Gen. George says Army’s new Western Hemisphere Command to stand up in weeks

AUSA 2025 — The Army’s Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George announced Tuesday that Western Hemisphere Command, which will combine the Army North Command, Army South Command and Force Command (FORSCOM), will be stood up before the end of the year. 

The move to stand up the new command comes as the service has been making strides to slim down the size of its headquarters and cut the number of four-star general officer billets as part of its larger continuous transformation effort. Earlier this month, the Army combined Futures Command with Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), into one command dubbed the Transformation and Training Command, or T2COM.

“You should expect in […] about the next six to eight weeks, we are looking to do the same thing with Western Hemispheres Command, where we will actually have down at Fort Bragg, will be that four-star headquarters that is responsible for the Western Hemisphere, and Army North and Army South will merge into that headquarters as well, to make sure that we are condensing headquarters,” George said Tuesday at the AUSA conference here in Washington, DC. 

The new command will be “focused on homeland defense and partnerships with Western Hemisphere allies,” per an April memo that first announced the consolidation among other sweeping Pentagon changes.

In his remarks here, George argued that the push to shrink the Army’s headquarters doesn’t just let the service use funds for various priorities, but it also could make it “more efficient,” as leaders would do more with less. 

“Our Army has gotten smaller, and we have grown headquarters. I mean, so we have to reduce the headquarters, and I think we can become more efficient,” George said. 

“We started by saying that we were going to downsize our own [headquarters] by 1,000 people,” he added. “Instead of passing all the people [and] product around, I have been able, in my own office, to look at a smart board and make decisions, not ask for info papers [to] understand what’s happening inside of our formation. So, we need less people to do that.” 

Army North and Army South are currently headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, but in the next six to eight weeks, operations will move to Fort Bragg in North Carolina where FORSCOM is located. However, some elements of the command will stay at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, according to local media.