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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.