ANTI-TERRORIST WAR EXPECTED TO BE LENGTHY EXPERTS DRAW FROM HISTORY.

WASHINGTON - Americans expecting swift vengeance for terror attacks will instead face a long and complex conflict, say experts, who also argue that the military needs to overcome the twin handicaps of downsized forces and a poorly defined mission.

``It has always taken a long time and a huge effort to get the U.S. ready for war,'' said Paul Koistinen, a California State University, Northridge, history professor and a recognized authority on military preparedness and wartime buildups.

``In the Gulf War, it was months before we were in a position to attack,'' said Koistinen, whose 1997 book ``Mobility for Modern War: The Political Economics of American Warfare, 1865-1919'' is required reading at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.

He noted that Iraq's Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, and although the first U.S. forces were deployed to the Persian Gulf region only seven days later, the Pentagon did not begin airstrikes until Jan. 17, 1991, and it finally launched the ground war, with 500,000 assembled U.S. troops, on Feb. 24, 1991.

America's wars have been marked by a series of military expansions and reductions, he and other experts said.

``In most of our history, we have seen no need for large standing armies,'' said Charles Macune, chairman of CSUN's history department. ``We've had a cheap insurance policy: oceans surrounding us and relatively weak neighbors. We have tended to understaff and under-arm our military until the crisis comes.''

``The Cold War is the only time America ever kept a large standing military and we still have a comparatively large force today,'' Koistinen said. ``But we are also enormously resilient. We started World War II in 1941 with limited resources. By 1943, we were producing 50 percent of the world's munitions. With the right leadership, we can also overcome this crisis.''

``You're never completely ready for anything,'' said retired Army Col. Daniel M. Smith, chief of research at the Center for Defense Information, a Washington think tank. ``All the military can do is draw up a number of contingency plans and depend on intelligence to identify the greatest threats. And I don't know if any strategy could have stopped these terror attacks.''

Maj. Gen. Paul D. Monroe, commander of the California National Guard, said that response times will vary if his force is called to duty.

``We can have specialized units, including our Fresno-based Air Guard fighter wing, that can get into action quickly,'' he said. ``But it would take as much as six months to assemble, train and deploy our largest unit, the 40th Mechanized Infantry Division.''

The 11,000-member division, headquartered at Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center, is largely made up of men and women from Southern California.

While the United States can still field a formidable force of 1.4 million regular troops, since 1991 the ranks of Army regulars alone have been trimmed from 710,821 to 482,170.