DAKAR, Senegal – The U.S. military in Africa has taken steps to increase the security of troops on the ground, adding armed drones and armored vehicles and taking a harder look at when American forces go out with local troops, the head of the U.S. Africa Command says. Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser told reporters on Monday the U.S. also has cut the response time needed for medical evacuations -- the result of a broad review in the wake of last year's ambush in Niger that killed four U.S. soldiers and four of their Niger counterparts. "Since that happened, there were significant things to change and learn," Waldhauser said. "We've done a thorough scrub really on every level, whether it's at a tactical level ... or how we conduct business at AFRICOM." A report is due in mid-August on actions taken in response to the findings, Waldhauser said.

WASHINGTON – One U.S. special operations soldier was killed and four U.S. service members were wounded in an "enemy attack" Friday in Somalia, the U.S. military said -- casualties that are likely to put renewed scrutiny on America's counterterrorism operations in Africa. It was the first public announcement of a U.S. military combat death on the continent since four U.S. service members were killed in a militant ambush in the west African nation of Niger in October. President Donald Trump paid tribute on Twitter on Friday night, offering "thoughts and prayers" to the families of the soldier who was killed and those who were wounded. "They are truly all HEROES," he tweeted. U.S. Africa Command said in a statement that U.S. troops with Somali and Kenyan forces came under mortar and small-arms fire in Jubaland, Somalia, at around 2:45 p.m.

WASHINGTON – One U.S. special operations soldier was killed and four U.S. service members wounded in an "enemy attack" Friday in Somalia, the U.S. military said -- casualties that are likely to put renewed scrutiny on America's counterterror operations in Africa. It's the first public announcement of a U.S. military combat death on the continent since four U.S. service members were killed in a militant ambush in the west African nation of Niger in October. U.S. Africa Command said in a statement that U.S. troops with Somali and Kenyan forces came under mortar and small-arms fire in Jubaland, Somalia, at around 2.45 p.m. local time. One member of the "partner forces" was wounded. One of the wounded U.S. service members received sufficient medical care in the field, and the other three were medically evacuated for additional treatment.

WASHINGTON – Dramatic new drone video of the Niger ambush that killed four American soldiers shows U.S. forces desperately trying to escape and fighting for their lives after friendly Nigerien forces mistook them for the enemy. It describes how the fleeing troops set up a quick defensive location on the edge of a swamp and -- thinking they were soon to die -- wrote messages home to their loved ones. The video, released by the Pentagon with explanatory narration, includes more than 10 minutes of drone footage, file tape and animation that wasn't made public last week when the military released a portion of the final report on the October attack. The video depicts for the first time the harrowing hours as troops held off their enemy and waited for rescue. There were 46 U.S. and Nigerien troops out on the initial mission in the west African nation, going after but failing to find a high-value militant, then collecting intelligence at a site where the insurgent had been.

WASHINGTON – Dramatic new drone video of the Niger ambush that killed four American soldiers shows U.S. forces desperately trying to escape and fighting for their lives after friendly Nigerien forces mistook them for the enemy. It describes how the fleeing troops set up a quick defensive location on the edge of a swamp and -- thinking they were soon to die -- wrote messages home to their loved ones. The video, released by the Pentagon with explanatory narration, includes more than 10 minutes of drone footage, file tape and animation that wasn't made public last week when the military released a portion of the final report on the October attack. The video depicts for the first time the harrowing hours as troops held off their enemy and waited for rescue. There were 46 U.S. and Nigerien troops out on the initial mission in the West African nation, going after but failing to find a high-value militant, then collecting intelligence at a site where the insurgent had been.

After an intense two-day search, local military forces Friday recovered the body of a U.S. Army commando who was inadvertently left behind after a daylight ambush by militants killed three other Green Berets in a rugged border region in Niger. Pentagon officials had not previously announced that a Green Beret was missing in action after the surprise attack on a joint patrol of U.S. commandos and Nigerien troops Wednesday. Six of the 12 Americans on the patrol were killed or wounded. Officials hoped the missing U.S. Army Special Forces operative might still be hiding in the dense brush, rather than taken captive, and launched a massive search-and-rescue mission with aerial drones and other aircraft, as well as Nigerien ground forces. The death of four Green Berets in remote West Africa marks the worst single loss of U.S. forces under fire since President Trump took office.

Two other Special Forces soldiers were also wounded in the Niger ambush; Lucas Tomlinson has the story for'Special Report.' There was no U.S. surveillance drone overhead at the time of the ambush in Niger which killed three U.S. Army Green Berets and wounded two others Wednesday, multiple officials familiar with the matter tell Fox News. In addition, Fox News has learned the dead and injured soldiers were taken from the firefight by French Puma helicopters. Only one U.S. helicopter was available to pick up the Green Berets. It is not clear why it wasn't used.

Operating vehicles in adversarial environments between a recurring origin-destination pair requires new planning techniques. Such a technique, presented in this paper, is a game inspired by Ruckle’s original contribution. The goal of the first player is to minimize the expected casualties undergone by a moving agent. The goal of the second player is to maximize this damage. The outcome of the game is obtained via a linear program that solves the corresponding minmax optimization problem over this outcome. The formulation originally proposed by Feron and Joseph is extended to different environment models in order to compute routing strategies over unstructured environments. To compare these methods for increasingly accurate representations of the environment, a grid-based model is chosen to represent the environment and the existence of a sufficient network size is highlighted. A global framework for the generation of realistic routing strategies between any two points is described. Finally the practicality of the proposed framework is illustrated on real world environments.

Operating vehicles in adversarial environments between a recurring origin-destination pair requires new planning techniques. A two players zero-sum game is introduced. The goal of the first player is to minimize the expected casualties undergone by a convoy. The goal of the second player is to maximize this damage. The outcome of the game is obtained via a linear program that solves the corresponding minmax optimization problem over this outcome. Different environment models are defined in order to compute routing strategies over unstructured environments. To compare these methods for increasingly accurate representations of the environment, a grid-based model is chosen to represent the environment and the existence of a sufficient network size is highlighted. A global framework for the generation of realistic routing strategies between any two points is described. This framework requires a good assessment of the potential casualties at any location, therefore the most important parameters are identified. Finally the framework is tested on real world environments.