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|allegiance= |branch= |type= Unified Combatant Command |role= |size= |command_structure= |garrison=MacDill Air Force Base Tampa, Florida, U.S. |garrison_label=Headquarters |nickname=CENTCOM |command badge=90px |patron= |motto= |colors= |colors_label= |march= |mascot= |equipment= |equipment_label= |battles=Persian Gulf War Iraq War War in Afghanistan |anniversaries= |decorations= |battle_honours= |commander1= General Lloyd Austin, USA |commander1_label= Combatant Commander |commander2= Vice Admiral Mark Fox, USN 〔http://www.centcom.mil/en/about-centcom-en/leadership-en〕 |commander2_label= Deputy Commander |commander3= |commander3_label= |notable_commanders= General David Petraeus Admiral William Fallon General John Abizaid General Tommy Franks General Anthony Zinni General James Mattis General Norman Schwarzkopf |identification_symbol= 100px |identification_symbol_label= Shoulder sleeve insignia (US Army only) |identification_symbol_2= |identification_symbol_2_label= }} The United States Central Command (USCENTCOM or CENTCOM) is a theater-level Unified Combatant Command of the U.S. Department of Defense, established in 1983, taking over the 1980 Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) responsibilities. The CENTCOM Area of Responsibility (AOR) includes countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, most notably Afghanistan and Iraq. CENTCOM has been the main American presence in many military operations, including the Persian Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm, 1991), the War in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom, 2001–2014), and the Iraq War (Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2003-2011). CENTCOM forces are deployed primarily in Afghanistan (Operation Resolute Support, 2015–Present) and Iraq (Operation Inherent Resolve, 2014–present) in supporting and advise and assist roles. CENTCOM's commander is General Lloyd J. Austin, U.S. Army. Of all six American regional unified combatant commands CENTCOM is among the three with headquarters outside its area of operations. CENTCOM's main headquarters is located at MacDill Air Force Base, in Tampa, Florida. A forward headquarters was established in 2002 at Camp As Sayliyah in Doha, Qatar, which in 2009 transitioned to a forward headquarters at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. ==History== United States Central Command (CENTCOM) was established January 1, 1983.〔Anthony Cordesman, (USCENTCOM Mission and History ), Center for Strategic and International Studies, August 1998〕 As its name implies, CENTCOM covers the "central" area of the globe located between the European and Pacific Commands. When the hostage crisis in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan underlined the need to strengthen U.S. interests in the region, President Jimmy Carter established the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) in March 1980. Steps were taken to transform the RDJTF into a permanent unified command over a two-year period. The first step was to make the RDJTF independent of U.S. Readiness Command, followed by the activation of CENTCOM in January 1983. Overcoming skeptical perceptions that the command was still an RDJTF in all but name, designed to support a Cold War strategy, took time. The Iran-Iraq war clearly underlined the growing tensions in the region, and developments such as Iranian mining operations in the Persian Gulf led to CENTCOM's first combat operations. On 17 May 1987, the , conducting operations in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War, was struck by Exocet missiles fired by an Iraqi aircraft, resulting in 37 casualties. Soon afterward, as part of what became known as the "Tanker War", the Federal government of the United States reflagged and renamed 11 Kuwaiti oil tankers. In Operation Earnest Will, these tankers were escorted by USCENTCOM’s Middle East Force through the Persian Gulf to Kuwait and back through the Strait of Hormuz.〔 By late 1988, the regional strategy still largely focused on the potential threat of a massive Soviet invasion of Iran. Exercise Internal Look has been one of CENTCOM's primary planning events. It had frequently been used to train CENTCOM to be ready to defend the Zagros Mountains from a Soviet attack and was held annually.〔Harold Coyle's novel ''Sword Point'' gives an impression of what such planning envisaged, by a U.S. Army officer who would have had some idea of the general planning approach.〕 In autumn 1989, the main CENTCOM contingency plan, OPLAN 1002-88, assumed a Soviet attack through Iran to the Persian Gulf. The plan called for five and two-thirds US divisions to deploy, mostly light and heavy forces at something less than full strength (apportioned to it by the Joint Strategic Capability Plan ()). The strategy of the original plan called for these five and two-thirds divisions to march from the Persian Gulf to the Zagros Mountains and prevent the Soviet Ground Forces from seizing the Iranian oil fields.〔Richard Moody Swain, Lucky War: Third Army in Desert Storm, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Press via Google Books, 6.〕 After 1990 General Norman Schwarzkopf reoriented CENTCOM's planning to fend off a threat from Iraq and Internal Look moved to a biennial schedule. There was an eerie similarity between the 1990 Internal Look exercise scripts and the real-world movement of Iraqi forces which culminated in Iraq's invasion of Kuwait during the final days of the exercise.