Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist at The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America’s Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders (releasing November 2021)
OPINION — The United States appears to be adding to its military presence in Israel at the same time the Pentagon is reducing American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and pulling Patriot anti-missile batteries from a handful of Arab countries.
The U.S. Air Force European Command has been constructing a “Combined Joint Operation Center (CJOC)” located on a closed area of the Israeli Air Force’s Hatzor Air Base in central Israel, according to a contract solicitation that seeks bids by tomorrow, July 28, for a roofing contractor to finish work on the project.
The single-story 7,400-square-foot building will have desks for 152 staff members and two meeting rooms, according to an earlier contract award document reviewed by Janes.
On June 15, U.S. Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 11 published images on its Facebook page showing the pouring of concrete for the walls of a building at the Hatzor base.
As has been past policy, neither the U.S. nor Israeli spokespersons would say who would staff the facility. But for decades, the U.S. has quietly been adding to military facilities it operates jointly and separately in Israel.
Reinforcing the close military ties between the two countries, the U.S.-Israel exercise called Juniper Falcon 2021-2 began last Friday at various locations in Israel, including Hatzor Air Base.
The exercise continues JF21, which took place over two weeks in February, but was held virtually because of COVID-19 concerns. The focus at that time was “how the two militaries would work together to confront a ballistic missile attack on the state of Israel,” according to The Times of Israel.
The new exercise now underway “is designed to test simulated emergency response procedures, ballistic missile defense and crisis response assistance in the defense of Israel,” according to a U.S. European Command press release.
The last Juniper Falcon exercise in 2019 involved some 300 U.S. troops and 400 Israelis. It, too, simulated deployment of the U.S. forces to assist with missile defense of Israel.
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