Pentagon partners with Colombia to build Latin America’s air defense tactics
Since 2002, the Defense Department has invested billions in building Colombia's air defense as a key tool in counternarcotics activities. A recently released DoD report shows the Pentagon is continuing this strategy in Colombia and is expanding efforts for Colombian pilots to train other Latin American militaries to stem drug trafficking. U.S. officials have not tracked results of this type of training, making it difficult to know how effective it has been.
In fiscal year 2014, $22 of the total $48.6 million slated for DoD counternarcotics activities in Colombia will go to the Colombian Air Force, according to the DoD report. The total for aerial assistance is actually higher as additional support has been rolled into more general counternarcotics trainings.
Enhancement of Colombia's air capabilities has been a key component of DoD, and even CIA, strategy in the country. Colombian airstrikes have dealt some of the biggest blows to the FARC and ELN rebels and forced them to move away from larger, more permanent camps to smaller groups on the move. The Colombian military has used its robust fleet of BlackHawks, Super Tucanos and other air artillery to provide air cover during combat, transport troops to remote jungle encampments and carry out surveillance missions.
Now, the Pentagon has a financial stake in Colombia passing on its air mobility tactics to other countries in the region for their counternarcotics campaigns. As a recent report by the Washington Office on Latin America found, aerial instruction has become a main part of trainings carried out by the Colombian military for forces from Mexico, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and El Salvador. And, in most of these countries, the military forces are increasingly involved in a heavy-handed approach to security.
Due to fewer big-ticket equipment purchases and an increase in Colombian military capacity, the DoD is decreasing its spending on in-country counternarcotics missions and investing more in Colombian military officials’ training of foreign forces in Latin America. This is a much cheaper option for the Pentagon than direct U.S. training.
This training is intended to help curb the amount of drugs traveling to the U.S. through Central America by air and improve countries’ operations against traffickers, especially in Mexico where some criminal groups continue to obtain military-grade weaponry.
Some of this instruction will be carried out at a U.S.-backed regional helicopter training center just outside Bogotá. As the DoD report notes, part of the almost $13.5 million going to the facility in 2014 will support courses for pilots from security forces throughout Latin America. Helicopter maintenance, special operations, rescue missions, and combat tactics have been part of the curriculum.
A large portion of these students are from Mexico, a country that has significantly built up its own BlackHawk fleet in recent years. Just this spring the Mexican government purchased 23 BlackHawk helicopters and associated equipment for $905 million from Sikorsky Aircraft Company and General Electric.
The $13.5 million also covers U.S. Army technical support, helicopter and simulator maintenance, parts, infrastructure and operational support. Although the facility is set to be nationalized by 2019, the Defense Department will continue to provide limited support to the center for third party trainings beyond that date.
However, it is hard to determine how effective this training has been. Despite the substantial amount of funding that has been poured into the facility –since FY2009 the DoD has allocated $87.4 million – the DoD has not tracked graduates of this program, making it impossible to evaluate its long-term effectiveness or any unintended consequences.
As the Colombians continue to take the reins of U.S.-funded counternarcotics trainings, not only for air defense, but other DoD-taught interdiction tactics such as small boat and riverine operations, it is even more important for the Pentagon to track graduates and establish metrics to monitor results. Compared to Colombia’s Air Force, other branches of Colombia’s military, which will be providing the training on small boat operations, have a dark history of human rights violations (committed at times with U.S. funding) and it’s possible some problematic training could be provided.
As U.S. assistance continues to evolve to regional dynamics and as U.S. policymakers continue to push for more effective oversight on the impact of U.S. dollars on global security, evaluation of this and other new types of U.S. military assistance are warranted.