A quarter-million soldiers -- all but a few of them Americans -- are within weeks of passing through this desert kingdom on their way to or from the war in neighboring Iraq, the largest such rotation of US forces in history, according to military planners overseeing the project.
"This is a breathtaking, history-making operation," said Army Major General Stephen Speakes, who runs the rotation from this sand-blown base south of Kuwait City.
Explaining the troop rotation is simple: About 130,000 US soldiers in Iraq will go home and 110,000 will take their places for about a year, in Operation Iraqi Freedom 2.
Getting it done is another matter.
The maneuver involves eight of 10 active army divisions and a US Marine Expeditionary Force, along with 40,000 troops from a few dozen countries in the US-led coalition.
Military planners have choreographed the arrivals of dozens of ships and hundreds of aircraft bearing fresh troops and their gear into Kuwait, the center of the operation. The new arrivals swap places with weary soldiers streaming in from Iraq on trucks and planes that, in a matter of hours, turn around and ferry newcomers north.
Already, as many as 4,000 trucks are on the road between Kuwait and Iraq at any moment, said Brigadier General Jack Stoltz, who directs the movement of troops and distribution of equipment.
That number will rise as the rotation hits a crescendo early next month, when as many as 60,000 troops at a time will be passing through Kuwait, ferrying enormous amounts of gear, including tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and helicopters.
By the time the rotation finishes in May, the Pentagon will have shipped nearly 408,000 tonnes of equipment to the Iraqi theater and sent home even more -- 635,000 tonnes.
"It's like a ballet, except it's the Green Bay Packers that are dancing," Stoltz said, referring to the NFL football team.
"Logistics is brute force," he said.
The army has engineered the rotation so that battle-numbed US forces rarely meet their fresh replacements, even though both groups pass through Kuwait at the same time.
Homebound troops stay at camps close to the seaports. New arrivals are trucked to desert camps where they assemble their gear and train to kill the rebels who may attack their convoy when it crosses the Iraqi border.
After March, from the point of view of the US military's transportation gurus, the US operation in Iraq will wind down, demanding fewer ships, airplanes and trucks.
In the fall, the rotation for Operation Iraqi Freedom 3 will creak to life, and Speakes and his subordinates will start over. That maneuver will send around 100,000 or so US troops into Iraq, but with fewer vehicles and supplies. Many are expected to be the same troops now heading home.
"This is a nonstop cycling business we're in," Speakes said.
"As soon as we finish this one, we'll be planning for the next," he said.
Speakes and his staff aren't just developing the troop rotation for use in Iraq. The sweeping operation is also being modeled for moving US soldiers in future wars, Speakes said.
The surging operation has left Kuwait awash with the US military, despite US efforts to keep a low profile.
People strolling along Kuwait City's seaside Corniche watch Navy cargo ships steaming in and the Air Force's fat gray C-17 Globe-masters lowering their wheels over the city. Gritty army convoys that stretch to the horizon roll south on the kingdom's coastal highway, and clean ones sweep past in the other direction.
Kuwait's ruling sheiks, still grateful to the US for driving out Iraq's invading army in 1991, have given the US broad swaths of the desert kingdom in which to house troops, store vehicles, land planes, berth ships, assemble convoys and fire weapons.
The US military has 14 camps and bases in Kuwait, including a pair of seaports, a pair of airports and a choice piece of coastal real estate.
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