AFRICOM Borrowing from CENTCOM to Fill Capacity Gap

US Africa Command is borrowing assets from US Central Command in order to make up for a capacity deficit, Marine Corps Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, chief of AFRICOM, told the Senate Armed Services committee Thursday. Waldhauser mentioned two occasions where AFRICOM made use of CENTCOM forces to accomplish a mission in AFRICOM’s area of responsibility. The series of airstrikes launched from the USS Wasp that helped push ISIS out of Libya was carried out with borrowed CENTCOM assets. “That’s how we have to do business these days,” Waldhauser told the committee. In 2016, a Marine crisis response task force that is based in Moron, Spain, and supports AFRICOM missions, lost six of its 12 MV-22Bs for training missions back in the US. When asked about the move, Waldhauser said “the impact right now is really capacity for us.” He said AFRICOM has “had to center their activity mostly on Western Africa,” while for operations in Eastern Africa they are “sharing assets” with CENTCOM to complete the mission.