U.S. sending more military ships and aircraft to Central and South America
The United States will send additional ships, aircraft and forces to South America and Central America this year to increase counternarcotics pressure and address Chinese and Russian influence in the region, the head of U.S. Southern Command said Wednesday.
“This really was born out of a recognition of the threats in the region,” said Navy Adm. Craig Faller, commander of Southern Command, which oversees the military’s activities in South America and Central America.
Over the last year the command has used the Navy ships temporarily deployed to its region to provide medical care for thousands of people in more than a dozen countries, including refugees who fled Venezuela.
In January another Navy vessel, the USS Detroit, conducted freedom of navigation operations off the coast of Venezuela as a statement to leader Nicolás Maduro. U.S. Coast Guard vessels also regularly assist the Colombian military in conducting drug interdictions in the Caribbean.
Faller declined to say specifically how many additional ships, aircraft or personnel would rotate through the region. He gave one example, that in the counternarcotics mission, where the command has seen a rise in illicit drug trade, the number of assets that Southcom has requested is “much larger” than it has had in the past.
Faller said that would mean more Coast Guard force packages - cutters, helicopters and law enforcement detachments - because any Navy ship deployed to the region, which could be used for detection and monitoring, would need a Coast Guard detachment for the law enforcement portion of a counternarcotics interdiction, including arrests or seizures.
It could also mean additional rotations of the Navy’s littoral combat ships that can operate in shallow waters, Faller said during a briefing with reporters at the Pentagon.
“In an area the size of the United States, we’ve been working between six and eight ships,” Faller said. “So we’ve been consistently saying the number we really need to cover that zone is much larger, and so that was part of the rationale for the additional force packages we will be receiving. So you’ll see additional forces in the air, on the land, at sea, and some maneuver forces ashore, some security forces, assistance brigades to work with our partners.”
Faller would not say when the additional rotations would begin.
The increase comes as the command overall is readying for cuts, as part of the Pentagon’s global review of staffing levels and resources of all its combatant commands.
For Southern Command, that means cuts to the number of personnel assigned to the detention facility at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.
“We’re rightsizing that,” Faller said. “There will be savings, tremendous manpower savings and cost savings for consolidation on footprint.”
Faller did not provide details on how many forces would be cut. There are currently about 1,800 U.S. National Guard forces staffing the detention facility operated at Guantanamo Bay.
The facility opened in 2002 to hold al Qaeda and Taliban affiliated prisoners caught during the almost two-decade war on terrorism.
About 780 prisoners have been held at the facility since it opened, however only 40 remain now, including detainees charged in connection with the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the October 2000 strike on the destroyer USS Cole.
This story was originally published March 11, 2020 at 5:48 PM with the headline "U.S. sending more military ships and aircraft to Central and South America."
