Winning Wars by Making Friends

With a large military presence and thousands of service members operating in the Middle East, one of the Department of Defense’s most important missions is being led by one of its smaller teams: the Air Forces Central Air Warfare Center. “Our job is basically security cooperation, which is a fancy term for go out, make new friends and strengthen existing relationships,” said U.S. Air Force Col. Kevin Walsh, commander of the AFCENT Air Warfare Center, “and the way we go about doing that is providing subject-matter expertise to partner-hosted exercises throughout the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. If someone needs fighter expertise or command and control expertise, or mobility expertise or intel, we’re able to provide those personnel to support our partners.”