Army merges three commands in move to prioritize homeland defense
By Haley Britzky, CNN
(CNN) — The US Army officially stood up a new command on Friday to oversee the Army’s activities in the Western Hemisphere in the latest signal of increasing focus on homeland defense.
The new command, called Army Western Hemisphere Command, will combine US Army Forces Command, US Army North, and US Army South into one organization, based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
The combined organization will oversee Army operations like that at the southern border, disaster response, and Army mobilizations in support of federal law enforcement around the country.
“The Army is transforming because our adversaries increasingly aim to exploit vulnerabilities in the homeland and throughout North, Central, and Southern America,” Gen. Joseph Ryan, the commander of the new Western Hemisphere Command, said at a ceremony marking the activation of the command Friday. “We have allowed this insidious activity to continue for too long, and we have not addressed it effectively.”
Army leadership said in May that it would merge the commands in a letter to the force following a directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said the Army “must prioritize defending our homeland and deterring China.”
The ceremony on Friday comes just hours after the White House released the new National Security Strategy, which directs a “readjustment” of the US military’s presence in the Western Hemisphere.
The new strategy calls for “[t]argeted deployments to secure the border and defeat cartels, including where necessary the use of lethal force to replace the failed law enforcement-only strategy of the last several decades.”
The US military became increasingly involved in the border mission earlier this year when the Trump administration surged more troops to the border and began establishing “national defense areas” where US forces could detain migrants. While the US military is prohibited legally from conducting law enforcement activities, the military zones are treated as extensions of US military bases, allowing service members to temporarily detain migrants before passing them off to local law enforcement.
National Guard forces have also been mobilized at several locations to protect federal law enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.
The consolidation to Western Hemisphere Command will not happen overnight; Col. Mike Burns, spokesperson for the new command, told reporters this week the headquarters at Fort Bragg is expected to be fully operational by June 2026, after which US Army North and Army South will be officially shut down.
“This reform modernizes the Army’s command structure, reduces overhead, eliminates duplication, and puts more soldiers in operational formations where they can directly contribute to warfighting readiness,” Burns said. “It’s based on threat, strategy, and the need to treat the homeland as a priority theater.”
Both Army North and Army South are currently headquartered at Joint Base San Antonio-Sam Houston, Texas. Most military and civilian personnel for the two commands will move to Fort Bragg over the next two years, Burns said, while some remain in the San Antonio area for specific assignments like that with Brooke Army Medical Center.
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