United Accord Brings Together U.S., Ghanaian Troops

By Army Staff Sgt. Brandon Ames, U.S. Army Africa

ACCRA, Ghana -- Members of Ghana’s armed forces are partnered with participants from other African nations, European allies and U.S. Army Africa for exercise United Accord 2018, which began July 16 at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre here.

"I'd like to thank our Ghanaian counterparts for hosting this world class, two-week exercise," said Army Brig. Gen. Eugene J. LeBoeuf, the U.S. Army Africa acting commander. "We look forward to conducting this mission and returning home to share the lessons learned and new knowledge with our home station."

For two weeks, more than 800 military personnel will participate in UA18. The exercise consists of a command post exercise, company field training exercise focused on peacekeeping operations, a medical readiness exercise and Ghanaian-led jungle warfare school training.

The command post exercise is designed to increase the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali's capacity to plan, deploy, sustain and redeploy a combined joint task force in support of U.N. and African Union-mandated peacekeeping operations.

The field training exercise, jungle training and medical readiness exercise will build participants’ readiness, capacity, security and stability through combined unit-level tactics, individual soldier skills and medical practices in forward-deployed environments.

The purpose of UA18 is to promote interoperability between U.S. and partner forces and organizations, advance troop contributing countries capacity to support MINUSMA and similar operations, and increase exercise participants' abilities to execute MINUSMA sector headquarter tasks, while enhancing positive multilateral relationships.

“Ghana is a defense and economic leader in the region and a valued partner, and it is because of these strengths that Ghana is an ideal host for an exercise like United Accord,” LeBoeuf said.