America has a new commander for Africa Command:
The U.S. Army has tapped Maj. Gen. Roger L. Cloutier Jr. to serve as the next head of Vicenza, Italy-based U.S. Army Africa, where he will oversee efforts to train indigenous ground forces for counterterrorism fights on that continent.
Africa has gotten no higher on the priority lists given the potential for conventional conflict in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East that draws more of America's military attention.
One or more modularized auxiliary cruisers as I discussed in "The Africom Queen" might be the only way to get capabilities capable of addressing a lot of needs along the long littorals of Africa far from American forces in Djibouti or Europe.
As the Ghana issue shows, land bases in Africa continue to be a sensitive issue.
The platform for the auxiliary cruiser is the first problem to solve. Luckily, an increased need to rebuild dwindling sea logistics to support potential conventional war provides a new avenue:
The merchant fleet that would carry the U.S. military to war is in dire need of recapitalization and might not prepared to fight its way to a conflict zone, said a panel of officials tasked with oversight of military sealift.
And if America restores military sealift by building up container ships in that fleet, the hull for the ship type could be created, creating more secure source of platforms than a naval version of the CRAF that provides reserve airlift that I proposed in that article.
These days money is easier to get than Navy hulls. Will AFRICOM wait for assets to be given to it? Or will AFRICOM MacGyger their own modularized auxiliary cruisers for power projection missions?
