The Special Operations Command Central(SOCCENT) is a sub-unified command of the U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM). It is responsible for planning special operations throughout the USCENTCOM area of responsibility (AOR), planning and conducting peacetime joint/combined special operations training exercises, and orchestrating command and control of peacetime and wartime special operations as directed.
The command is headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. SOCCENT FWD (formerly known as Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command) is located at Al Udeid in Qatar. The Command's motto is Molon labe (Greek for "Come and take them", reportedly said by King Leonidas I of Sparta before the Battle of Thermopylae in response to the Persian demand to surrender their weapons.)
In the initial stages of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, the formation's commander was Rear Admiral Albert Calland. SOCCENT stood up Joint Special Operations Task Forces (JSOTFs). Beginning on 5 October 2001, Joint Special Operations Task Force-North (JSOTFN) was established under command of Col Frank Kisner at Karshi-Kanabad (K2), Uzbekistan, and the bombing of Afghanistan began on 7 October. The 5th SFG (A), under the command of COL John Mulholland, deployed to K2 and formed the core of this JSOTF, more commonly known as Task Force Dagger. Unconventional Warfare became DAGGER’s principal mission. This task force included aviators from the 160th SOAR (A) and Special Tactics personnel from AFSOC. A comparable task force, Task Force K-Bar, deployed to southern Afghanistan.
In the leadup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, SOCCENT assigned 5th Special Forces Group the task of establishing Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-West (CJSOTF-W), and its three battalions would constitute the bulk of the task force. As operations approached, CJSOTF-W grew to include Australian and British special forces, Psychological Operations (PSYOP) elements from B Company, 9th PSYOP Battalion, and 301st PSYOP Company, with Civil Affairs augmentation.
Most U.S. special operations forces left Iraq in May and June 2003. CJSOTF-N/Task Force Viking was deactivated, and CJSOTF-W was re-designated CJSOTF-Arabian Peninsula (CJSOTFAP), having moved to Baghdad in April. By July 2003, CJSOTF-AP had drawn down to the 5th Special Forces Group Headquarters, consisting of one Naval Special Warfare Task Unit (NSWTU) and one FOB. The FOB commanded 14 ODAs, few of them at full strength. The bulk of these forces remained in Baghdad with outstations covering Al Qaim, Ramadi/Fallujah, Najaf/Nasiriyah, Hillah, Kut/Amarah, Tikrit, Balad, Samarra, and Kirkuk.
According to a 2006 online edition of Special Operations Technology magazine, SOCCENT, operating with coalition partners as the CFSOCC, consists of two combined joint special operations task forces, one Combined Joint Special Operations Aviation Command (also referred to as 'Component'), which seems to be at Balad Air Base, one joint psychological operations task force, one Naval Special Warfare Unit and three Special Operations command and control elements .
The two CJSOTFs are CJSOTF-Arabian Peninsula, whose headquarters directs United States Army Special Forces and CJSOTF Afghanistan. Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Arabian Peninsula (CJSOTF-AP) is a "white," or unclassified, special operations task force that is always organized around the headquarters of 5th Special Forces Group or 10th Special Forces Group. Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Arabian Peninsula (CJSOTF-AP), itself answers to While information is scarce, it consists of two battalions of the United States Army Special Forces (the 'Green Berets') and a west coast-based Navy SEAL Team. CJSOTF-AP is task organized into three Special Operations Task Forces (SOTFs): SOTF-Central, SOTF-North, and SOTF-West.
CJSOTF Aghanistan's headquarters has been provided in rotation by a number of Army Special Forces Groups, including the 3rd and the 19th. CJSOTF Afghanistan has included elements of the 7th Special Forces Group operating in southern provinces, including Kandahar, as Task Force 71.
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, special, operations, command and/or central:
“Prior to the meeting, there was a prayer. In general, in the United States there was always praying.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“What lies behind facts like these: that so recently one could not have said Scott was not perfect without earning at least sorrowful disapproval; that a year after the Gang of Four were perfect, they were villains; that in the fifties in the United States a nothing-man called McCarthy was able to intimidate and terrorise sane and sensible people, but that in the sixties young people summoned before similar committees simply laughed.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“... no young colored person in the United States today can truthfully offer as an excuse for lack of ambition or aspiration that members of his race have accomplished so little, he is discouraged from attempting anything himself. For there is scarcely a field of human endeavor which colored people have been allowed to enter in which there is not at least one worthy representative.”
—Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954)
“We’ve got to figure these things a little bit different than most people. Y’know, there’s something about going out in a plane that beats any other way.... A guy that washes out at the controls of his own ship, well, he goes down doing the thing that he loved the best. It seems to me that that’s a very special way to die.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I had now formed a clear and settled opinion, that the people of America were well warranted to resist a claim that their fellow-subjects in the mother-country should have the entire command of their fortunes, by taxing them without their consent.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking?—the entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world—a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)