Morocco, U.S. first successful live-fire demonstration of low-cost, long-range cruise missile * Military Africa

On 6 August, 2026, U.S. and Moroccan forces executed the first live-fire demonstration of a low-cost, long-range cruise missile at an expeditionary site near Tan-Tan, Morocco, leveraging the Africa Multidomain Training and Experimentation Center (AMTEC). The event ran from August 3 to 7 and brought together the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), Morocco’s Royal Armed Forces (Forces Armées Royales, FAR), and engineers from a US defence startup.

It fell under the US Army Secretary’s Test Range Expansion Initiative, a program that gives private technology firms faster access to military test ranges. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has said the initiative aims to cut the wait for range access, historically 12 to 18 months, down to about 30 days. Personnel set up a temporary expeditionary launch site in the dunes outside Tan-Tan rather than using a fixed facility. Teams tested the missile’s communications links, checked how its wings, tires and launch trolley handled the desert terrain, and gathered weather and targeting data through the week. AFRICOM described the effort as a single live-fire event supported by days of setup and system checks, not a repeated firing campaign.

Col. Zouhair El Hamdani, the Royal Armed Forces officer coordinating the project, called it a step toward making AMTEC “a regional hub for innovation, strategic cooperation, and industrial development”.  AFRICOM commander Gen. Dagvin Anderson said Morocco’s involvement “accelerates readiness for the US joint force and our African partners”.

AFRICOM’s own statement did not name the weapon or the company behind it, referring only to a “US defense industry partner”. Regional reporting has since identified the system as Anthem, a low-cost, long-range cruise missile built by Covenant Industries, a US-registered startup with an Israeli subsidiary founded in 2024 by Michael Kaufman. The company has raised backing from investors including Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz and has been valued at more than a billion dollars, according to the Israeli financial press.

Covenant pitches Anthem as a cheaper, more easily mass-produced alternative to established cruise missiles such as the US Tomahawk, aimed at giving forces a scalable precision-strike option without the cost or lead time of legacy systems. The company is also developing lower-cost interceptors meant to counter drones and aircraft swarms. A Covenant executive told reporters the firm expects to begin delivering production-ready hardware for its manufacturing line in early 2027.

US Tomahawk stocks have thinned after roughly 850 missiles were expended during the opening weeks of the Iran conflict, cutting the American inventory by about a quarter. That has pushed Washington to prioritize replenishing its own stockpile over supplying allies, and left some partners looking at newer, lower-cost options. Germany has reportedly held talks with Covenant about acquiring Anthem as it works through what officials call a four-track plan to field a low-cost cruise missile capability by 2027.

AMTEC itself is barely a month old. Morocco’s Royal Armed Forces and AFRICOM signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on July 13, 2026, at AFRICOM headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, to build the center at Tan-Tan, southwestern Morocco. General Mohammed Berrid, inspector general of the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces and commander of the Southern Zone, signed for Morocco; Anderson signed for AFRICOM. The center is meant as a standing range complex covering the full electromagnetic spectrum, where operators, planners and instructors from Morocco and other African partner nations can train on small unmanned aerial systems and counterterrorism tasks, whilst US and Moroccan industry test and validate new technology in conditions that are hard to replicate on US ranges. AFRICOM has said future work at the site will expand into long-range fires, autonomous systems, wireless communications and advanced sensing.

AMTEC builds on a broader run of US-Morocco defense activity this year. In March, Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of the US Army Europe and Africa, told the African Land Forces Summit in Rome that Washington planned a regional drone training hub in Morocco, describing it as a lasting capability rather than an exercise add-on. In April, the 2 countries signed a 10-year Roadmap for Defense Cooperation covering 2026 to 2036, according to the Pentagon. This spring’s Africa Lion exercise, led by US Army Southern European Task Force Africa (SETAF-AF) alongside the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces and more than 40 partner nations, gave both militaries a recent, large-scale rehearsal for working together.

For Morocco, hosting AMTEC extends its role as Washington’s most active security partner in North Africa over several years, with a permanent range that can attract other African militaries and outside investment. For AFRICOM, it offers a testing ground close to African partner forces without the scheduling backlog of ranges in the continental United States.

AFRICOM has not announced a date for the next AMTEC demonstration, but officials have signaled that autonomous systems and sensing technology are next in line for testing at the site.

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