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."