NECC Integrates Capabilities for Combatant Commanders

By Otto Kreisher, Special Correspondent

The Navy Expeditionary Combat Command [NECC] integrates the Navy’s multiple expeditionary capabilities and is a force provider for the regional combatant commanders, Capt. David Balk, NECC’s chief of staff, told an audience at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Exposition.

Balk described NECC’s 13 different organizations brought together in the relatively new command at a session on the exhibition floor May 4 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, National Harbor, Md.

Many of the integral units have been in existence for years, such as the Naval Mobile Construction Battalions, better known as Seabees, and the Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams. The Maritime Expeditionary Security units, which provide port security and protection for important aircraft in the combat zone, and Expeditionary Logistics units, which conduct port and air cargo handling and customs services, also are veteran organizations.

Others NECC elements have been created recently to address the challenges of the irregular conflict the nation has been involved in since the 2001 terrorists attacks.

For example, the Expeditionary Intelligence Command was formed because “we recognized early in the war that we had lost our human intelligence capabilities,” he said. The command provides quick intelligence support for boarding teams and on-scene commanders.

Maritime Civil Affairs is a recent organization that “helps us reach out and touch people” in other countries by providing help with fisheries, port operations and human needs, such as water wells, Balk said.

Other relatively new units are the Guard Battalion, which guards detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Iraq, and Expeditionary Combat Readiness, which watches out for the thousands of individual augmentees on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their families.

Balk emphasized that 51 percent of NECC’s personnel are Navy Reservists. “They are an operational reserve,” he said. “They do exactly the same missions as the active duty units” and are “trained to the same standards.”