SUPPORTING THE GLOBAL SPECIAL OPERATIONS NETWORK

FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

New Authority Supports Global Special Operations Network
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service

TAMPA, Fla., May 15, 2013 - A new arrangement that gives U.S. Special Operations Command responsibility for manning, training and equipping special operators assigned to regional combatant commands is beginning to pay off in strengthening the global special operations force network, the Socom commander reported here yesterday.

Navy Adm. William H. McRaven told attendees at the 2013 Special Operations Forces Industry Conference that the new command structure amends a shortcoming that had left Socom with "no institutional relationship" with regional special operations commanders.

Then-Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta approved the change in February. "In essence, now U.S. Special Operations Command has authority over all special operations [forces]," McRaven said, including those assigned to U.S. European Command, U.S. Pacific Command, U.S. Central Command, U.S. Southern Command and U.S. Africa Command.

This authority also will extend to U.S. Northern Command, which is standing up its own special operations element.

A key part of the arrangement, McRaven said, is that these special operators and their regional special operations commanders will remain under the operational control of their respective geographic combatant commander.

"That is very important," he said, emphasizing that geographic commanders will determine what missions special operators conduct within their areas of responsibility.

"We will not do anything," McRaven said, repeating it for emphasis, "without the approval -- underline that -- of a geographic commander and the chief of mission [or] ambassador."

The admiral elaborated on the arrangement during his testimony before the House and Senate armed services committees in March.

"As the Socom commander, with some unique exceptions, I do not command and control any forces in combat or crisis," he said. "I am a 'supporting commander' to geographic combatant commanders and the chiefs of mission.

"It is my job to provide them the best special operations force in the world," he continued. "It is their job to employ those forces in support of U.S. policy."

Yesterday, McRaven told the forum of special operators and defense contractors he advocated the change of authority to better support theater special operations commanders and their assigned forces.

"I want to be held responsible for the manning, training, equipping and resourcing of the theater special operations commanders," McRaven said. That way, he said, if a theater special operations commander doesn't have the best talent or isn't well resourced, there's no question about who should be held accountable.

"The answer ought to be, 'You come here to Socom because we are now responsible for it,'" he said. "It really is about, 'How do we better support those theater special operations commanders?'"

Special Operations Command already is making good on its new responsibility.

Army Brig. Gen. Sean P. Mulholland, commander of Special Operations Command South, reported that his command, long stretched for manpower and resources, is slated to triple in size over the next few years. Meanwhile, the funding lines will start to shift based on McRaven's emphasis on bolstering the theater special operations commanders, he said.

Navy Rear Adm. Brian L. Losey, commander of Special Operations Command Africa, reported that his command has received additional funding for technical requirements, as well as temporary augmentees from the Socom staff. The new command arrangement "is absolutely empowering" the theater special operations commanders, he said.

But there's an additional benefit in the communication links the new command relationship allows. McRaven now conducts weekly videoconferences with all of his theater special operations commanders, encouraging them to share information about their activities and challenges.

"Before long, we begin to knit together the global problems that we are seeing," he said. "And we are passing information [among the theater special operations commanders] that is the beginning of enhancing this global [special operations force] network."

SOUTHCOM SENDS MEDICATIONS TO BRAZIL NIGHTCLUB FIRE VICTIMS

FROM: U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT
Southcom Speeds Medications to Brazil for Nightclub Victims
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2, 2013 - Medication to treat victims suffering from the tragic Jan. 27 nightclub fire in Santa Maria, Brazil, funded by and transported through coordination by U.S. Southern Command, are scheduled to arrive in Brasilia today, Southcom officials reported.

Southcom partnered with the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia, the Brazilian Ministry of Health, American Airlines, Miami Dade Aviation and the Transportation Security Administration to secure the rapid transport of the medication, officials said.

The Brazilian Ministry of Health submitted a request to the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia for 140 doses of the drug Cyanokit to treat victims exposed to cyanide poison when the fire ignited acoustic foam insulation inside the club, they said.

Southcom, in turn, worked with the Defense Logistics Agency to secure the medication under an existing contract with Meridian Medical Technologies. The command used funds from its humanitarian assistance program to pay for the drugs, valued at more than $97,000, officials said.

