The Trump administration is considering merging the Defense Department’s two combatant commands that cover North and South America into one and renaming it America Command, according to five current and former U.S. officials.
The proposal under discussion would merge U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Southern Command to create AMERICOM to reduce costs and streamline operations in the Defense Department, the officials said.
NORTHCOM is currently headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colo., and SOUTHCOM’s headquarters is in Doral, Fla., and it is possible the new command could use one of the two existing locations. Alabama has also been discussed as a possible location for a new AMERICOM headquarters, two of the current and former U.S. officials said.
Merging the two commands would put a sprawling scope of regions under a single post — from Central America, South America and the Caribbean to aerospace and maritime activity across Canada, Alaska and the continental U.S.
The Trump administration is looking at the structuring of other military commands to determine if there could be budget savings there. NBC News previously reported that the administration is considering getting rid of U.S. Africa Command and housing it under U.S. European Command, which has been the structure in the past.
SOUTHCOM, which has more than 1,200 military and civilian personnel, also includes the defense of the Panama Canal and oversees operations of Naval Station Guantanamo, which has recently begun housing and detaining migrants transported from the southern U.S. via military aircraft.
NORTHCOM, charged with defense of the U.S., also assists in relief efforts after natural disasters and counter-drug operations. The Commander of NORTHCOM also commands North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, which defends the airspace over North America, and was in the spotlight in 2023 after an alleged Chinese spy balloon floated across U.S. airspace. While NORTHCOM and NORAD work together for homeland defense, NORAD is a binational military command with the U.S. and Canada.
Merging the two commands could have bipartisan support in Congress. Pentagon appointees from both parties have considered the idea several times over the past decade, according to two congressional officials and a former U.S. official, though those discussions repeatedly landed on keeping NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM separate.
The idea of a singular command for the two operation centers was discussed during the first Trump administration, according to three people with knowledge of conversations.
One of the people with knowledge of the conversations said that the NORTHCOM commander in the first Trump administration pushed the idea with Republican senators during Trump’s first term.
The general view among Republicans in Congress who serve on committees with oversight of the commands is that SOUTHCOM is largely overlooked and underfunded, so they would support merging it with NORTHCOM, according to this person.
Merging the two commands could also eliminate a four-star billet. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said he intends to eliminate inflation in the ranks, or general officer positions being inflated to higher ranks, and to shrink the size of headquarters units in the military to eliminate bureaucracy.
