If adopted, the plan would usher in some of the most significant changes at the military’s highest ranks in decades, in part following through on Hegseth’s promise to break the status quo and slash the number of four-star generals in the military. It would reduce in prominence the headquarters of U.S. Central Command, U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command by placing them under the control of a new organization known as U.S. International Command, according to five people familiar with the matter....The plan also calls for realigning U.S. Southern Command and U.S. Northern Command, which oversee military operations throughout the Western Hemisphere, under a new headquarters to be known as U.S. Americas Command, or Americom, people familiar with the matter said... Combined, the moves would reduce the number of top military headquarters — known as combatant commands — from 11 to eight while cutting the number of four-star generals and admirals who report directly to Hegseth. Other remaining combatant commands would be U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, U.S. Space Command, U.S. Strategic Command and U.S. Transportation Command.
USEUCOM and USAFRICOM used to be one command, and are both still co-located in Stuttgart, Germany. AFRICOM remains small, and won't be a particular problem to re-integrate.
That's not true for USCENTCOM. I used to work at Central Command years ago. It is a huge headquarters, really a whole compound of various buildings and trailers on MacDill AFB near Tampa. They also have a forward deployed headquarters at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Trying to integrate that monster into an even larger command with massive responsibilities is going to be a fun exercise.
I wonder if this is the latest version of the 'pivot to Asia' we've been hearing about since the Obama terms, which the military has found difficult to actualize. I notice that USINDOPACOM is not on the chopping block; if the idea is to radically shrink our commitments in the Middle East and Europe, we could focus on the Western hemisphere and on keeping China hemmed in behind the first island chain.
Separately, another article that came to my attention was a significant re-thinking of information warfare by the US Army. It was published in Small Wars Journal. Very long-time readers will remember that I wrote for SWJ in 2007, as an embedded correspondent with Special Operations forces conducting combat operations against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Abu Sayyaf. Since then SWJ joined the Foundation for Defense of Democracies for a long stint, but now is no longer there: they've moved out to Arizona State University since the death of their founder, Dave Dillege (another name that long-timer readers will recognize). It's good to see the US Army is using them to release major publications; clearly the move out of the Swamp hasn't hurt their influence in the community.
The problem they're talking about is one I wrote about extensively during the Security Studies Group era; it's a problem that is bigger than the Army, too. If this latest reshuffle solves every problem the Army has (which is likely won't, though it may improve things), the USG will still have significant issues coordinating its information warfare efforts. If you want a brief introduction to the problem, this panel on Russian disinformation efforts opens with a short talk on that topic.
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