Southcom also coordinated transport of the medication from St. Louis to Brazil via Miami by working closely with Miami Dade Aviation, TSA and American Airlines. The drugs are scheduled to arrive today aboard an American Airlines flight. In Brasilia, they will be turned over to local health ministry officials to immediately distribute to health care facilities treating victims exposed to the poison, officials said.

The command is one of six geographically focused, unified commands within the Defense Department. It is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Caribbean, Central America and South America.

STABILITY AND SECURITY ARE PROMOTED BY SOUTHCOM

AMERICAN FORCES PRESS SERVICE
The guided missile frigate USS Thach, left, passes alongside the dry cargo ship USNS Lewis and Clark as it pulls out in to the Pacific Ocean to participate in PANAMAX 2011 sea phase. U.S. Navy Photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Jose Lopez  

Southcom Exercise Program Promotes Stability, Security
By Donna Miles
MIAMI, June 20, 2012 - Several military exercises that just wrapped up or are under way exemplify U.S. Southern Command's robust exercise program, one that officials consider integral to regional stability and U.S. national security.

Exercise Tradewinds 2012, which kicked off in Barbados June 15 and continues through the upcoming weekend, is focused on what Air Force Gen. Douglas M. Fraser, the Southcom commander, calls the most pressing regional challenge: transnational organized crime.

U.S. Marine Forces South is leading the exercise, which has brought together defense and law enforcement from the United States, Canada and 15 Caribbean countries for the 28th year to enhance their ability to work together against a common threat.

Speaking during opening ceremonies in Bridgetown, Barbados, Marine Corps Col. Michael Ramos, MARFOR-South chief of staff, emphasized the benefit of Exercise Tradewinds to participating nations. "We recognize the value of working together to confront these common security challenges," he said. "We are truly united through our collaboration and collective efforts to fight terrorism, illicit trafficking and transnational criminality in all forms and in being prepared to effectively respond to natural disasters."
Another exercise that concluded last week in Colombia, Fuerzas Comando 2012, brought together special operators from 21 regional countries for a grueling counterterrorism and special operations skills competition. That event, sponsored by U.S. Special Operations Command South, was designed to promote military-to-military relationships, increase interoperability and improve regional security.

"This is the one forum that we have annually where we can come together as a region and talk about ideas, [about how to] increase our effect, collectively, against these dangerous non-state-actor threats we face," Navy Rear Adm. Thomas L. Brown II, commander of Special Operations Command South, told American Forces Press Service.

These are just two examples of a broad Southcom exercise program that last year alone included hundreds of training and educational events, 12 major multinational exercises with regional partners and 56 medical readiness training exercises in 13 countries, according to Army Maj. Gen. Gerald W. Ketchum, the command's director of theater engagement.

"You don't want to show up on game day for the big game, when you have never practiced together," Ketchum told American Forces Press Service at the Southcom headquarters here. "And that is really what the exercise program is all about."

Toward that end, the exercise program centers on four basic pillars: security and illegal migration and illicit trafficking, peacekeeping, counterterrorism, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

The annual Peacekeeping Operations-Americas exercise that wrapped up last month brought together the United States and 15 partner nations to train in skills needed to serve as peacekeepers in Central and South America and the Caribbean.

U.S. Army South sponsored the four-phase exercise, conducted over the course of three months in Chile and the Dominican Republic in support of the State Department's Global

Peace Operations Initiative.
U.S. Ambassador to Chile Alejandro Daniel Wolff emphasized the importance of building the skills and interoperability needed for militaries to conduct vital peacekeeping roles. "Exercises like this offer the opportunity to learn from each other and to become more capable in our tasks to create a safer future for everybody," Wolff said during the May 11 closing ceremony in Santiago.

Other Southcom exercises focus primarily on humanitarian assistance. These efforts, Ketchum explained, give military members an opportunity to use their skills while leaving behind tangible improvements in host nations. Sometimes it's a new or renovated school, a newly dug well or new building to serve as an emergency operations center in the event of a natural disaster. Other exercises provide training for host-national medical staffs or desperately needed care in local communities.

