Fortunately, one of America’s best regional partners in the SOUTHCOM AOR – Colombia – was able to salvage Fuerzas Comando 2014. Colombia was in an excellent position to provide a fairly permissive threat environment to host Fuerzas Comando 2014 and to provide the necessary infrastructure and support needed to run the event. Also, having won the event regularly over the past decade, Colombia was a good bet to win again in 2014.
U.S. and Colombian parachutists jump out of a C-130 aircraft from an altitude of 15,000 feet as part of an international military free fall jump in Fort Tolemaida, Colombia, July 30 as part of Fuerzas Comando 2014. An aircraft from the West Virginia Air National Guard supported the free fall jump. U.S. Department of Defense photo by Maj. Edward Lauer
When the 17 international teams for Fuerzas Comando 2014 arrived in Colombia, they found a venue with exactly what they needed for a world-class SOF competition. There was lots of water space to support the aquatic portions of the competition, along with excellent shooting ranges, shoot houses, towers, and other facilities. And those facilities were put to good use. Much of the Fuerzas Comando skills competition involves forced marches with heavy loads, which must be moved just prior to simulated assaults. These evolutions are run in rapid succession, usually by nearly exhausted SOF professionals on the edge of their already impressive endurance.
At the end of every Fuerzas Comando competition is an event deeply enjoyed by all the participants: an international parachute jump for all who wish to participate. As most SOF professionals would agree, there is not much in the world that is more fun than jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, and Fuerzas Comando uses this event to mark the end of the competition. It is an appropriate end to what each year is becoming a larger and more popular event throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Fuerzas Comando – 2015 and Beyond
The SOF communities of 27 nations in the Western Hemisphere are preparing to come together this summer for Fuerzas Comando 2015. This year’s edition is presently planned to be held in central Guatemala, and looks to be one of the tightest competitions in recent years. Colombia, which has won four of the last five Fuerzas Comando competitions, including 2014, is going to work hard to defend its record and championship. But the United States, which came in second in 2014, has also been working hard for the top spot this coming year. It’s also not unlikely that the SOF units of Guatemala will finish near the top of the leaderboard when Fuerzas Comando 2015 is completed.
Members of a Surinamese special operations team crawl under wire through a trench as part of the Fuerzas Comando stress test event at Fort Tolemaida, Colombia, July 27, 2014. The stress events are designed to see how steady a competitor’s aim is after he’s been pushed to the point of physical exhaustion. Fuerzas Comando, established in 2004, is a U.S. Southern Command-sponsored special operations forces skills competition and fellowship program that continues to build the required capacity to confront common threats that cannot be defeated by traditional military means alone. Photo by Staff Sgt. Richard Andrade, 16th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment
Guatemala, like Colombia following the bloody hunt for drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in the 1990s, has committed itself to developing a world-class SOF community, having itself faced the murderous specter of transnational organized crime (TNOC) and the drug smuggling trade within the country. Following the template laid down by cooperation between the United States and Colombia over the past two decades, it hopes to force TNOC operations to give their country a wide berth, as the drug cartels try to move their products north into Mexico and the United States. Given the impressive growth and training of its SOF forces in the past few years, that goal may well be in sight. By hosting Fuerzas Comando 2015, Guatemala hopes to show the rest of the world that it is a serious player in the dangerous world we live in today.
This article first appeared in The Year in Special Operations 2015-2016 Edition.