ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates —  The Army recently added a division headquarters to supplement its eight brigade combat team-sized formations in the U.S. Central Command area of operations, which is freeing up the service to focus on theater-wide strategy and operational tasks, the three-star general in charge of US Army Central said Monday.

Up until about two months ago, the Army in the Middle East had to focus on tactical efforts, providing command and control, mission command, and oversight of the eight BCTs and conduct theater Army responsibilities, Lt. Gen. Michael Garrett told an audience at the Association of the US Army's pavilion at Abu Dhabi's International Defense Exhibition.

The new division headquarters in Kuwait sets up the Army to focus on building and maintaining strategic partnerships, to reassure allies and to set conditions for coalition building, Garrett added, in an area of operation that expands from Sinai in Egypt to Afghanistan to Pakistan, covering 20 countries and 540 million people. On any given day, he said, there are roughly 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. Army soldiers and civilians in the region.

The problems plaguing the Middle East continue to keep the U.S. Army invested there. Iran remains the region's primary state aggressor. The country has increased its cyber attacks against U.S. partner nations, Garrett said, and is supporting the Syrian government along with Russia.

Russia will probably be the United States' greatest competitor in the Middle East going forward "and will seek to counter the U.S. through diplomatic, informational, military and economic means," Garrett said. 

Russia had a robust presence at IDEX and Russian company Rostec announced Monday at the show that it was partnering with the United Arab Emirates to co-develop a fifth-generation fighter jet.

When asked by Defense News what he might recommend to the Pentagon as it weighs whether to put ground troops in Syria, Garrett simply said, "the strategy we are executing today by and with our partners works and it has worked."

Like the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq, the process to suppress or eliminate such terrorists from the region, will take time, Garrett said. He added that he was the chief of staff to the US Central Command commander when ISIS first attacked Mosul in Iraq and remembered the commander stating that achieving a sustainable outcome would take three to five years and noted, by his math, "we are in year three" of that fight.

The US Army thus far has soldiers in an advise-and-assist capacity, but not fighting ISIS in direct combat. The Army instead relies on coalition partners to conduct tactical operations against ISIS.

But, Garrett said the Pentagon is working on options for Syria and part of that is the Army delivering deployment options for forces readily available in order to inform a decision.

CNN reported last week that the Pentagon was developing proposals for sending an unspecified number of conventional ground forces who would augment the 500 combat advisers already there coordinating efforts to destroy ISIS.

The Pentagon would not confirm the report, but Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said, "We are in the process of conducting our 30-day review of the strategy to defeat ISIS as directed by the president."

The Defense Department is "considering a number of measures to accelerate the campaign as part of that review, but no decisions have been made," Davis added.

Multiple U.S. Army sources indicated that about two thousand soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team soon may bolster other Army elements already in the region. Currently, about 1,800 paratroopers from the 2nd BCT are in Iraq participating in the U.S. military’s train-and-advise mission.

Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

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