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</font><font size=4><b>America's secret empire of drone bases<br>
</b></font><font size=3>By Nick Turse <br>
Oct 26, 2011<br><br>
They increasingly dot the planet. There's a facility outside Las Vegas
where "pilots" work in climate-controlled trailers, another at
a dusty camp in Africa formerly used by the French Foreign Legion, a
third at a big air base in Afghanistan where Air Force personnel sit in
front of multiple computer screens, and a fourth at an air base in the
United Arab Emirates that almost no one talks about. <br><br>
And that leaves at least 56 more such facilities to mention in an
expanding American empire of unmanned drone bases being set up worldwide.
Despite frequent news reports on the drone<br><br>
<br>
assassination campaign launched in support of America's ever-widening
undeclared wars and a spate of stories on drone bases in Africa and the
Middle East, most of these facilities have remained unnoted, uncounted,
and remarkably anonymous - until now. <br><br>
Run by the military, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and their
proxies, these bases - some little more than desolate airstrips, others
sophisticated command and control centers filled with computer screens
and high-tech electronic equipment are the backbone of a new American
robotic way of war. They are also the latest development in a
long-evolving saga of American power projection abroad - in this case,
remote-controlled strikes anywhere on the planet with a minimal foreign
"footprint" and little accountability. <br><br>
Using military documents, press accounts, and other open source
information, an in-depth analysis by TomDispatch has identified at least
60 bases integral to US military and CIA drone operations. There may,
however, be more, since a cloak of secrecy about drone warfare leaves the
full size and scope of these bases distinctly in the shadows. <br><br>
<b>A galaxy of bases</b> <br>
Over the past decade, the American use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
and unmanned aerial systems (UAS) has expanded exponentially, as has
media coverage of their use. On September 21, the Wall Street Journal
reported that the military has deployed missile-armed MQ-9 Reaper drones
on the "island nation of Seychelles to intensify attacks on al Qaeda
affiliates, particularly in Somalia". <br><br>
A day earlier, a Washington Post piece also mentioned the same base on
the tiny Indian Ocean archipelago, as well as one in the African nation
of Djibouti, another under construction in Ethiopia, and a secret CIA
airstrip being built for drones in an unnamed Middle Eastern country.
(Some suspect it's Saudi Arabia.) <br><br>
Post journalists Greg Miller and Craig Whitlock reported that the
"Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone
bases for counter-terrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the
Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack
al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen." Within days, the Post
also reported that a drone from the new CIA base in that unidentified
Middle Eastern country had carried out the assassination of radical
al-Qaeda preacher and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen.
<br><br>
With the killing of al-Awlaki, the Barack Obama administration has
expanded its armed drone campaign to no fewer than six countries, though
the CIA, which killed al-Awlaki, refuses to officially acknowledge its
drone assassination program. The air force is less coy about its drone
operations, yet there are many aspects of those, too, that remain in the
shadows. Air force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel John Haynes recently told
TomDispatch, "For operational security reasons, we do not discuss
worldwide operating locations of Remotely Piloted Aircraft, to include
numbers of locations around the world." <br><br>
Still, those 60 military and CIA bases worldwide, directly connected to
the drone program, tell us much about America's war-making future. From
command and control and piloting to maintenance and arming, these
facilities perform key functions that allow drone campaigns to continue
expanding, as they have for more than a decade. <br><br>
Other bases are already under construction or in the planning stages.
When presented with our list of air force sites within America's galaxy
of drone bases, Haynes responded, "I have nothing further to add to
what I've already said." <br><br>
Even in the face of government secrecy, however, much can be discovered.
