22                                       U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991


Major General Hopkins commanded the 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, the
first significant Marine Corps force to arrive in the Persian Gulf      Before he
deployed with the brigade, he also commanded the Marine Air Ground Combat
Center in Twentynine Palms Califonia, where Marine units go for desert and
combined arm training.   when Lieutenant General Boomer arrived in Saudi
Arabia, General Hopkins became the Deputy Commander of I Marine Expedi-
tionary Force.
    In this interview, General Hopkins discusses the first operational offload of
Maritime Prepositioning Ships, and describes the measures taken by the first
American forces to arrive in Saudi Arabia to deftnd against-the large, menacing
Iraqi Army in Kuwait.


This Was No Drill

interview with Major General John I. Hopkins, USMC

U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, November 1991

Proceedings: When were you alerted?

Hopkins: The brigade was alerted officially to deploy on 8 August 1990, while
the Maritime Prepositioning Ships [MPSl got under way on the 7th, and we
started working the Time Phased Force Deployment Data (TPFDD).          We didn't
have all the ships in the right spots.  Only three were at Diego Garcia; one was
at Blount Island, Florida, on a maintenance cycle; and one was en route.   So we
didn't have our total package.  Eut the Diego Garcia ships got moving.
    We worked like hell.  We had a problem with the TPFDD right away
because it was due to be updated in October.     This was August, it hadn't been
reworked for a couple of years, and we had some problems. Everybody wanted
to put on more gear than the 250 equivalent airlift sorties allowed.  So after my
staff came to me and said, "We need a decision.         They're trying to dump
everything on," I said, 1,If you put something additional on the aircraft, you've
got to take something off."

Proceedings: Did you take more tanks on your ships, based on what you thought
you would be up against?

Hopkins:   No. We had the generic Maritime Prepositioning Force (MPF)
equipment package.  We couldn't have changed it anyway.      The MPS concept
equals the prepositioned ships plus the fly-in echelon.  The flexibility is there,
though, for new weapon systems like the light armored vehicle [LAV] variants,
or new communications gear, and things that haven't been loaded on the MPS
since the last maintenance cycle; those get put on the fly-in echelon.