Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe was withdrawing from the NATO military structure. SHAPE and all the other NATO installations, including NATO Headquarters and Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT), were informed that they must leave French territory by April 1967. Belgium became the host nation for both NATO's political headquarters and SHAPE. General Lyman Lemnitzer, SACEUR at the time, had hoped that SHAPE could be located near to NATO Headquarters, as had been the case in Paris, but the Belgian authorities decided that SHAPE should be located at least 50 kilometres from Brussels, NATO's new location, because SHAPE was a major wartime military target. The Belgian
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe but now aboard the amphibious ship "Mistral". The French naval component is drawn from the Force d'Action Navale, the French Navy's surface fleet. Island Commander, Iceland, remains in existence as a detachment of HQ ACO, as does Allied Submarine Command, a NATO command based on the United States Navy's ComSubLant. A special operations coordination centre and an intelligence fusion centre have also recently been formed within SHAPE. As more capable rapid reaction forces were established, earlier 'fire brigades', including the ACE Mobile Force (Land) ('AMF (L)'), were disbanded; AMF(L) was disbanded on 30 October 2002. In addition to this Allied