US Army deploy new troops in Nigeria and Philippines

US AFRICOM Commander Confirms Deployment of ‘Small Team’ of Troops to Nigeria

by Dave DeCamp
February 3, 2026

The confirmation of the deployment comes after President Trump launched missile strikes in the country on Christmas Day

The head of US Africa Command said on Tuesday that the US has deployed a “small team” of troops to Nigeria, comments that come more than a month after the US launched its first missile strikes in the country on Christmas Day.

It’s unclear when the US troops were sent to Nigeria, but AFRICOM Commander Dagvin Anderson said that it came after he and Nigerian President Bola Tinubu held talks in Rome during the Aqaba Process summit in October 2025, before President Trump threatened to go into Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” if the Nigerian government didn’t do more to protect Christians.

“We were able to share some thoughts and agree that we needed to work together on a way forward in the region,” Anderson told reporters during a digital press briefing. “That has led to increased collaboration between our nations, to include a small US team that brings some unique capabilities from the United States in order to augment what Nigeria has been doing for several years.”

The US missile strikes on Christmas Day were launched by a US warship in the Gulf of Guinea and targeted ISIS-linked militants in the northwestern Sokoto State, though several missiles fell on two villages far from the intended target, causing damage in one village and injuries, though no deaths were reported. AFRICOM claimed that multiple militants were killed in the strikes, but there’s been no confirmation of the casualties.

The US has long been an ally of the Nigerian government, though Trump initially appeared to threaten to take military action without the cooperation of the government over claims that it was looking the other way while a “Christian genocide” was taking place in the country.

Continue reading at: news.antiwar.com/2026/02/03/us-africom-commander-confirms-deployment-of-small-team-of-troops-to-nigeria/

New US Army force deployed to Philippines

This signals an expanding American footprint and risk of being pulled into tensions with China

Stavroula Pabst
Feb 03, 2026

The U.S. Army has quietly sent a rotational force to the Philippines — a move experts tell RS signals greater U.S. military involvement in the region, amid growing tensions over the island of Taiwan.

“From the Chinese perspective…the United States is sending Army forces now to a country that’s in very close proximity, to an area of obvious concern,” Dan Grazier, director of the National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center, told RS. “We’re used to seeing Naval forces, and Marine forces and [the] Air Force in that part of the world. But now we’re sending the United States Army to the Philippines…really close to Taiwan, which obviously [is of] interest for the Chinese.”

Led by a Lieutenant Colonel, the new rotational force is “not a major commitment” in terms of personnel, Grazier said. But, he said, “sending the Army… does show an increased level of commitment” to the region overall.

As Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South Program at the Quincy Institute tells RS, the Army Rotational Force-Philipines is “a step up as a part of a broader trendline since 2023 of an expanding U.S. military footprint in the Philippines.”

“Washington expanded U.S. military sites five to nine in April that year, and new, longer-range weapons systems have since been deployed to the country,” Shidore said.

As Shidore told RS, these ongoing U.S. military expansions into the region, which have included military exercises and missile deployments there, could pull the U.S. further into ongoing tensions there — perhaps especially over Taiwan, but also over those existing between China and the Philippines.

“Most of the U.S. expansion [as of late] seems directed toward the Taiwan contingency rather than the South China Sea flashpoint, pulling the U.S.-Philippine alliance deeper into the East Asian theater, which also includes Japan,” Shidore said. “The enhanced U.S. presence also increases the chances of the U.S. ending up as a frontline actor (rather than playing a supporting role from the rear) in China-Philippines maritime tensions, which have been on a boil for more than two years.”

Continue reading at: responsiblestatecraft.org/army-philippines/
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