Africom Stands Up 2006-2017

[Michael F]

Africom is indeed a great opportunity.

As a European military, I do consider it as positive for the European military system too. Often, we do plan and do operations in Africa (Artemis or Eufor Kinshasa in DRC, Eufor Tchad,...) as part of the EU system. Having one interlocutor on the US military side will allow better coordination and possibly mutual assistance for both US and EU forces.

I hope they will also engage European capitals (very protective of their influence in Africa), make them understand Africom is not a threath (in terms of influence in Africa) but a partner. Some Liaison officers from France, UK, Portugal, Belgium, Germany,EU,...in Africom might be very usefull.

[Tom Odom]

Africom is indeed a great opportunity.

As a European military, I do consider it as positive for the European military system too. Often, we do plan and do operations in Africa (Artemis or Eufor Kinshasa in DRC, Eufor Tchad,...) as part of the EU system. Having one interlocutor on the US military side will allow better coordination and possibly mutual assistance for both US and EU forces.

I hope they will also engage European capitals (very protective of their influence in Africa), make them understand Africom is not a threath (in terms of influence in Africa) but a partner. Some Liaison officers from France, UK, Portugal, Belgium, Germany,EU,...in Africom might be very usefull.

Agree Michael. When EUCOM had the mission, regardless of type, ie training, humanitarian, military assistance, demining or whatever, the first step was always reorienting a Europe focused organization on an entirely different region with its own complexities. The two standard problems are always distance to be overcome and communications. Transverse Mercator maps exacerbate the problem of distance; the DRC is the size of Western Europe as you well know, Michael. And even countries well experienced on the continent are challenged by those realities--France turned to contract air with Ukranian and Russian platforms in Operation Turquoise. They very quickly drained the region of aviation fuel. US TRANSCOM ended up refueling the critical nodes to keep the short and medium range aircraft flying during Support Hope. In all of this we were damn lucky that we had access to a cellular phone system in Goma.

Tom