permanent

Jan. 9 (Asia Today) — The U.S. Eighth Army and South Korea’s Army Ground Forces Command have launched a permanent combined ground forces component command that will lead joint ground operations planning and begin training during the Freedom Shield combined exercise in March, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

The new organization, described by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a combined ground forces component command, will develop joint operational plans and conduct combined exercises and training with the commander of South Korea’s Army Ground Forces Command serving as the commander, the military said.

The South Korea-U.S. Permanent Military Committee approved the permanent establishment of the command on Oct. 24 last year, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. The organization then completed operational readiness preparations and began duties last month, shifting from a structure activated only in wartime to a peacetime command under South Korean Army leadership.

With the combined ground command now operating on a permanent basis, some U.S. personnel will be assigned to a combined staff and are expected to participate in joint planning and training beginning with the Freedom Shield exercise in March, the military said.

The move is part of the Lee Jae-myung administration’s effort to advance a conditions-based transfer of wartime operational control. South Korea and the United States have been working to make permanent six combined component commands under a future combined command structure that would be led by the South Korean military after the transfer, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

Combined component commands for the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps were made permanent in 2022, the military said. South Korea and the United States also plan to make permanent two additional combined component commands: one focused on special operations and another focused on military intelligence support operations, it added.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Dec. 27 (UPI) — The FBI Hoover headquarters in Washington soon will be vacant as the federal law enforcement agency prepares to make a permanent exit in favor of a more modern structure.

FBI Director Kash Patel plans to make a permanent move into the former headquarters of the recently closed U.S. Agency for International Development sometime soon, according to Bloomberg.

“After more than 20 years of failed attempts, we finalized a plan to permanently close the FBI’s Hoover headquarters and move the workforce into a safe, modern facility,” Patel said in a social media post on Friday.

Moving into the former USAID headquarters will save taxpayers almost $5 billion, which was allocated to build a new FBI headquarters that would not have opened until 2035, Patel said.

“We scrapped that plan,” he explained. “Instead, we selected the already-existing Reagan Building, saving billions and allowing the transition to begin immediately with required safety and infrastructure upgrades underway.”

When the improvements are done, Patel said the FBI staff will move into the Reagan Building, which is located at 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., between the White House and the Capitol. He did not say when the move might occur.

The Hoover Building will be shut down after the FBI vacates it, the FBI director added.

While Patel said the move will save taxpayers billions of dollars, Maryland lawmakers are not happy about the change in plans.

Congress had approved the allocation to build a new FBI headquarters in Maryland during the Biden administration, but the change in plans has canceled that.

“Not only was this decision final, [but] the Congress appropriated funds specifically for the purpose of the new, consolidated campus to be built in Maryland,” the state’s Democratic Party Congressional delegation said in a joint statement in July.

“Now the Administration is attempting to redirect those funds — both undermining Congressional intent and dealing a blow to the men and women of the FBI — since we know that a headquarters located within the District [of Columbia] would not satisfy their security needs,” the delegation said.

Maryland officials in November filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of improperly diverting $555 million when it announced the change of plans for the FBI headquarters.

“These actions flouted Congress’s explicit direction to choose a site from the three specified sites, as well as other specific statutory directives concerning the selection of the site and the use of the funds,” state attorneys say in the federal lawsuit.

The J. Edgar Hoover Building opened in 1974 and has been the FBI’s headquarters for the past 50 years.

Prior to that, the FBI was headquartered in the Justice Department building.