Wichita ? On a bitter-cold field at Fort Riley, a U.S. Army tank the color of desert sand glides past Capt. Aaron Cichocki.

The 28-year-old tank company commander wears a pistol strapped across his chest and smiles widely at the armored giant, an M1A1 Abrams. “Seventy tons, stops on a dime,” he says. “It’s a Cadillac.”

After a day of standing in a tank turret, dust fills the pores of his chafed face. He feels the rush of having just finished an exercise involving about 20 tanks, 20 artillery pieces, 15 armed infantry vehicles and 700 active-duty soldiers – firing live rounds.

The exercise, using equipment from the Gulf War, comes as the prospect of combat against Iraq looms again. If President Bush calls for war, some of America’s soldiers could be deployed from the Kansas post, says Col. Frank Helmick, Fort Riley’s acting commanding general.

The fort always prepares for war, Helmick says, with a standing message to soldiers: “This might be the last chance you get to train before being deployed.”

Located in the nation’s center, with superior railway, highway and airfield access, Fort Riley serves as a platform for deploying soldiers and equipment.

After the live-fire training Wednesday, Col. Russ Gold reminded officers that they never know whether “the next time you maneuver, it will either be in the Mojave (Calif.) Desert or the Iraqi desert.”

Now, with arms inspectors in Iraq and talk of war dominating headlines, the fort is receiving calls from national media interested in its operations, said Deb Skidmore, a Fort Riley spokeswoman.

No clear sign of mobilization

In nearby Junction City, long accustomed to regular vibrations from the fort’s firing ranges, residents and community leaders say they have sensed no change in mood at the fort and seen no clear sign of a mobilization.

So far, there has been no spike in marriage-license applications at the Geary County Courthouse, which occurred before the Gulf War.

But at Dick Edwards Auto Plaza, co-owner Janice Edwards said she wondered if car sales could be down partly because soldiers are reluctant to buy when they may be sent to war.

When the fort sent forces to the Persian Gulf more than a decade ago, many of the soldiers’ families returned to their hometowns during their absence.

Businesses from Junction City to Manhattan suffered because they lost a whole population of customers overnight. The economic impact rippled. Edwards had to lay off four to five employees.

A different mission

Since Desert Storm, the fort has changed a great deal.

Fort Riley no longer is headquarters for the famed 1st Infantry Division, now based in Germany, although the Kansas post still retains a brigade of that unit.

The fort is headquarters for the 24th Infantry Division and offers training for combat units, engineers, and Reserve and National Guard troops from around the nation.

It houses roughly 10,500 active-duty soldiers and 12,000 family members and employs 3,900 civilians. It calls itself the 16th largest city in Kansas.

A massive armored exercise like Wednesday’s occurs only a couple of times a year. Fort Riley, with a training area spread across 70,000 acres of rolling prairie, is one of a few posts large enough to have such training.

The maneuvers test the ability of tanks, armed troop carriers and artillery to coordinate live fire.

The enemy is imaginary, the targets are wooden or plastic, but the ammunition is real.

Clouds of pale smoke rise in the distance over tan- and rust-colored fields crisscrossed by the dust trails left by tanks and troop carriers.

The M1A1 Abrams tanks, some with plows that can shove aside mines, provide safe paths and a sense of security for the ground soldiers and smaller vehicles around them.

Despite their size, the tanks move relatively quietly, especially on the desert sands of the Persian Gulf region, where Iraqis in the Gulf War feared the machines, calling them silent killers.

After the exercise, crews use mammoth trucks to refuel tanks in a rutted field.

In the biting wind, heat waves shimmer in the exhaust from the tanks’ turbine engines.

Spc. Adam Kurtz, from Idaho, hops down from one tank and reflects on the day’s training ” as close as it gets to the real thing.

“This,” he says, “is what we join the Army for, to drive these tanks, to fight.”