In this episode of Micro Journeys Inside Access, host Daniel Marrujo steps inside the Joint Operations Center at the Royal Armed Forces base in Agadir, Morocco, the nerve center of African Lion 2026, to explore how government, industry, and academia converge to support both the multinational exercise and a live, real-world search-and-rescue mission. He’s joined by Seth Henderson, lead planner for Morocco’s African Lion exercises, who breaks down how this year’s iteration differs from years past.
The conversation digs into how 42 partner nations, alongside academic institutions like Colorado State University and industry players including Palantir, are working side by side to close technology gaps for warfighters, particularly in AI, drone systems, and counter-UAS capabilities. Henderson explains how lessons learned from the war in Ukraine have directly shaped this year’s exercise design, and how the team is navigating the reality that not every technology brought into the field is mature enough for real-world deployment.
The episode frames this layered collaboration, spanning classified and unclassified information sharing, cross-border communication protocols, and rapidly evolving battlefield technology, as the connective tissue that turns disparate national and industrial efforts into a single, coordinated mission capable of adapting in real time.