US plans to create ‘drone academy’ in Morocco amid strategy shift

The U.S. military command that oversees forces across Africa will establish a “drone academy” and training center in Morocco to begin getting African partners up to date with their use in counterterrorism, officials announced.

U.S. Africa Command officials signed a memorandum of understanding on Monday with the leaders from the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces to establish the Africa Multidomain Training and Experimentation Center in Tan-Tan, Morocco, by 2030, officials said in a release.

An AFRICOM official told Task & Purpose that the purpose of the drone academy is to train African forces so they can conduct these operations on their own and reflect recent shifts in American military strategy in Africa that has included significant withdrawals of U.S. forces.

In July 2024, the U.S. pulled troops from two of its air bases in Niger and earlier this month, the U.S. withdrew service members deployed to Nigeria after officials said they wrapped up counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State. AFRICOM head Gen. Dagvin Anderson recently spoke about the need to boost partners’ capabilities in the continent, echoing a previous AFRICOM commander’s May 2025 comments that the U.S. was “leaning into empowerment over dependency” for African partner nations.

Plans for the center include a range for multi-domain training, an innovation center where troops, contractors and academics will collaborate and test new technology, and a drone academy. The U.S.-run academy would train African militaries on how to incorporate drones into local security operations and “enhance their counter-terrorism capabilities against threats in West Africa,” officials said.

Officials said African Lion exercise in 2027, the largest annual training event that the U.S. hosts with dozens of nations from across Africa, will “serve as a proof of concept” for the new center. 

In previous iterations of African Lion, soldiers have trained alongside African militaries to test new tech like first-person viewer, FPV, drones, long-range precision munition drones and the ‘Bumblebee,’ an FPV multi-rotor drone that collides with other small UASes mid-flight. 

Moroccan special operations troops train with U.S. troops in May, 2026. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Enrique Barcelo.

The 2026 exercise, held from April to May, also emphasized drone training with a three-day drone crash course for U.S. soldiers and the first “drone academics” class where American forces taught operations and planning tactics to Moroccan, Nigerian, and Ghanaian troops. 

“The Africa Multidomain Training and Experimentation Center will increase readiness and advance capabilities of both nations,” Gen. Anderson said in the release. “This partnership represents a great opportunity for U.S. and African defense industrial bases as well as academic institutions to experiment, innovate and develop scalable, adaptable solutions across emerging technologies.”

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