In this episode of Micro Journeys, host Daniel Marrujo sits down with Chief Warrant Officer 4 Brian Duncan, Chief Technical Advisor for Africom J6, on the ground at African Lion 2026 in Morocco. Chief Duncan pulls back the curtain on how a small, specialized team is integrating commercial and military technology into a single agnostic cloud platform — enabling real-time data sharing across U.S. forces, industry partners, and partner nations in some of the most remote corners of the African continent. What begins as a conversation about innovation during a multinational training exercise takes an unexpected turn when the exercise itself becomes a live rescue mission, putting every piece of technology on the ground to an immediate, real-world test.
The African continent presents unique operational challenges that solutions built for other theaters simply cannot anticipate. Without reliable infrastructure, traditional server stacks and communication systems become liabilities — too heavy, too slow, and too dependent on connectivity that doesn't exist at the edge. Chief Duncan describes a military landscape where commercial technology floods the market but rarely accounts for the realities of remote, irregular warfare environments where every day is unpredictable and the cost of a communication failure can be measured in lives.
Chief Duncan and his team proved that a backpack-sized edge device and a Starlink terminal can replace an entire server stack — and that an agnostic platform capable of integrating any system, including a partner nation's commercial drone feed, is the key to rapid, effective coalition operations in austere environments.
What You'll Discover in This Episode
01:43 — Why solutions that work in other theaters don't automatically translate to the African continent, and the specific transport and connectivity questions every commander needs to ask before deploying technology to a remote location.
02:56 — How Chief Duncan's team replaced heavy server stacks with a small form factor edge device and a Starlink terminal that fit in a backpack — redefining what it means to operate at the edge.
05:38 — The moment African Lion 2026 shifted from training exercise to live rescue mission, and how an agnostic cloud platform allowed every industry partner on the ground to immediately contribute a solution for the commander.
07:16 — How a whiteboard session with Moroccan partner forces unlocked the ability to pull a partner nation's drone feed directly into the U.S. network — reinvigorating coalition energy and demonstrating interoperability in action.
08:55 — Chief Duncan's candid reflection on what made this exercise historic: a team that broke systems, integrated them anyway, and built a common operational picture that no one had assembled quite like this before.
12:02 — The lesson that will outlast African Lion 2026: speed of implementation matters as much as the technology itself, and units with the freedom to act don't have to wait for approval to prove what works.
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