Emblem of Joint Interagency Task Force South

Joint Interagency Task Force South is a United States multiservice, multiagency

task force A task force (TF) is a unit or formation established to work on a single defined task or activity. Originally introduced by the United States Navy, the term has now caught on for general usage and is a standard part of NATO terminology. Many ...

based at

Naval Air Station Key West Naval Air Station Key West , is a naval air station and military airport located on Boca Chica Key, four miles (6 km) east of the central business district of Key West, Florida, United States., effective 2007-10-25 NAS Key West is an ai ...

(Truman Annex),

Key West Key West is an island in the Straits of Florida, at the southern end of the U.S. state of Florida. Together with all or parts of the separate islands of Dredgers Key, Fleming Key, Sunset Key, and the northern part of Stock Island, it con ...

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

. It conducts counter illicit trafficking operations, intelligence fusion and multi-sensor correlation to detect, monitor, and hand off suspected illicit trafficking targets; promotes security cooperation and coordinates country team and partner nation initiatives in order to defeat the flow of illicit traffic. JIATF South is a subordinate command to

United States Southern Command The United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), located in Doral, Florida, Doral in Greater Miami, Greater Miami, Florida, is one of the eleven unified combatant commands in the United States Department of Defense. It is responsible for providi ...

and is commanded by a

Coast Guard A coast guard or coastguard is a Maritime Security Regimes, maritime security organization of a particular country. The term embraces wide range of responsibilities in different countries, from being a heavily armed military force with cust ...

Flag Officer.

History

In response to a need for unified command and control of drug interdiction activities, the FY 1989

National Defense Authorization Act The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is any of a series of United States federal laws specifying the annual budget and expenditures of the U.S. Department of Defense. The first NDAA was passed in 1961. The U.S. Congress oversees the de ...

designated the

Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and supervising the six U.S. armed services: the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, ...

as the lead agency for the detection and monitoring program targeted against the aerial and maritime traffic attempting to bring drugs into the United States. Commander Joint Task Force FOUR (CJTF-4) in Key West, Commander, Joint Task Force FIVE in

Alameda, California Alameda ( ; ; Spanish for "Avenue (landscape), tree-lined path") is a city in Alameda County, California, United States, located in the East Bay (San Francisco Bay Area), East Bay region of the Bay Area. The city is built on an informal archipe ...

and Commander, Joint Task Force 6 in

El Paso, Texas El Paso (; ; or ) is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States. The 2020 United States census, 2020 population of the city from the United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the List of ...

were established to direct the anti-drug surveillance efforts in the Atlantic/Caribbean, Pacific, and Mexico border areas respectively. The Joint Task Forces have been operating since October 1989. The Joint Task Force 4 operations center received radar data from the AN/FPS-118

Over-the-horizon radar Over-the-horizon radar (OTH), sometimes called beyond the horizon radar (BTH), is a type of radar system with the ability to detect targets at very long ranges, typically hundreds to thousands of kilometres, beyond the radar horizon, which is t ...

located at Moscow Air Force Station, Maine, until the system was turned off and placed in "warm storage" after the end of the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...

's Presidential Decision Directive 14 of 3 October 1993 led to a reorganisation of U.S. military anti-drug organization. On 7 April 1994, Dr. Lee P. Brown, Director of the

Office of National Drug Control Policy The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) is a component of the Executive Office of the President of the United States. The director of the ONDCP, colloquially known as the drug czar, heads the office. "Drug czar" was a term first used ...

, signed the National Interdiction Command and Control Plan which directed establishment of three national interagency task forces (JIATF East in Key West, Florida; JIATF South in Panama; and JIATF West in Alameda, California). On 1 June 1997, the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Southern Command expanded his area of responsibility to include the Caribbean and the waters bordering South America, and assumed command and control of JIATF East. In compliance with the 1979 Panama Canal Treaty and the necessity to complete the military drawdown in Panama by the end of 1999, the decision was made to merge JIATF South and JIATF East into one organization. Transfer of the JIATF South mission to the merged JIATF was completed on 1 May 1999. Due to the previous history of the command, Task Groups 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, and 4.4, and others, are in use controlling U.S. and allied assets assigned to JIATF South. In February 2007, a Dutch magazine described the relationships as follows: under the command of the Director JIATF South, the U.S. Tactical Commander held the position of Commander Task Group 4.1,

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

forces CTG 4.2,

US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

forces CTG 4.3, the Director of the Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard (DCCG), who is always the commander of the

Dutch Navy The Royal Netherlands Navy (, ) is the Navy, maritime service branch of the Netherlands Armed Forces. It traces its history to 8 January 1488, making it the List of navies, third-oldest navy in the world. During the 17th and early 18th centurie ...

in the Caribbean area ( CZMCARIB), Commander Task Group 4.4 (CTG 4.4), and US Customs force CTG 4.5. Since 2008 an additional Task Group known as CTG 4.6 has been commanded by the

French Navy The French Navy (, , ), informally (, ), is the Navy, maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the four military service branches of History of France, France. It is among the largest and most powerful List of navies, naval forces i ...

Commander (Antilles).

Current leadership

: Director: Rear Admiral Jo-Ann F. Burdian, USCG : Deputy director: Rear Admiral Joshua Lasky, USN : Chief of staff: Colonel Walter B. Swain, USAF : Director of Intelligence & Security: Captain Joseph "Joey" Harrison, USN : Director for Operations: Captain Paul J. Goguen,

USMC The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines or simply the Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is responsible for conducting expeditionary ...

: Command master chief: CMC Michael V. Farrell, USCG

International cooperation

Twenty countries have liaison officers based at JIATF-S. These include, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, the Netherlands, Panama, Peru, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago and the United Kingdom.http://scm.oas.org/IDMS/Redirectpage.aspx?class=CP/CSH&classNum=780&addendum=3&lang=e (Auto-download of Word doc "Information Presented Pursuant To Operative Paragraph 3 Of General Assembly Resolution AG/RES. 2113 (XXXV-O/05)", dated 24 April 2007)

References

External links

* * Globalsecurity.org
Globalsecurity.org Entry

orchestratingpower.org
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160622011501/http://orchestratingpower.org/lib/Interagency%20and%20Coalition/2011-06%20JIATF%20South.pdf , date=2016-06-22 Joint task forces of the United States Armed Forces United States Coast Guard