Testing the Future of Joint All-Domain Operations in Africa

In his 2026 posture statement to Congress, United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) General Dagvin Anderson proposed a novel idea: using open terrain in Africa for battle labs that test modern warfighting capabilities while signaling competitors including China and Russia. Even a cursory glance at defense news headlines illustrates the prevailing trend in warfare. Advantage is increasingly defined by how a military integrates drones and missile salvos with cyber, space, electromagnetic spectrum operations, and information effects to create adaptive kill webs, or mosaics, that disrupt adversary networks. What is missing are places where the U.S. military, alongside key partners and allies, can test joint all-domain operations.

Enter the battle lab. This concept has the potential to accelerate joint force experimentation while building deeper relationships with partners that support future military operations and incentivize new supply chains for key components. Furthermore, there is no better way to deter war with China than signaling the ability of the U.S. military, working alongside partners, to deploy multi-domain strike packages capable of holding Beijing at risk globally.

What Are Battle Labs?

Battle labs serve as dedicated environments where military forces can experiment with, test, and validate new warfighting concepts, technologies, and joint all-domain operations. The idea of using battle labs isn’t new. The military has a long history of utilizing vast terrains to rehearse and refine operations, most notably with the Louisiana Maneuvers, which prepared the U.S. Army for mechanized warfare ahead of World War II. In the aftermath of the Cold War, the U.S. Army used the same model as a campaign of experimentation that built Force XXI, the first digitized ground force. Today, this legacy continues through initiatives such as the U.S. Army Transformation Initiative, a massive modernization effort that focuses on prototyping new organizational designs, deploying robotics, and rapidly testing emerging technologies to ensure the joint force remains adaptable.

Despite this track record, there is a fundamental problem with current ranges in the United States. As modern warfare scales, traditional U.S. sites simply can’t accommodate the vast spatial requirements needed for operating long-range drones and conducting unrestricted electronic warfare. Additionally, there are severe restrictions on GPS jamming in the United States to prevent interference with civilian navigation, commerce, and infrastructure. Finally, the strict need to coordinate with the Federal Aviation Administration can limit using next-generation capabilities such as directed energy weapons and high-power microwaves due to the fear of fratricide and the safety hazards these technologies pose in domestic airspace.

Building a Battle Lab in Africa

There are multiple countries that are candidates for a battle lab in Africa. The key is to pair large training areas with growing drone sectors. Ghana has the Tamale Airborne Force Training Center (69 Airborne Force) and is home to a growing drone industry set to produce over 50,000 drones annually. Senegal has the Centre d’Entraînement Tactique 2 (CET2) training area, which has been used in past Africa Lion exercises. The country is also using the Flying Lab initiative to encourage a domestic drone economy. In East Africa, Kenya works with the British Army to operate the Nanyuki and Archer Post, which has large tracks of land. In addition, the United States is making large investments in the country’s military infrastructure including naval facilities and expanding aircraft runways. The country is also home to multiple drone companies including Orbital Africa, which focuses on aerial mapping and surveys, and Astral Aerial, which focuses on cargo transportation.

Morocco is particularly interesting candidate. The country offers a combination of geography, stability, and strategic credibility to host twenty-first century battle labs. Geographically, Morocco sits at the hinge of several theaters. It is less than 10 miles from Europe across the Strait of Gibraltar, with direct access to the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the approaches to the Sahel. This gives Morocco a unique position. The country is close enough to Europe to connect with NATO and transatlantic logistics and stable enough to host recurring experimentation with U.S. and partner forces. Compared with many neighboring states facing political instability, military coups, or contested external influence, Morocco offers a credible and durable platform for building partner networks and testing operational concepts on African soil. It is also one of the United States’ oldest international partners. Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States in 1777, and the U.S.-Morocco Treaty of Peace and Friendship, signed in 1786, remains one of America’s longest-standing diplomatic relationships.

The strategic relevance of Morocco is reinforced by its effort to turn geography into connectivity. Through the Atlantic Initiative, Rabat is positioning its Atlantic ports as gateways for landlocked Sahel states, linking security, trade, and logistics across North and West Africa. The African Atlantic Gas Pipeline points in the same direction: The Economic Community of West African States, Morocco, and Mauritania adopted the project title in 2024, with the pipeline intended to connect Morocco, Nigeria, West African states, and potentially Europe. Together, these projects show that Morocco is not only geographically close to the Sahel, it is also actively building the infrastructure to become one of the main corridors connecting Africa’s interior to the Atlantic, Europe, and transatlantic markets.

