Chapter 2 -- Initial Preparations

Moreover, the Memorandum of Understanding required that OSIA assist military commanders in training site personnel and evaluating their site preparations. The memorandum explicitly stated that the OSIA escort team chief represented the U.S. government in all treaty-related matters during inspections. A related provision required that OSIA provide liaison officers to meet arriving inspection teams at the designated points of entry and during the inspection to maintain continuous communications with the U.S. European Command. Finally, the memorandum stipulated that the U.S. Atlantic Command would provide the necessary logistical and operational support for U.S. military facilities subject to inspection in Iceland and the Azores.⁹

Several aspects of this memorandum were contentious. For example, the U.S. Army Europe's position on feeding and housing inspection teams was that their units would be hard pressed to support the requirement. Most U.S. Army units in Europe, they maintained, did not have adequate facilities to house inspection and escort teams. Feeding the teams would be difficult, unless they ate during regular meal hours in the dining hall. Since the chief of the inspection team set the schedule for the conduct of the inspection, teams often took their meals very late, after dark, or very early, before first light. Therefore, General Crosbie E. Saint, USA, USAREUR Commander-in-Chief, recommended that OSIA be responsible for providing housing and food for the inspection and escort teams. The new director of OSIA, Major General Robert W. Parker, USAF, countered that the agency had no housing or messing facilities, and that the U.S. Army personnel at each site knew the surrounding area better than did OSIA escort or liaison teams.¹⁰

It took many months to resolve this dispute of defining responsibilities for the support mission. While USAREUR and OSIA ironed out these support issues, the first order of business for OSIA was to evaluate the inspection/escort mission: just how many people, teams, and support personnel would it take to conduct and escort on-site inspections under the CFE Treaty?

OSIA: SIZING THE CFE TREATY MISSION

To implement the INF Treaty, OSIA set up a small field office in 1988 at Rhein-Main Air Base in Frankfurt, Germany. This office became the gateway for U.S. teams conducting on-site inspections of Soviet INF missile sites located in the western USSR. Inspection teams originated in Washington, D.C., flew to Germany where they received inspection equipment and briefings, and then proceeded to Moscow, the point of entry for INF Treaty inspections. On completion of their inspection missions, the American teams returned to Germany, turned in their inspection equipment, and flew back to the United States. The personnel assigned to OSIA's Rhein-Main office also escorted Soviet teams inspecting U.S. INF missile sites in Europe. From 1988 through 1991, this small office assisted in more than 200 INF Treaty inspection and escort missions. With the CFE Treaty, OSIA's Field Office, Europe* assumed a far larger and more significant role.¹¹

All CFE Treaty inspection, escort, and liaison operations would originate from this field office. It would also manage all gateway activities in support of the INF Treaty, the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Three experienced senior officers, Colonel Frederick E. Grosick, USAF, Chief of the Field Office, Europe; Lt. Colonel Paul H. Nelson, USA; and Lt. Colonel Thomas S. Brock, USA, former INF inspection team chiefs and current headquarters planners, began in the spring of 1990 to examine treaty requirements to determine manpower needs. In May 1990, 20 people were assigned to OSIA's European Operations Command, to support the INF Treaty mission. This number would increase to more than 127 by July 1992, when the CFE Treaty entered into force. Initially, projections for this sixfold increase had been much greater. In January 1990, a key headquarters planner, Commander Edward J. Higgins, USN, had projected that the agency would need 159 people in Frankfurt and 49 in Washington to carry out its CFE Treaty responsibilities. Higgins had estimated that OSIA's European Operations Command would need 81 inspectors, 51 escorts, and 27 logistics, administrative, and operations center personnel. Senior DoD policy and acquisition committees reviewed and approved OSIA's manpower projections.¹²

^{*The European

component of the On-Site Inspection Agency underwent

several redesignations over the years. In 1988, OSIA's

detachment at Rhein-Main Air Base was called the Field

Office, Europe. On December 1, 1990, it was made a

stand-alone directorate and redesignated as OSIA-Europe.

On 9 March 1992, another reorganization of OSIA gave this

directorate status as a command, and it was renamed the

European Operations Command. Throughout this history, the

designation of European Operations Command will be used.}

Lt Colonel Joseph J. Drach, Jr.,and Sergeant Jill Robinson preparing for a helicopter flight over a Ukrainian declared site.

European Operations Command carried out OSIA's INF escort responsibilities.

Later, some of Commander Higgins's assumptions proved to be incorrect. This was understandable, since they had been formulated in January 1990, nearly 10 months before the treaty was signed and two-and-a-half years before it entered into force. One assumption concerned the size of inspection teams. The INF Treaty provided an early planning model for a 10-person team; negotiators for the CFE Treaty, however, agreed to a maximum of only 9 inspectors per team. This treaty change lowered manning projections. Another change came when Colonel Lawrence G. Kelley, USMC, OSIA European Operations Command's new Chief of Operations, redefined what constituted a "qualified" inspection team. Under the INF Treaty, teams qualified either as escorts or inspectors, and during treaty operations they operated exclusively in that role. Under the CFE Treaty, Kelley directed that all OSIA CFE Treaty teams would be dual qualified: capable of conducting both inspections and escorts. This redefinition further reduced the manning projections for the number of OSIA CFE Treaty teams, inspectors, and escorts.¹³