Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, Texas – U.S. Army South hosted the Conference of the American Armies (CAA), a specialized conference on military support to civilian authorities to counter threat networks from February 5-7 in San Antonio, Texas.
“Countering threat networks has to be a team effort,” said U.S. Major General Mark Stammer, the conference president and U.S. Army South commander, after welcoming delegates from 18 different countries to San Antonio. “During this conference we will propose several practical initiatives that will make us more interoperable in this fight. With your help, I know that we can make these products into something that will truly benefit all of our armies and our interagency partners.”
“This specialized conference is part of a two-year cycle that this year [2019] is run by the Dominican Republic. At the conclusion of the cycle, the results of this and the other specialized conferences will be presented to the army commanders of the CAA for their approval in November, in the Dominican Republic,” said Robert Pike, U.S. Army Liaison Officer to the CAA. “To defeat any network, it takes a lot of partners. A network of networks is best. We need to include all of our interagency partners when we are planning and executing counter threat network operations.”
Pike said the main objective of the conference is to create a CAA guide to countering threat networks. This guide will be based on U.S. doctrine, but the intent is to make it acceptable for all partner nations to improve interoperability by creating common themes and terminology in three languages, he said. The guide will be translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and English.
“This conference gives us the opportunity to come together and get the input from all of the partner nations,” said Pike. “One of the great things about CAA is that the United States is just one of 26 members, so this allows us to come together and work together on this topic. We also develop stronger relationships among the members of the CAA armies.” Pike said that the team will work on refining the products that come out of the conference and then present them to the Dominican Republic in August, when they will be refined and finalized.
“I am very grateful for your valuable collaboration during this conference,” said Maj. Gen. Stammer as he concluded the conference. “I believe that together we have started to create some great products that will help all of us to work together to defeat these threat networks.”