A defense technology ecosystem is beginning to take shape under King Mohammed VI’s vision for establishing a Moroccan national defense industrial base. Law No. 10-20 established the legal framework to manufacture defense and security equipment, while two dedicated defense industrial zones were formed to support this activity. Under the country’s 2023 investment charter, defense projects can qualify as strategic projects and access tailored support, including grants of up to 30 percent of eligible investment under defined conditions. Together, these measures show that Morocco is moving beyond importing systems and toward building indigenous unmanned systems, local adaptation, maintenance, integration, and export-oriented defense production. That makes Morocco relevant not only as a host for experimentation, but as a partner able to build the industrial depth required for scalable unmanned capabilities.

Morocco also has experience hosting large multinational exercises that include joint effects. African Lion 26, for example, included B-52H bombers operating with Moroccan F-16s, and U.S. reporting described the event as a demonstration of combat-credible airpower with partners. The exercise could be expanded in the future to use large, remote areas of the kingdom as a battle lab that tests integrating drone warfare with multidomain and information effects including electronic attack and deception and cyber operations.

Demonstrating this capability reinforces deterrence. The United States often signals power through global force projection: bomber task force missions, carrier deployments, airborne operations, and large exercises. These remain useful. But China is also studying whether the United States can close geographic distance, build coalition networks, and rapidly generate multidomain effects. They see war as a system. A battle lab would allow the United States to test and refine its approach to projecting power but in a manner that reflects new ideas about pulsed operations that attack key features of how China imagines fighting the next war. Signaling this capability in Africa has the added benefit of demonstrating the United States can hold China’s overseas interests and long supply lines at risk.

Multidomain pulsed operations will increasingly become a central feature of joint all-domain operations (JADO). JADO requires seeing battle networks as a form of modern operational art. Military planners develop novel approaches that fuse sensors, shooters, and decisionmakers into dynamic systems that shorten kill chains and maximize cross-domain fires, all ideas articulated in the Joint Warfighting Concept. The true test is turning the joint into the combined, and testing whether allies and partners can share data, assign authorities, and generate effects under realistic conditions. Countries that have deep military relationships with the United States, large training areas open to using information effects (e.g., electronic attack and cyber operations), and a history of supporting multinational training exercises offer venues for testing this new approach to warfare.

Furthermore, the ability to test a wide range of unmanned system, electronic warfare, and other effects in remote locations will support accelerating drone modernization across the U.S. military. The Pentagon’s fiscal year 2027 request reportedly seeks $54.6 billion for Defense Autonomous Working Group (DAWG) as a generational investment in unmanned systems capability. Without battle labs, that money risks buying inventories faster than the force can develop tactics, training, maintenance models, data pipelines, and coalition concepts of employment. The DAWG needs large training areas where it can integrate unmanned systems with the types of multidomain effects visioned by JADO and described in the Joint Warfighting Concept.

Building a battle lab would likely require considering a Center of Excellence model common in NATO. These centers become focal points for planning and analysis. In case of an African battle lab, center could support joint research and development for creating novel solutions specifically for unique security environments found on the continent. Second, it could be a focal point for certification so that the systems made in emerging drone and defense ecosystem can be integrated in the inventory of the U.S. military and even other NATO members. In the future, the goal would be to bring in competing vendors and see how effectively their systems supported the ability of the ability of a small, networked U.S. joint force to deploy, connect into a larger battle network and adapt in contact. Last, a center could act as hub for training, education, and analysis, including analyzing data from exercises and even running wargames to test new ideas.

Conclusion: Laying the Groundwork

The United States should work with key partners in Africa to build a twenty-first century battle lab and supporting infrastructure. Leveraging exercise such as Africa Lion and large training areas provides an ideal venue to integrate joint all-domain effects, unmanned systems, and electronic warfare. By focusing on a continuous campaign of learning rather than isolated boutique innovation projects, the United States and its partners can validate new operational concepts, build resilient, indigenous defense supply chains, and deepen partner capability and capacity. Ultimately, experimenting with pulsed operations alongside key partners in Africa will send a powerful deterrent signal to China that the United States can impose costs in any future crisis.

Benjamin Jensen is the executive director of the CSIS Futures Lab and the Frank E. Petersen Chair for Emerging and Disruptive Technology at the Marine Corps University, School of Advanced Warfighting. Soufiane Ammagui was a visiting fellow at CSIS through a U.S. Department of State program and is the founder and managing partner of AERODRIVE, a Moroccan tactical UAS manufacturer.