AFRICOM Adds Logistics Hub in West Africa, Hinting at an Enduring U.S. Presence by Katie Bo Williams - Defense One
From Ghana’s capital, a new supply network will ferry supplies and arms to special forces troops across the region.
U.S. Africa Command plans to begin routing flights to Accra, Ghana, as the hub of a new logistics network to ferry supplies and weapons to the patches of U.S. troops operating across the continent’s increasingly turbulent western region.
A C-17 cargo plane is scheduled to touch down at Kotoka International Airport later this month, inaugurating what is expected to become a weekly flight from AFRICOM’s home base in Europe to the port capital. The United States has access to warehouse space in Accra — part of a defense-cooperation agreement struck with the Ghanaians in May — and from there will send the aggregated cargo out on smaller planes and trucks to the approximately 1,800 U.S. troops dispersed across 17 to 20 locations in West Africa.
It’s “basically a bus route,” said Brig. Gen. Leonard J. Kosinski, who runs logistics at AFRICOM, carrying arms, ammunition, food, and other supplies to special forces troops.
But it’s a bus route that traverses a baker’s dozen of nations that together cover roughly the area of the continental United States, epitomizing “the tyranny of distance,” Kosinski said…