The United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), located in Miami, Florida, is one of nine Unified Combatant Commands (COCOMs) in the United States Department of Defense. It is responsible for providing contingency planning and operations in Central and South America, the Caribbean (except U.S. commonwealths, territories, and possessions), Cuba, their territorial waters, and for the force of U.S. military resources at these locations. USSOUTHCOM is also responsible for ensuring the militarization of the Panama Canal and canal area.
Under the leadership of a four-star Commander, USSOUTHCOM is organized into a headquarters with six main directorates, component commands and military groups that represent SOUTHCOM in the region of Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The current commander is General Douglas M. Fraser, USAF.
USSOUTHCOM is a joint command of more than 1,200 military and civilian personnel representing the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and several other federal agencies. Civilians working at USSOUTHCOM are, for the most part, civilian employees of the Army, as the Army is USSOUTHCOM's Combatant Command Support Agent. The Services provide USSOUTHCOM with component commands which, along with their Joint Special Operations component, two Joint Task Forces, one Joint Interagency Task Force, and Security Cooperation Offices, perform USSOUTHCOM missions and activities. USSOUTHCOM exercises its COCOM authority through the commanders of its components, Joint Task Forces/Joint Interagency Task Force, and Security Cooperation Organizations.
Read more about United States Southern Command: Area of Interest, Components, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, History, Transformation of U.S. Southern Command To An Interagency-Oriented Organization
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, southern and/or command:
“We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you’re looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“The heroes of the world community are not those who withdraw when difficulties ensue, not those who can envision neither the prospect of success nor the consequence of failure—but those who stand the heat of battle, the fight for world peace through the United Nations.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“In it he proves that all things are true and states how the truths of all contradictions may be reconciled physically, such as for example that white is black and black is white; that one can be and not be at the same time; that there can be hills without valleys; that nothingness is something and that everything, which is, is not. But take note that he proves all these unheard-of paradoxes without any fallacious or sophistical reasoning.”
—Savinien Cyrano De Bergerac (1619–1655)
“It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took: we know it because she repented.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Ordinary time is “quality time” too. Everyday activities are not just necessities that keep you from serious child rearing: they are the best opportunities for learning you can give your child...because her chief task in her first three years is precisely to gain command of the day-to-day life you take for granted.”
—Amy Laura Dombro (20th century)