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Defense Speak Interpreted: Decoding the Military’s COCOM

Have you ever followed Defense activities around the world and been confused by terms like CENTCOM or SOUTHCOM? Who’s in charge of worldwide Defense activities—just “a big guy at the top” or regional commanders? How do the Army, Navy, and Air Force stay coordinated around the world in various geographies?

All that relates back to Combatant Commands, also known as COCOMs. Those may be called by six geographies and the recently added Space Command:

• CENTCOM: U.S. Central Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Florida
• AFRICOM: U.S. Africa Command, Kelley Barracks, Stuttgart, Germany
• EUCOM: U.S. European Command, Patch Barracks, Stuttgart, Germany
• NORTHCOM: U.S. Northern Command, Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado
• INDOPACOM: U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii
• SOUTHCOM: U.S. Southern Command, Miami, Florida
• SPACECOM: U.S. Space Command, Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado

Figure 1: A worldview representation of the Combatant Commands. (Source: Wikipedia)

Whoa, all but two of those commands are in the United States, and only EUCOM is actually in the assigned geography? And, some headquarters are Army and some Air Force? Finally, there is a fight now as to the future headquarters of the Space Commend. Will it be Colorado, as indicated, or potentially at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama?

Now, as if six geographies, and space, are not enough, Defense has added four “Functional Combat Commands”; sort of like staff divisions with world-wide responsibility that can be applied in any geography:

• SOCOM: U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Florida
• TRANSCOM: U.S. Transportation Command, Scott Air Force Base, Illinois
• STRATCOM: U.S. Strategic Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska
• CYBERCOM: U.S. Cyber Command, Fort Meade, Maryland

Who are the current commanders of the combatant commands?

Table 1: Simplified from a Wikipedia entry on combatant command.

You can see there is certainly a mix of service branches represented. Five Army (USA), three Navy (USN), two Air Force (USAF), and one Marines (USMC).  

Perhaps the Command most in the headlines in the last 20 years was “Central Command,” the one involved in the Middle East. See how many of the CentCom commanders you remember. I have highlighted five who stand out, including one IPC APEX EXPO speaker:

Table 2: Central Command leaders in the Middle East. (Source: Wikipedia)

Of course, Schwarzkopf, Franks, and Petraeus were active wartime commanders. Mattis was Trump’s Chief of Staff, and Austin is the current Secretary of Defense.  

One other notable is Paul M. Nakasone, the current CoCom of the Cyber Command. With the shutdowns of pipelines, packing plants, and the hacking of software companies, it seems that Nakasone is in the news daily, as the cyber threat is everywhere these days. 

Now you have your own decoder ring to figure out what geography is in the Defense news.

Dennis Fritz was a 20-year direct employee of MacDermid Inc. and is retired after 12 years as a senior engineer at (SAIC) supporting the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Indiana. He was elected to the IPC Hall of Fame in 2012.