Defense: Mr. Pacific

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From Felt's military standpoint, Formosa—where the threat is from land, sea and air—approaches the ideal in rock-like anti-Communist strength. The crack, U.S.-trained Nationalist air force is, for its particular mission, as good as any in the world. The U.S. could move air support swiftly into Formosa's big, excellent airfields. Chiang Kai-shek's 450,000-man army has been pared down and streamlined. And the 32,000-man navy is constantly drilling and redrilling in methods of supplying Quemoy and Matsu.

Southern Sector. The Philippines provide a powerful and friendly base from which the U.S. can mount its defense of Southeast Asia. At the big naval base at Subic Bay and at Clark Field, supplies predestined for Southeast Asian forward bases are already packed and labeled, loaded aboard the trucks that will roll them into the yawning mouths of C-124s and C-130s if the whistle blows.

Forward base for Southeast Asia defense is Thailand. It is through Bangkok that the U.S. has funneled millions of dollars' worth of aid for Laos, and it is from Bangkok that the U.S. would operate its defense of that chaotic country. The Thai forces are shaky but improving rapidly. This year Thailand's air force got its first North American F-86s (graduating from ancient F-84s). The 90,000-man army is weak in communications and plagued by spare-parts shortages, but its intrepid front-line troops are equipped with M-1 rifles. Five good airfields stand ready as front-line bases for incoming jets from Clark Field.

In South Viet Nam, U.S. money and U.S. leadership have slowly begun to wean the Vietnamese defense forces away from the "Let's spend the night in the fort" concept of guerrilla fighting that they learned from the French. But the whole establishment is threatened by 350,000 well-armed Viet Minh Communists from north of the 17th parallel. Cambodia, citadel of Southeast Asian neutralism, and Laos are the weakest spots in the defense chain.

Chain of Command. As Felt maneuvers his fire brigade in support of these difficult and divergent outposts on his frontier, he is in close touch with Washington, which must decide at all times how far he should commit his forces (unlike NATO membership, where an attack on one is automatically an attack on all, SEATO asks for a U.S. response under "its constitutional processes"). Felt's forces report to three commands whose headquarters are in Honolulu: ¶ PACAF (Pacific Air Forces), bossed by able, flamboyant old SACman General Emmett O'Donnell Jr., organizes its 650 combat planes into 35 squadrons—fewer than those of the combined totals of the U.S.'s Far East allies. "Rosie" O'Donnell keeps his planes and his men in a superb state of readiness. Not for him the promises of the other services about next year's capabilities. "They are always saying, 'Let me tell you what I'm going to do to Philadelphia Jack O'Brien when I get in the ring with him,' " says O'Donnell.