United States Central Command

The United States Central Command (USCENTCOM) is a theater-level Unified Combatant Command of the U.S. Department of Defense, established in 1983. It was originally conceived of as the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF).

Its area of responsibility includes countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, most notably Afghanistan and Iraq. CENTCOM has been the main American presence in many military operations, including the Persian Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan (2001–present), and the Iraq War. Forces from USCENTCOM (also called CENTCOM) currently are deployed primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan in combat roles and have bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Pakistan, and central Asia in support roles. CENTCOM forces have also been deployed in Jordan, and Saudi Arabia in the past, and although there is a small presence remaining in each of those countries, no substantial U.S. forces are based there.

The current commander of USCENTCOM is General Lloyd J. Austin, USA, who took command from General James Mattis, USMC on 22 March 2013. Mattis took command from  Lieutenant General John Allen, USMC, the deputy commander since July 2008, who took temporary command when the previous commander, General David Petraeus, USA, left to take command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan on 23 June.

Of the six American regional unified commands, CENTCOM is one of three regional unified commands whose headquarters are not within its area of operations. CENTCOM's main headquarters is located at MacDill Air Force Base, in Tampa, Florida, although a forward headquarters was established in 2002 at Camp As Sayliyah in Doha, Qatar, which transitioned to a new forward headquarters at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar in 2009 to serve American strategic interests if the USCENTCOM Area of Responsibility (AOR) and Area of Interest (AOI). The other regional unified commands with headquarters located outside their areas of operations are United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), currently based in Miami, Florida, and United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM), currently based in Stuttgart, Germany.

Exercise Internal Look is one of the Command's primary planning events. Up until around 1990, it was annual, but it is now held every two years. Up until 1990 it was frequently used to train CENTCOM to be ready to defend the Zagros Mountains from a Soviet attack. It has been employed for explicit war planning on at least two occasions: Internal Look '90, which was held after General Norman Schwarzkopf reoriented CENTCOM's planning to fending off a threat from Iraq, and Internal Look '03, which was used to plan what became Operation Iraqi Freedom.

History
In 1983, U.S. Central Command succeeded the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force with responsibilities for handling United States national security interests in South-west Asia, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. Among its first major activities was oversight of the Tanker War in the Persian Gulf (1987–1988).

In April–July 1999 CENTCOM conducted Exercise Desert Crossing 1999 centered on the scenario of Saddam Hussein being ousted as Iraq’s dictator. The exercise was held in the McLean, Virginia, offices of Booz Allen. The exercise concluded that unless measures are taken, “fragmentation and chaos” will ensue after Saddam Hussein's overthrow.

Components
No fighting units are directly subordinate to this command; rather, there four subordinate service component commands and one subordinate unified command.


 * Service component commands
 * U.S. Army Forces Central Command (USARCENT), Headquartered at Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina, USA
 * U.S. Marine Forces Central Command (USMARCENT), Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, USA
 * U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (USNAVCENT), Headquartered at Naval Support Activity Bahrain, Kingdom of Bahrain
 * U.S. Air Forces Central (USAFCENT), Headquartered at Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina, USA


 * Sub-unified command
 * Special Operations Command Central (USSOCCENT), Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, USA

There are major subordinate multiservice commands reporting to Central Command which are conducting operations in various areas:


 * International Security Assistance Force, now taken over by NATO. Formerly the U.S. force in Afghanistan was Combined Forces Command Afghanistan.
 * Unpublicized temporary task forces

The former United States Forces – Iraq (see also Iraq War order of battle), or USF-I, was also a major subordinate multiservice command until it was disestablished in 2011.

On 1 October 2008 Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti was transferred to AFRICOM. During the Israeli incursion into Lebanon of 2006 a temporary task force, Joint Task Force Lebanon was also operational.

CENTCOM staff directorates include personnel, intelligence, operations, logistics, plans & policy, information systems, training & exercises, and resources, as well as other functions. The intelligence section is known as JICCENT, or Joint Intelligence Center, Central Command, which serves as a Joint Intelligence Center for the co-ordination of intelligence. Under the intelligence directorate, there are several divisions including the Afghanistan-Pakistan Center of Excellence.

There are also elements of other Unified Combatant Commands, especially United States Special Operations Command, operating in the CENTCOM area. It appears that SOCCENT does not direct the secretive Task Force 77, the ad-hoc grouping of Joint Special Operations Command 'black' units such as Delta Force and Army Rangers, which is tasked to pursue the most sensitive high value targets such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership since 11 September 2001. Rather TF 77, which started out as Task Force 11 and has gone through a number of name/number changes, reports directly to Joint Special Operations Command, part of USSOCOM.

Geographic scope


The formal Area of Responsibility (AOR) extends to 20 countries: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Uzbekistan, and Yemen. International waters included are the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and western portions of the Indian Ocean. Syria and Lebanon are the most recent addition, having been transferred from the United States European Command on 10 March 2004.

Israel, which is now surrounded by CENTCOM countries remains in EUCOM, "because it is more politically, militarily and culturally aligned with Europe," according to American military officials. General Norman Schwarzkopf expressed the position over Israel more frankly in his 1992 autobiography: 'European Command also kept Israel, which from my viewpoint was a help: I'd have had difficulty impressing the Arabs with Central Command's grasp of geopolitical nuance if one of the stops on my itinerary had been Tel Aviv.'

On 7 February 2007, plans were announced for the creation of a United States Africa Command which would transfer responsibility for all of Africa except the country of Egypt to the new USAFRICOM. On 1 October 2008, the Africa Command became operational and Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa, the primary CENTCOM force on the continent, started reporting to AFRICOM at Stuttgart instead of CENTCOM in Tampa.

Major US troop presence in the region dates to the 1990 Invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent Operation Desert Shield, which transferred hundreds of thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia. Islamists objected to the presence of non-Muslim troops in Saudi Arabia, and their use in Operation Desert Storm and other attacks on Iraq became a key rallying cry for opposition movements in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. By the late 1990s, a gradual move to other countries was underway, particularly Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and the UAE.

The military uses a variable number of base locations depending on its level of operations. With warfare ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003, the United States Air Force used 35 bases, while in 2006 it used 14, including four in Iraq. The United States Navy maintains one major base and one smaller installation, with extensive deployments afloat and ashore by U.S. Navy, U.S Marine Corps and U.S. Coast Guard ships, aviation units and ground units.

Unit decorations
The unit awards depicted below are for Headquarters, US Central Command at MacDill AFB. Award for unit decorations do not apply to any subordinate organization such as the service component commands or any other activities unless the orders specifically address them.