005 we are supposed to have 120 C-17s, Right now we have barely enough to move the medium brigade LAVs. There are plenty of older transports available, like the C-141 and C-5 that can also do the job. But that's not the problem. According to Air Force planning guidelines, getting the brigade to a far off spot will take at least 106 hours. OK, close enough for PR purposes. But there are more problems. When you look at the potential difficulties with airfield capacity and refueling the transports along the way, the transit time goes to at least 126 hours. We are getting into serious trouble. And it gets worse still.

By the time all the problems of refueling, airport capacity, maintenance and the like are taken into account, it takes more than 150 hours to get a brigade to the Middle East. Going to someplace closer like the Balkans or Africa doesn't help much. Both of those places have a real shortage of airfields and ground facilities. This was demonstrated during the 1999 Kosovo war, where there was only one decent airport in Albania and too many people (UN, US, NATO allies, air organizations) were trying to use it simultaneously. At one point, French and American troops were on the brink of fighting each other over whose aircraft would land when.

To get a division (three brigades) over there in 120 hours, you need three times as many aircraft. At that point, you are using most of the transports available, and this will cause problems with the Air Force. When there's a crisis overseas, the Air Force wants to get its warplanes there fast. While the combat aircraft can fly to Korea or the Middle East by themselves, they require a lot of aerial refueling along the way. And a lot of ground support equipment that requires the services of many Air Force transports. But we have only 126 C-5's, 40 C-17s and 158 C-141's. That's barely enough to move two brigades, to say nothing of all the Air Force stuff and anything else you want to get into the area in a hurry.

What to do? Well, the Marines already have a solution, which is to have battalions and brigades of Marines on ships off potential hot spots. The amphibious ships have helicopters that can carry the marines quite a way inland, thus covering over 80 percent of the world's potential hot spots. The Marines, and the Army, also keep ships or warehouses full of weapons and equipment. Just fly in the troops and you are ready to roll. The Army can also fly paratroopers to any part of the world, but these guys would be light infantry once they hit the ground, without any armored vehicles.

While an American airborne battalion or two will do wonders for local unrest, the troops require a lot of support. In many parts of the world, if they don't get clean water and medical support right away, the battalion will start melting away from sickness. And putting paratroopers down in some out-of-the-way place also requires several dozen communications troops and their gear so that everyone, including the airplanes bringing supplies, can keep in touch.

The air freight approach is being oversold, but that's normal Pentagon practice. The medium brigade allows more GIs to be flown in to some far off mess on short notice. But not 96 hours, and not with enough firepower to deal with a well-armed and determined foe. But this might still work if a messy situation needs rapid attention, like the 1994 massacres in Rwanda. In areas where there is likely to be more resistance, like the Middle East or Korea, there already are heavily armed allies available, not to mention American reinforcements close enough to be flown in by the larger fleet of shorter range C-130 transports.

But for those FedEx situations, you can simply order the troops off before all the political arrangements, here and over there, have been made. This usually takes a few days and if things don't work out, you can turn the transports around before they land. It might work. This is what happened when we went into Haiti in 1993. The paratroopers were in the air while the politicians here and in Haiti were still negotiating.

The 96 Hour Brigade is not a silver bullet, but rather a new tool, and an untried one at that.

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