〔 U.S. President George Bush responded quickly. A timely deployment of forces and the formation of a coalition deterred Iraq from invading Saudi Arabia, and the command began to focus on the liberation of Kuwait. The buildup of forces continued, reinforced by United Nations Security Council Resolution 678, which called for Iraqi forces to leave Kuwait. On January 17, 1991, U.S. and coalition forces launched Operation Desert Storm with a massive air interdiction campaign, which prepared the theater for a coalition ground assault. The primary coalition objective, the liberation of Kuwait, was achieved on February 27, and the next morning a cease-fire was declared, just one hundred hours after the commencement of the ground campaign. The end of formal hostilities did not bring the end of difficulties with Iraq. Operation Provide Comfort, implemented to provide humanitarian assistance to the Kurds and enforce a "no-fly" zone in Iraq, north of the 36th parallel, began in April 1991. In August 1992, Operation Southern Watch began in response to Saddam's noncompliance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 688 condemning his brutal repression of Iraqi civilians in southeastern Iraq. Under the command and control of Joint Task Force Southwest Asia, coalition forces in this operation enforced a no-fly zone south of the 32nd parallel. In January 1997, Operation Northern Watch replaced Provide Comfort, with a focus on enforcing the northern no-fly zone. Throughout the decade, CENTCOM operations such as Vigilant Warrior, Vigilant Sentinel, Desert Strike, Desert Thunder (I and II), and Desert Fox responded to threats posed by Iraq to its neighbors or sought to enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions in the face of Saddam's continued intransigence. The 1990s also brought significant challenges in Somalia as well as from the growing threat of regional terrorism. To prevent widespread starvation in the face of clan warfare, the command responded in 1992 with Operation Provide Relief to supply humanitarian assistance to Somalia and northeastern Kenya. CENTCOM's Operation Restore Hope supported UNSCR 794 and a multinational Unified Task Force, which provided security until the U.N. created UNOSOM II in May 1993. In spite of some UNOSOM II success in the countryside, the situation in Mogadishu worsened, and a series of violent outbreaks ultimately led President Bill Clinton to order the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Somalia. Throughout the decade following the Gulf War, terrorist attacks had a major impact on CENTCOM forces in the region. Faced with attacks such as the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers, which killed 19 American airmen, the command launched Operation Desert Focus, designed to relocate U.S. installations to more defensible locations (such as Prince Sultan Air Base), reduce the U.S. forward "footprint" by eliminating nonessential billets, and return dependents to the United States. In 1998 terrorists attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 250 persons, including 12 Americans. The October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, resulting in the deaths of 17 U.S. sailors, was linked to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida organization. From April to July 1999 CENTCOM conducted Exercise Desert Crossing 1999 centered on the scenario of Saddam Hussein being ousted as Iraq’s dictator. It was held in the McLean, Virginia, offices of Booz Allen.〔Michael R. Gordon, Bernard E. Trainor(2012). The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 978-0-307-37722-7.〕 The exercise concluded that unless measures were taken, “fragmentation and chaos” would ensue after Saddam Hussein's overthrow. The September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC led President George W. Bush to declare a war against international terrorism. CENTCOM soon launched Operation Enduring Freedom to expel the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which was harboring Al Qaida terrorists and hosting terrorist training camps. Exercise Internal Look has been employed for explicit war planning on at least two occasions: Internal Look '90, which dealt with a threat from Iraq, and Internal Look '03, which was used to plan what became Operation Iraqi Freedom. Iraqi Freedom, the 2003 United States invasion of Iraq, began on 19 March 2003. Following the defeat of both the Taliban regime in Afghanistan (9 November 2001) and Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq (8 April 2003), CENTCOM has continued to provide security to the new freely-elected governments in those countries, conducting counterinsurgency operations and assisting host nation security forces to provide for their own defense. Beginning in October 2002, CENTCOM conducted operations in the Horn of Africa to combat terrorism, establish a secure environment, and foster regional stability. These operations involved a series of Special Operations Forces raids, humanitarian assistance, consequence management, and a variety of civic action programs. The command has also remained poised to provide disaster relief throughout the region, with its most recent significant relief operations in response to the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan and the large-scale evacuation of American citizens from Lebanon in 2006. On 1 October 2008, the Department of Defense transferred responsibility for Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, and Somalia to the newly established Africa Command. Egypt, home to Exercise Bright Star, the Department of Defense’s largest reoccurring military exercise, remained in the CENTCOM Area of Responsibility. In January 2015, CENTCOM's Twitter feed was reported to have been hacked on 11 January by ISIS sympathizers. for less than one hour. No classified information was posted and “none of the information posted came from CENTCOM’s server or social media sites", however, some of the slides came from federally funded Lincoln Laboratory at MIT.〔 In the summer of 2015 whistle blower CENTCOM analysts played the key role in uncovering Intelgate, a scandal regarding the manipulation of intelligence estimates about the wars in Syria and Iraq by the Obama Administration. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「United States Central Command」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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