Mogadishu (SONNA)- The Defense Department is considering sending U.S. troops back to Somalia just about six months after pulling them all out of the country as part of a broader look at the military\u2019s force posture.<\/p>\n
In December, then-President Donald J. Trump ordered troops to leave Somalia as part of a global push to draw down the numbers of deployed forces. Since then, U.S. forces have been \u201ccommuting to work\u201d by flying in from nearby nations for training events and then leaving.<\/p>\n
AFRICOM boss Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, speaking June 29 during the Center for Strategic and International Studies EU Washington Defense Forum, said the Pentagon under President Joe Biden is in the final stages of changing the force posture in the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been communicating back and forth with my civilian leaders in the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense, giving him options,\u201d Townsend said. \u201cAnd I think we\u2019ll keep those options right where they should be, in private communications with the Secretary Defense, so our civilian leaders have the opportunity to make their decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Townsend said it is his belief that the best way to work with partners in Africa is \u201cside-by-side, face-to-face, shoulder-to-shoulder,\u201d and it\u2019s gotten much more difficult to do that with American forces flying in for short periods of time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s really no denying that our \u2026 fairly sudden repositioning out of Somalia earlier this year has introduced new layers of risk and complexity to our mission there,\u201d Townsend said. \u201cSo, what we\u2019re trying to do is manage that risk and complexity as we still try to help our African partners with their security challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n
The withdrawal from Somalia was a large-scale undertaking, led by USAF aircraft and other air power. USAF C-130s flew about 200 sorties as part of \u201cOperation Octave Quartz,\u201d bringing out about 4 million pounds of cargo and hundreds of personnel.<\/p>\n
A U.S. Navy aircraft carrier deployed to the region, with U.S. Marine Corps F-35Bs providing overwatch of moving American troops. USAF MQ-9s and special operations aircraft also provided surveillance. Air Force F-16s and KC-135s from U.S. Central Command also flew down to the region, with an E-11 Battlefield Airborne Communication Node helping the forces communicate, U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa boss Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian told Air Force Magazine earlier this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we did this, we recognize that when you pull together a joint task force made up of Americans that are focused on a mission, they\u2019re going to figure out a way to get it done,\u201d Harrigian said. \u201cAnd they\u2019re going to do it by protecting Americans. They\u2019re going to do it safely and effectively, and they did it in an extremely short period of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also in 2020, the Pentagon announced it was looking to move AFRICOM\u2019s headquarters as part of its force posture changes. Townsend said June 29 that his command \u201cis very happy to be right where we are in Europe, in Germany,\u201d and it would be \u201ctough to choose\u201d a possible location in Africa. \u201cI think we\u2019re in a great place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mogadishu (SONNA)- The Defense Department is considering sending U.S. troops back to Somalia just about six months after pulling them all out of the country as part of a broader look at the military\u2019s force posture. In December, then-President Donald J. Trump ordered troops to leave Somalia as part of a global push to draw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-405955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405955"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":405959,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405955\/revisions\/405959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}