For example, Army engineers and medical professionals currently deployed to Honduras and Guatemala for Beyond the Horizon 2012 are providing medical, dental and engineering support. Participants in another joint humanitarian exercise, New Horizons 2012, are providing training, free medical care and critical infrastructure in poor areas of Peru.

Officials said the efforts help address critical needs while showing U.S. support and commitment to the region. For many of the participants, the reward is getting to make a visible difference in others' lives.

"My favorite part of this exercise is seeing the work getting done," said Army 1st Lt. Johnny Robey, commander of the Missouri National Guard's 1140th Engineer Battalion, supporting Beyond the Horizon 2012 in Honduras. "I enjoy going to the sites and seeing the immediate impact of what we're here to do."

Among Southcom's array of multinational security exercises, PANAMAX remains the largest. The annual exercise focuses on supporting the Panamanian government in defense of the strategic Panama Canal.

Eighteen nations participated in last year's exercise, working to improve the interoperability of their military and civil forces to guarantee safe passage through the canal and ensure its neutrality.

"This is a theme that is embraced by virtually everyone in the region: free and open access to the canal and flow of goods through the Panama Canal," Ketchum said. "Everyone recognizes that it is clearly something of great value to the entire hemisphere to ensure that."

Ketchum cited the growing success of the exercise as partners in the region step up to assume major leadership roles. Colombia took on the land component commander role last year, and will retain it during this year's PANAMAX, in August. "They have embraced this role, and done a wonderful job," Ketchum said. "Ultimately, that's good for all of us, because we need interoperability and we need to be able to communicate with each other."

Meanwhile, Brazil is preparing to assume leadership of the maritime component role during the upcoming PANAMAX, Fraser told Congress earlier this year. Fraser called the move "an important step in strengthening the expanding partnerships in the hemisphere."

With expansion efforts under way at the Panama Canal that will increase the seaborne traffic it handles, close, regional cooperation will be more critical than ever, Fraser told the Senate Armed Service Committee in March. "I don't see a direct change to the threat or to the concerns as we look into the future, but our PANAMAX exercise will remain critical to that effort," he said.

Ketchum said the capabilities built and relationships strengthened through the exercise program have a direct impact on regional stability and U.S. national security.

"We truly believe that it takes an international approach to address the challenges we face in the region, and that these engagements are supporting that effort, he said. "We want to be the security partner of choice, and we look forward to continuing to work with our partner nations in the region."

(Army Sgt. Sarah E. Lupescu, from the Missouri National Guard; Army Sgt. Alysia Jarmon, from the 65th Public Affairs Operations Center; and Robert Ramon from U.S. Army South contributed to this article.)

SOUTHCOM'S COMMANDER SAYS CURBING INTERNATIONAL CRIME TOO BIG FOR SOUTHCOM TO HANDLE ALONE

The following excerpt is from a Department of Defense American Forces Press Service e-mail:

"Southcom 'Part of Solution' to Drug Crime, Commander Says

By Karen Parrish
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, March 7, 2012 - U.S. Southern Command's central mission -- disrupting transnational trafficking in drugs, weapons, cash and people in Central and South America –- is too large and complex for even a U.S. combatant command to tackle alone, Southcom's commander said today.

At a Defense Writers Group breakfast, Air Force Gen. Douglas M. Fraser said that in line with the president's strategy targeting transnational organized crime, Southcom works with other U.S. government agencies and international partners' military and law enforcement agencies to track, capture and prosecute people who have made several countries in the Americas the most violent in the world.

Success in that effort rests on the command's other primary mission of building international and interagency partnership and cooperation, the general told reporters.

Southcom is "only one part of the solution" to transnational organized crime and its effects in Central and South America, Fraser noted. Both the United States and the international community are intent on the issue, he added.

"We're working to pull together all the various agencies, capabilities, and [the] international community to improve our ability to coordinate and focus our efforts to address this larger problem," he said.

While transnational organized crime is not a traditional military threat, Fraser said, the violence and corruption stemming from the global drug trade in countries south of the United States has, in many cases, destroyed law enforcement and judicial processes.

