GUARD'S F-16S TO SCOPE DRUG TRAFFIC

60 Va. airmen to start mission in December

The Virginia Air National Guard will be sending airmen and F-16 jet fighters
to the Caribbean to chase drug traffickers this winter.

More than 60 airmen - all volunteers - from the Air Guard's 192nd Fighter
Wing and six F-16 fighter-bombers will be in Curacao Dec. 1-29 for the
anti-drug mission, said Col. Steve Hicks, commander of the wing based at
Richmond International Airport.

The Guard will be participating in a deployment called Coronet Nighthawk,
aimed at preventing illegal drugs - run by smugglers with fast, long-range
aircraft and seagoing vessels - from entering the United States.

It is part of a larger U.S. counterdrug effort that includes the CIA, FBI
and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Virginia pilots will be on standby to intercept suspicious aircraft and
ships at night by using their airplanes' radar and night-vision goggle
systems.

"The advantage of the F-16 is its speed," Hicks said. "We can get out there
quickly and get the word back."

The Air Guard planes will only identify suspected airborne drug smugglers,
not attempt to force them to land, Hicks said.

F-16 Fighting Falcons are jet fighter-bombers capable of flying at twice the
speed of sound.

The planes are armed with a 20mm six-barrel cannon, and up to 10 tons of
bombs, missiles, rockets and other equipment.

Normally the Air Guard's F-16s cruise at about 400 mph. Flight below 230 mph
is considered unusually - occasionally perilously - slow.

"We've been practicing slow intercepts," Hicks said. "That is not an easy
thing, especially at night and especially low to the water."

The District of Columbia Air National Guard's 113th Wing, based at Andrews
Air Force Base, Md., did the anti-drug mission last winter, said Col. Mike
Redman, the wing's vice commander.

The unit flew out of Hato International Airport in Curacao, he said, and the
pilots and support crews stayed in commercial hotels.

With the Virginia unit living among the general population and based on a
public airport, traffickers whose illicit business is hurt by the drug
interdiction flights could take action against Air Guard members and their
expensive equipment, one person familiar with the operation pointed out.

"We'll take the proper precautions," Hicks said. "Force protection is always
a high priority for us." The D.C. Air Guard did not encounter any personnel
safety problems on its rotation to Curacao, Redman said.

Curacao is in the Western Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela. It is one of
five islands that make up Netherlands Antilles, a former Dutch colony that
is now a self-governing part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The U.S. Southern Command, whose area of responsibility includes Latin
America and the Caribbean, counts fighting narcotics trafficking as one of
its two highest-priority missions.

Since 1992, the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force South has done
counternarcotics operations in the region, training and advising the
hemisphere's counter-drug forces, and monitoring South America's skies for
suspicious drug-related activity.

Since September 1994, the interceptors have been credited with more than
33,000 metric tons of cocaine being disrupted or seized.

Making drug smugglers avoid a territory raises their cost of doing business
and denies them an avenue of importing drugs into the United States. Those
who do use the central air route are likely to be greeted by law enforcement
agencies once they reach the United States.

The information pilots gather ultimately goes to organizations like the U.S.
Customs Service and the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Another issue is whether the American military should be used for police
functions, Guard observers said.

"It seems to me they could use other assets to do that more economically,"
one officer said.

Said another person familiar with the Guard and the military's anti-drug
operations, "That's a policing function and I don't think the military
should be involved. If it's a [national] security issue, that's a different
thing."