Five years after the Marine Corps stood up a new land-based unit to respond to threats at U.S. embassies and other emergencies across Africa, the Pentagon's top watchdog wants to make sure the force has what it takes to carry out its mission.
The Defense Department Inspector General's office announced last week that it will immediately begin evaluating whether Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force-Crisis Response-Africa can meet its operational requirements. The study comes months after the unit's former commander recommended the land-based force be moved back to Navy ships.
Elements should definitely be put to sea for better ability to quietly move to places that intelligence suggests are under threat.
But who believes the Navy will dedicate the assets to African waters around the immense littoral regions of the large continent? Rising China, oddly aggressive Russia, geographically dangerous Iran at the Persian Gulf, and a still-nuclear North Korea compete for scarce Navy ships.
Recognizing Africa as a theater lower down the priority list for Navy assets, in 2016 in "The AFRICOM Queen," I called for using container ships as the foundation for modularized auxiliary cruisers for AFRICOM to project land power around the African continent's littorals (with options to deploy assets inland).
I wonder how the study will solve the sealift problem without The AFRICOM Queen?
