CRISIS FORCE DEPLOYMENT TO BE MADE PERMANENT AT MORON AIR BASE, SPAIN

FROM:  U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT
U.S., Spain Agree to Make U.S. Crisis Force Deployment Permanent
By Cheryl Pellerin
DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, June 18, 2015 – U.S. and Spanish officials yesterday signed an amendment to the nations’ defense agreement that will change the deployment of the U.S. crisis response force at Moron Air Base from temporary to permanent, defense officials said today.

In the State Department’s Treaty Room, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Spanish Deputy Foreign Minister Ignacio Ybanez signed the Third Protocol of Amendment to the U.S.-Spanish Agreement for Defense and Cooperation.

The amendment, when the Spanish parliament approves it, will make permanent the temporary deployment of the Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force for Crisis Response at Moron Air Base.

Protecting, Stabilizing

The crisis response task force protects U.S. diplomatic personnel and facilities in Africa and supports efforts to stabilize an area of shared concern, defense officials said.

The United States bases nearly 4,000 personnel in Spain at Naval Station Rota and at Moron Air Base.

“We are very grateful to our Spanish allies and partners and friends for this agreement. You’ve hosted the United States military for more than 60 years now, and every day this partnership, this relationship, grows stronger,” Blinken said.

On behalf of the U.S. government, the deputy secretary expressed gratitude for the long years of military cooperation and anticipation of many more years of strong partnership.

Years of Cooperation

Blinken also presented Ybanez with a letter from Secretary of State John Kerry, who is recovering from a recent bike accident that kept him from signing the amendment in Madrid as planned.

“Secretary Kerry … very much wished he could be here to do this today,” Blinken said. “We now have him back in Washington. We’re going to get him back in the building very soon, but he asked me to convey this to you and to the foreign minister on his behalf.”

The amendment allows for a maximum long-term U.S. military presence at the base of 2,200 military personnel, 500 U.S. Defense Department civilian employees and 21 aircraft.

After U.S. consultations with the Spanish government, a surge capability was included in the amendment of another 800 dedicated military crisis-response task force personnel and 14 aircraft at Moron, for a total of 3,500 U.S. military and civilian personnel and 35 aircraft.

Bolstering Crisis Response

The surge capability would temporarily bolster crisis response capabilities, defense officials said.

The presence of the crisis response task force in Spain has increased joint training opportunities, with more than 52 joint exercises in the past two years, an increase of more than 50 percent, the officials added.

Long-term basing and increased joint training will benefit NATO interoperability, they said.

The amendment comes three years after the second protocol of amendment to the defense and cooperation agreement, which gave the United States permission to homeport four ballistic-missile defense-capable ships in Rota as Spain’s contribution to NATO’s ballistic missile defense.

Three ships have arrived, and the fourth is due in September, defense officials said.

U.S. DOD 'DISTRIBUTION SYNCHRONIZER'

U.S. Transportation Command's global campaign plan for distribution will ensure the command is postured to ensure warfighters have the transportation and logistical support required to conduct future missions around the world. Here, Army Spc. Chance Alwin with 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, takes the lead during a combat patrol in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, Dec. 9, 2009. Courtesy photo

FROM: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Transcom Charts Future as DOD's 'Distribution Synchronizer'
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service
SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill., Nov. 14, 2012 - For years, tiny Morón Air Base in Southern Spain appeared to be headed to the chopping block. The base, established with the Spaniards in the early 1950s, had for decades been relegated to standby status for U.S. deployments in support of exercises or crisis response.

U.S. Air Forces in Europe leaders, looking for ways to cut operations that don't directly support their contingency plans, were prepared to close its gates. However, officials at U.S. Transportation Command, working with U.S. European Command, helped them realize that although Morón may no longer be vital to activities in the European theater, it's a key node for operations within both U.S. Central Command and U.S. Africa Command.

The decision to maintain Morón offers a snapshot of Transcom's work as the Defense Department's officially designed "distribution synchronizer," Navy Rear Adm. William "Andy" Brown, the command's director of strategy, policies, programs and logistics, told American Forces Press Service

That mission, assigned in early 2011, charges Transcom to look horizontally across the combatant commands -- rather than vertically, through individual combatant command stovepipes -- to synchronize planning for global distribution operations, Brown explained.

The idea is to help DOD "knit the distribution seams among the combatant commands to better support their theater campaign and contingency plans," Air Force Gen. William M. Fraser III, the Transcom commander, told the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this year.

This, in turn, will help ensure access to the places vital to Transcom's transportation and distribution mission, Fraser said, ensuring sufficient distribution lines across multiple theaters for it to project and sustain forces around the globe.

A big consideration, Brown said, is to continue posturing Transcom to react to simultaneous events with the transportation and distribution network in place to support them. "What happens if we had to [respond to] a hurricane over here and another operation over there?" he said, pointing to two opposite ends of the globe. "What happens to the global transportation network, and how do you maintain that resiliency and ability to react quickly to changes?"

Transcom's global campaign plan for distribution, expected to be completed by late 2013, will provide the framework for addressing these issues, Air Force Col. Carol Johnson, a plans officer in Brown's directorate, reported.

The campaign plan will help Transcom identify what measures need to be taken now to provide the infrastructure, relationships and other requirements to support the defense strategic guidance, she said. That includes the department's pivot toward the Asia-Pacific region, the drawdown of combat operations within Centcom, natural disasters and other contingencies.

Recognizing that requirements will always outweigh capability, Johnson said the global campaign plan will help DOD identify redundancies, establish priorities, weigh risks and recommend solutions for reducing them.

Working with an initial concept, Transcom brought together stakeholders from across its distribution community to war-game it in July. "Everybody agreed it was feasible and would work," Johnson said of the concept. Now, the Transcom staff is waiting for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy James N. Miller to give that concept the green light, most likely in early December, so they can begin drafting the official plan.

If that plan is approved as expected by the end of next year, Transcom officials plan to spend a year fine-tuning the processes.

Then, once each year, the Transcom commander will sit at the table with defense senior leaders and the other combatant commanders to review their theater distribution plans and identify ways to shore up any gaps.

"Our job will be to look across the spectrum and make recommendations to the chairman," Brown said. "From a national perspective, our No. 1 priority is to get this global campaign plan for distribution right."

The annual review will help keep Transcom's global distribution plan in line with the changing strategic environment and COCOM requirements, Johnson said.

"Most people write plans, get them approved, then put them on the shelf until it's time to pull them off and execute," she said. "But ours is consistently going to be evolving and updating, because we do this every day. Our plan will be updated based on the strategic environment and the strategic needs of the Defense Department."

Ultimately, she said, the new plan will help DOD develop a more strategic posture for the future.

"In the past, we have been reactionary in supporting folks when things happen, and we haven't had that strategic look at distribution," Johnson said. "But with the global campaign plan for distribution, we can be more strategic in the planning effort of distribution. And that will make us more effective in everything we do."