- The Washington Times - Tuesday, September 30, 2014

The Marine Corps will have three new staging areas at its disposal to speed up its reaction time to global crises: Senegal, Ghana and Gabon.

The “cooperative security locations” will give U.S. Africa Command, which is based in Moron, Spain, the ability to better handle the region’s security needs, Marine Corps Times reported Tuesday.

Marine Corps Times reported that when the U.S. Embassy in Juba, South Sudan, needed to be evacuated last December, an advance flight of Marines heading from Spain took over 15 hours to reach Entebbe, Uganda. The new staging areas will make the logistics of such operations less complicated.

“What we set out to do is build those relationships with those embassies, those country teams and those host nations … so we could establish cooperative security locations there,” Col. Kenneth DeTreux, who commanded a Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response in the region, told the paper. “We can use these very austere, very rustic [cooperative staging locations], fall in on, and be able to operate out of, so we can get closer to the point of crisis,” he added.

No Marines will be based permanently at any of the new staging areas.

• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.

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