WASHINGTON, Aug 16 (AFP) - The biggest realignment of American forces overseas in more than 50 years will significantly reduce US ground forces in Europe, bringing home two heavy army divisions from Germany and replacing them with a single high-tech combat brigade about a tenth the size.
The two divisions in Germany alone account for about 30,000 of the 70,000 US troops that President George W. Bush said Monday will return to the United States over the next ten years as part of a global repositioning US forces for sudden conflicts in far-flung regions.
East Asia also can expect changes in the deployments of US forces in South Korea and Japan although senior US officials were reluctant to spell them out, telling reporters discussions were still underway with governments there.
Bush and his aides insisted the cutbacks should not be read as a sign of flagging US commitment to Europe and East Asia at a time when the US army is tied down in Iraq.
"In the 21st century, we no longer measure the strength of our war-fighting or the strength of our commitment strictly in numerical terms, although admittedly that was the measuring stick in the past," a senior State Department official said.
"Advances in technology and organization and military art have taken us to a new place," he asserted, briefing reporters at the Pentagon on condition of anonymity.
Democrats warned, however, that the changes would weaken US ties to its allies in Europe and East Asia at a time when those relationships need to be strengthened.
"It undermines relations with allies in Europe. And it weakens our bargaining leverage against North Korea," retired General Wesley Clark, a former supreme NATO commander and adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, told CNN.
Senior defense officials said the 1st Armored Division and the 1st Infantry Division, each numbering about 15,000 troops, will be brought back to the United States from Germany as early as 2006.
They will be replaced by a single Stryker brigade, a 3,600-strong unit consisting of wheeled armored vehicles designed for rapid deployment aboard C-130 aircraft.
Speedier than conventional armor, they are netted together with high tech data links, but their thin skinned armor makes them more vulnerable to attack.
Officials said the army also is adding a third battalion to the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vicenza, Italy, another rapidly mobile unit.
The Army's 5th Corps, which now oversees the two armored divisions, will be kept in Germany but be made more deployable, they said.
The United States also appears to have opted to maintain air bases and training areas in Germany and take advantage of new ones elsewhere in eastern Europe.
Ramstein Air Base, a major logistics hub near Frankfurt that also serves as the headquarters for the US air forces in Europe, will stay, officials said.
Two F-16 fighter squadrons will remain in Spagdahlem, Germany for now, as well two F-16 squadrons at Aviano air base in Italy. Defense officials said they are seeking greater flexibility in their use of Incirlik air base in Turkey.
One of the most significant changes are plans to concentrate US ground forces in the United States, rather than deployed overseas as they have since the end of World War II.
"It isn't always faster to get from Europe to other parts of the world. And if you had to get from Europe to Asia for example, it's a lot longer," a senior defense official said.
"It isn't just the tyranny of distance," said another senior defense official. "Deployability is a function of flexibility -- that is to say you can leave when you want, how you want to and where you want to."
A senior State Department official, however, said it would be "misleading" to conclude that an objective of the realignment was to avoid political constraints on the use of US forces deployed in other countries.
US troops will be rotated through lightly-manned "forward operating locations" in an arc from eastern Europe to central Asia where they will undergo training and exercises. They already are the spine of a logistics corridor that supplies US forces in Afghanistan.
"It is not our goal to have a shift of our stationed forces to the east," a senior defense official said.
"We're going to have training and exercises. We're going to have rotational deployments to those countries. But we're not going to be looking to station big numbers to the east of the forces there in Germany today," he said.