Senior leaders representing 17 African national militaries came together with their American counterparts here this week to better understand U.S. Africa Command and to help in developing the noncommissioned officers corps in their nations.

At the conference, Schwartz stressed the need to build long-term partnerships that would prevent low-intensity conflicts from becoming “larger-scale crises that we must confront.”

The head of the Afghan national army wants to build a replica of the Royal Military Academy, which has been churning out officers for the British army since 1741. In Kabul the idea has already won the approval of American and British commanders. President Hamid Karzai now has to sign off the idea.

A U.S. and Malawi Defense Force humanitarian medical exercise being conducted here is enhancing the partners’ medical capabilities and their ability to work together in response to a future crisis or emergency response

[AFRICOM] is assigned mandate to win friends and influence people; build military-to-military ties; monitor socio-politico-economic trends; engage in intelligence acquisition; compile data bases on would be/could be terrorists -- and their possible enablers, and do some public diplomacy.

There was reason to worry that AFRICOM, which would lead the Operation Odssey Dawn, was too green, and its mandate too soft, for it to perform up to U.S. standards. Yet in launching the U.S. intervention in Libya, AFRICOM, led by its commander, General Carter Ham, acquitted itself well.

The United States will provide Pakistan with 85 small "Raven" drone aircraft, a U.S. military official told Reuters on Thursday, a key step to meeting Islamabad's calls for access to U.S. drone technology.

Britain said Tuesday it will send about a dozen senior soldiers to Libya to help organize the country's haphazard rebel forces, as international allies seek to aid the opposition's attempts to break the military stalemate.