Why Russia is wasting time doing this other than to be a big fat jerk is beyond me:
Army Gen. Stephen Townsend, the nominee to head U.S. Africa Command, said Tuesday that the presence of Russian mercenaries in the Central African Republic is part of the effort by President Vladimir Putin to regain influence for Moscow in the Sub-Sahara.
We have limits on responding. Our footprint in Africa is small away from the Horn of Africa and our power projection capabilities are limited to that area and the Mediterranean littorals with Marine reaction forces ashore in Spain and Italy.
Although we are building up capabilities to go after jihadis in the areas around Niger.
Still, local sensitivities generally provide a brake on our ambitions. And higher priorities in Europe and Asia mean resources to AFRICOM are scarce. I sometimes figure AFRICOM's unofficial motto must be "Thank God for SOUTHCOM!"
But if we equip one or more modularized auxiliary cruisers as power projection platforms capable os military or humanitarian missions, as I described in "The AFRICOM Queen" in Military Review, we could have a mobile at-sea force capable of reaching areas in sub-Sahara Africa beyond the range of existing power concentrations.
UPDATE: Fighting in Libya is getting too close for comfort:
The U.S. military has withdrawn its troops from Libya as a local military commander’s forces advanced on the capital for a showdown with militias holding the city.
“Due to increased unrest in Libya, a contingent of U.S. forces supporting U.S. Africa Command temporarily relocated in response to security conditions on the ground,” AFRICOM said in a statement.
Libya--especially after the failure to rapidly respond to the September 11, 2012 jihadi attacks in Benghazi--is well within our military range of action from bases in Europe now.
But away from that, The AFRICOM Queen would be useful for similar evacuations--or even basing such missions aboard the ship itself offshore.
