CAIRO: The United States has halved its troop numbers to take part in the multinational Bright Star war games in Egypt, an Egyptian general announced on Wednesday.
Two thousand, four hundred American soldiers will be there, compared to 5,000 at the last Bright Star, Major General Abdul Fatah Farag, who is in charge of the land, sea and air exercises, told AFP at a press briefing.
A total of 7,402 soldiers from 13 countries – including Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Jordan, Turkey, the United States and Yemen – are to take part, with 42 aircraft and 13 ships deployed.
The exercises, staged every two years, involved 30,000 soldiers in 2005 and more than 60,000 in 2001, including 23,000 US troops. They were called off in 2003 because of the US-led invasion of Iraq.
US Captain Lance Carr said that the troop numbers were down this year because many of the exercises would be computer-simulated and require less assets on the ground.
We are focusing on a combined exercise, including a computer-aided command, with more limited movements of tactical air, amphibious and special operations forces, he said.
A military analyst, asking not to be named, said the US military was being stretched by the Iraq conflict and giving a lower priority to the war games, held mostly in the Nile Delta north of Cairo and in the Mediterranean.
Bright Star kicked off in 1980, a year after Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel, as exercises involving only the Egyptian and US militaries, before taking on a multinational format in 1996.
