Rear Adm. Colin J. Kilrain will become the new commander of the Special Operations Command Pacific at Camp H.M. Smith in Halawa Heights, the Pentagon announced.
Kilrain is currently serving as assistant commander of the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C.
He will replace Rear Adm. Philip G. Howe, who has been at the Camp Smith post for the past year. Howe’s new assignment has not been announced.
Kilrain is a career Naval Special Warfare SEAL officer with multiple Joint Special Operation duty assignments. Upon completion of Officer Candidate School, Kilrain was commissioned in 1985. He completed basic underwater demolition/ SEAL training in 1986.
His command tours include Naval Special Warfare Unit Four, Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico; SEAL Team Four; and Naval Special Warfare Group Two.
Kilrain holds a Master of Science degree in national resources strategy and management from the National Defense University’s Industrial College of the Armed Forces and is a graduate of the Defense Language Institute, where he studied German and Spanish.
Kilrain has deployed on operations to Central and South America, the Horn of Africa, the Caribbean, the Balkans, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He was a national collegiate all-American champion wrestler at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1985. The Lehigh University wrestling newsletter said Kilrain’s great-great grandfather Jake Kilrain fought world heavyweight champion John Sullivan and lost to him in the last bare-knuckle prize fight in 1889 after 75 rounds.
Kilrain is married to a former Navy flier and NASA astronaut, Susan Kilrain, who has made two flights into space. They have four children.
The Pacific Command’s special warfare operations was established in 1965 on Okinawa as the Special Operations Center to provide unconventional warfare task force support for operations in Southeast Asia. Its functions were later transferred to the U.S. Pacific Command.
According to the Pacific Command’s website, Special Operations Command Pacific was activated on November 1983 at Camp Smith as a subordinate command of the U.S. Pacific Command.
Units under operational control of the Special Operations Command include the 353rd Special Operations Group and 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne), which are on Okinawa and Torii Station in Japan; Naval Special Warfare Task Unit-Pacific and a subordinate SEAL platoon, which are based at Apra Harbor Naval Station on Guam; and an airborne company in South Korea.
In January 2002, Special Operations Command deployed to the Southern Philippines as Joint Task Force 510, conducting counterterrorist operations with the Philippine government. The task force returned in September 2002, leaving stay-behind elements to form Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines, and continued operations with the Philippines.
