Thomas told a large crowd gathered under a hot sun that this was at least the fourth time he was replacing Votel ’80 who was put in charge of Centcom. “Each time, it gets harder,” said Thomas, who became the 11th Socom commander, and the third in a row to have been promoted from the Joint Special Operations Command, headquartered at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Socom, headquartered at MacDill. He follows Votel and, before that, retired Navy SEAL Adm. William McRaven.
Before running JSOC, the military’s elite hunter-killer counterterrorism command, Thomas served as Assistant Director for Military Affairs at the CIA, commanded all special operations forces in Afghanistan, served as senior special operations officer on the joint staff at the Pentagon, and held command positions with the Army, including the Ranger Regiment and Delta Force. Read More