Area Drive opens new regional base in Florida

The Area Drive, the Pentagon’s latest army service, activated on Friday its second regional headquarters in Tampa, Fla., below U.S. Central Command. 

U.S. Area Forces-Central, opened at MacDill Air Drive Base, “will play a major position in supporting Centcom’s rising want for space-based capabilities equivalent to satellite tv for pc navigation, communications and missile warnings” within the Center East and central Asia, in accordance with a Wednesday launch from the command. 

The brand new regional headquarters is supposed to place extra deal with space-related protection points inside Centcom and can perform all house operations inside the command’s space of duty.  

Led by Col. Christopher Putman, the 28-person employees is supposed to “work with allies and companions to combine house actions into shared operations,” Centcom famous. 

“Simply because the evolution of house as a warfighting area necessitated the institution of a separate service, SPACECENT gives Centcom a subordinate command centered solely and repeatedly on house integration throughout the command – with all domains and all parts,” Putman mentioned within the launch. 

Putman involves the brand new place after previous roles as commander of the twelfth Area Warning Squadron at Thule Air Base, Greenland — a unit that operates ballistic missile-alert and -defense techniques — in addition to the latest director of Area Forces for U.S. Air Forces-Central at MacDill. 

That is additionally the Area Drive’s second geographically centered service element. The army department on Nov. 23 activated U.S. Area Forces Indo-Pacific at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii.  

The Area Drive, created in 2019 as a separate army department inside the Division of the Air Drive, is tasked with coaching troops to guard and function U.S. space-based property together with satellites and conduct space-based missions.