Military aircraft are for the first time to join an enlarged U.S. special-operations force in Uganda as President Barack Obama ramps up efforts to hunt down notorious warlord Joseph Kony.

CV-22 Osprey aircraft will arrive by midweek, along with refueling aircraft and some 150 Air Force special-operations personnel, according to the Washington Post. A total of 300 U.S. troops will now be stationed in the restive Central African state.

Kony, whose brutal Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has spent years plundering villages, mutilating civilians and kidnapping children across large swaths of Uganda, the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Congo, has been indicted by the International Criminal Court.

LRA atrocities publicized on the Internet have sparked waves of revulsion around the world.

[Washington Post]

Write to Charlie Campbell at charlie.campbell@time.com.