Fraser said he doesn't see either an internal or external conventional military threat in the region, but many countries are using their militaries to augment too-small or corrupt police forces.

Transnational crime's greatest impact is in Central America, he said. Honduras in 2011 led the world in per capita murders, with 86 per 100,000 people, Fraser noted. El Salvador's murder rate is 66 per 100,000, he added, while Guatemala's overall rate is 41 per 100,000, with higher peaks in parts of the country.

Those three countries do use their military forces in crime-fighting efforts, Fraser said. He noted Honduras has committed half of its forces to the effort, and Guatemala has employed forces in 60-day sieges against high-crime areas.

While he doesn't think military forces should serve in law enforcement over the long term, the general said, he supports the approach as a bridging strategy.

"[Southcom's] efforts along those lines are to help support the militaries with training, with some equipping -- to help them work with law enforcement as well as address the traffic as it enters Central America," he added.

Fraser said Southcom's forces pursue a more conventional military mission along the region's coastlines, where for 20 years they have spotted and monitored air- and sea-based drug movement from northern South America through the Caribbean to various destinations -- most commonly, now, in Central America.

Drug traffic -- mostly cocaine but increasingly including methamphetamine precursors coming from India and China, routed through the Americas by transnational criminal networks -- then typically moves inland, by ground or air, through Mexico and into the United States, still the world's largest consumer of illegal drugs, the general said.

"Brazil has become the second-largest user of cocaine in the world," he noted, adding drug movement is also increasing from South America to West Africa, then into Europe and the Middle East.

Southcom still conducts training and disaster-preparedness exercises and other traditional military-to-military engagements with partner forces in the region, Fraser said, but international and U.S. efforts are mostly aimed at disrupting drug trade.

Operation Martillo, or "Hammer," is focused on air and maritime surveillance of the Caribbean and eastern Pacific using Southcom assets including Navy and Coast Guard ships and Navy, Air Force and U.S. Customs and Border Protection aircraft, Fraser noted.

About 80 percent of Colombia's cocaine moves by ship, whether traditional coast-hugging "go-fast" drug smuggling boats, fishing vessels, or "pretty sophisticated" wood and fiberglass submersibles and semi-submersibles drug traffickers craft in the region's jungles, Fraser said.

The general said Southcom and its regional partners interdict some 25 to 35 percent of the drug supply they know about, but he acknowledged the overall actual percentage likely is lower. And as traffickers shift from larger shipments to using smaller, more numerous boats, he said, more drugs are getting through.

Operation Hammer has in 45 days netted 3.5 metric tons of cocaine and 10 smuggling vessels, but the effort's overall aim is to use persistent surveillance to force traffickers to move their shipping routes into international waters, the general said.

That shift would prolong transit time and offer more opportunities for U.S. and other nations' vessels to stop illegal shipments, seize cargoes and prosecute traffickers, Fraser explained. Dutch and French ships are active in counterdrug efforts in the Caribbean, he added.

The general said while Southcom may see the number of its own ships decline over time as the Navy reshapes its fleet, some countries in the region are bringing more to bear in the counterdrug effort.

Colombia's recent strategy against the narcoterrorist group FARC -- Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de Colombia, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- demonstrates what is possible, Fraser said. Colombia has focused more task forces against the group, and paired with forces in neighboring Venezuela to target illicit activity across the border.

"FARC has been diminished in half, ... and they've reverted back to very traditional guerilla tactics," he noted.

Southcom supports Colombia's efforts, and the United States has spent some $8 billion on counterdrug efforts in that nation over 10 years, Fraser said, but Colombia itself has invested $100 billion in defense during that time. Colombia can serve as a model for other regional nations, particularly in its whole-of-government approach anti-corruption efforts, the general said. The government first moves in security forces to stop drug production and quell violence in a given region, then follows up with economic development experts to help build sustainable, legal means of livelihood, he explained.

Colombian troops get anti-corruption training, and spend two months at time in postings in the field before rotating to a new assignment elsewhere in the country, Fraser added. Through these means, the Colombian government has gained control over the country's cities and large towns, he said.

Other nations in the region can take those lessons and determine how to apply them to their situation, the general said."