"They're going to gather information that will be used in determining considerations for possible forward operating locations," a spokesperson for the US Armed Forces European Command in the southern German city of Stuttgart told AFP, confirming a report in the Boston Globe.

Such "locations" in eastern Europe are intended to move away from the 20th century basing system that established giant garrisons in countries such as Germany and South Korea.

The visits to the three former Soviet bloc countries will evaluate ports, airfields and training facilities -- the first of several tours in the coming months, the spokesperson confirmed.

The Boston Globe said that the arrival of military engineers, logisticians and airfield analysts in the three countries indicated the process of "transformation" was picking up momentum.

"There have not been any final decisions made yet, but 80 percent of the solution is there," a senior US military official told the newspaper.

American armed forces officials are due to brief a small group of reporters on the changes Tuesday in Stuttgart.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday that Germany and South Korea would be hardest hit by the biggest change in US force structure since World War II, at an informal NATO meeting in Munich, southern Germany.

With advice from the military, the Pentagon is drawing up plans for repositioning its forces so they can respond swiftly to rapidly emerging crises anywhere in the world.

This will mean scrapping the static defenses manned by armored units that grew up during the Cold War to defend Europe from a Soviet land attack.

Instead, US strategists anticipate consolidating facilities in Europe, keeping certain large airbases such as Ramstein in southwest Germany as a hub from which to project a global network of smaller bases.

The new sites will be designed to allow for quick, nimble responses to emerging crises and allow greater proximity to the Middle East, US military officials have said.

Decisions on where to open new facilities could be made as early as this summer, according to US officials.

"We don't plan many new bases," Rumsfeld said Friday. "We may have bases in places where people want us, where it's a warm base where we can exercise, or use (it) periodically."

Rumsfeld and other US military officials have denied that the shift away from Germany is aimed at punishing the country for opposing the US-led war on Iraq. With some 70,000 troops stationed on German soil, many communities are economically reliant on the US presence.

German Defense Minister Peter Struck said at the same meeting Friday that Rumsfeld had assured him that Washington would cooperate closely with Berlin on the base closures.

Russia, meanwhile, has repeatedly made it clear that it opposes a stronger US military presence near its borders.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov on Saturday urged NATO not to put new military facilities in Poland and the Baltics, warning that Moscow could respond in kind if its interests were threatened.

He said Russia could boost its military presence in the Kaliningrad enclave between Poland and the Baltics if NATO expanded eastward, at a meeting of defense experts in Munich.

WAR.WIRE