Here, then, for the record is a TomDispatch accounting of America's drone
bases in the United States and around the world. <br><br>
<b>The near abroad<br>
</b>News reports have frequently focused on Creech Air Force Base outside
Las Vegas as ground zero in America's military drone campaign. Sitting in
darkened, air-conditioned rooms 7,500 miles from Afghanistan, drone
pilots dressed in flight suits remotely control MQ-9 Reapers and their
progenitors, the less heavily-armed MQ-1 Predators. <br><br>
Beside them, sensor operators manipulate the TV camera, infrared camera,
and other high-tech sensors on board the plane. Their faces are lit up by
digital displays showing video feeds from the battle zone. By squeezing a
trigger on a joystick, one of those air force "pilots" can
loose a Hellfire missile on a person half a world away. <br><br>
While Creech gets the lion's share of media attention - it even has its
own drones on site - numerous other bases on US soil have played critical
roles in America's drone wars. The same video-game-style warfare is
carried out by US and British pilots not far away at Nevada's Nellis Air
Force Base, the home of the Air Force's 2nd Special Operations Squadron
(SOS). <br><br>
According to a factsheet provided to TomDispatch by the air force, the
2nd SOS and its drone operators are scheduled to be relocated to the Air
Force Special Operations Command at Hurlburt Field in Florida in the
coming months. <br><br>
Reapers or Predators are also being flown from Davis-Monthan Air Force
Base in Arizona, Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, March Air Reserve
Base in California, Springfield Air National Guard Base in Ohio, Cannon
Air Force Base and Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, Ellington
Airport in Houston, Texas, the Air National Guard base in Fargo, North
Dakota, Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, and Hancock Field Air
National Guard Base in Syracuse, New York. Recently, it was announced
that Reapers flown by Hancock's pilots would begin taking off on training
missions from the Army's Fort Drum, also in New York state. <br><br>
Meanwhile, at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, according to a report
by the New York Times, teams of camouflage-clad air force analysts sit in
a secret intelligence and surveillance installation monitoring cell-phone
intercepts, high-altitude photographs, and most notably, multiple screens
of streaming live video from drones in Afghanistan. <br><br>
They call it "Death TV" and are constantly instant-messaging
with and talking to commanders on the ground in order to supply them with
real-time intelligence on enemy troop movements. Air force analysts also
closely monitor the battlefield from Air Force Special Operations Command
in Florida and a facility in Terre Haute, Indiana. <br><br>
CIA drone operators also reportedly pilot their aircraft from the
agency's nearby Langley, Virginia headquarters. It was from here that
analysts apparently watched footage of Osama bin Laden's compound in
Pakistan, for example, thanks to video sent back by the RQ-170 Sentinel,
an advanced drone nicknamed the "Beast of Kandahar". According
to air force documents, the Sentinel is flown from both Creech Air Force
Base and Tonopah Test Range in Nevada. <br><br>
Predators, Reapers and Sentinels are just part of the story. At Beale Air
Force Base in California, Air Force personnel pilot the RQ-4 Global Hawk,
an unmanned drone used for long-range, high-altitude surveillance
missions, some of them originating from Anderson Air Force Base in Guam
(a staging ground for drone flights over Asia). <br><br>
Other Global Hawks are stationed at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North
Dakota, while the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base in Ohio manages the Global Hawk as well as the Predator and
Reaper programs for the air force. <br><br>
Other bases have been intimately involved in training drone operators,
including Randolph Air Force Base in Texas and New Mexico's Kirtland Air
Force Base, as is the army's Fort Huachuca in Arizona, which is home to
"the world's largest UAV training center", according to a
report by National Defense magazine. <br><br>
There, hundreds of employees of defense giant General Dynamics train
military personnel to fly smaller tactical drones like the Hunter and the
Shadow. The physical testing of drones goes on at adjoining Libby Army
Airfield and "two UAV runways located approximately four miles west
of Libby", according to Global Security, an on-line clearinghouse
for military information. <br><br>
Additionally, small drone training for the army is carried out at Fort
Benning in Georgia while at Fort Rucker, Alabama - "the home of Army
aviation" - the Unmanned Aircraft Systems program coordinates
doctrine, strategy, and concepts pertaining to UAVs. <br><br>
Recently, Fort Benning also saw the early testing of true robotic drones
- which fly without human guidance or a hand on any joystick. This, wrote
the Washington Post, is considered the next step toward a future in which
drones will "hunt, identify, and kill the enemy based on
calculations made by software, not decisions made by humans".
<br><br>
The army has also carried out UAV training exercises at Dugway Proving
Ground in Utah and, earlier this year, the navy launched its X-47B, a
next-generation semi-autonomous stealth drone, on its first flight at
Edwards Air Force Base in California. <br><br>
That flying robot - designed to operate from the decks of aircraft
carriers - has since been sent on to Maryland's Naval Air Station
Patuxent River for further testing. At nearby Webster Field, the navy
worked out kinks in its Fire Scout pilotless helicopter, which has also
been tested at Fort Rucker and Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, as well as
Florida's Mayport Naval Station and Jacksonville Naval Air Station.
<br><br>
The latter base was also where the Navy's Broad Area Maritime
Surveillance (BAMS) unmanned aerial system was developed. It is now based
there and at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington state.
<br><br>
<b>Foreign jewels in the crown</b> <br>
The navy is actively looking for a suitable site in the Western Pacific
for a BAMS base, and is currently in talks with several Persian Gulf
states about a site in the Middle East. It already has Global Hawks
perched at its base in Sigonella, Italy. <br><br>
The air force is now negotiating with Turkey to relocate some of the
Predator drones still operating in Iraq to the giant air base at Incirlik
next year. Many different UAVs have been based in Iraq since the American
invasion of that country, including small tactical models like the
Raven-B that troops launched by hand from Kirkuk Regional Air Base,
Shadow UAVs that flew from Forward Operating Base Normandy in Baqubah
province, Predators operating out of Balad Air Base, miniature Desert
Hawk drones launched from Tallil Air Base, and Scan Eagles based at
al-Asad Air Base. <br><br>
Elsewhere in the Greater Middle East, according to Aviation Week, the
military is launching Global Hawks from al-Dhafra Air Base in the United
Arab Emirates, piloted by personnel stationed at Naval Air Station
Patuxent River in Maryland, to track "shipping traffic in the
Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Arabian Sea". <br><br>
There are unconfirmed reports that the CIA may be operating drones from
the Emirates as well. In the past, other UAVs have apparently been flown
from Kuwait's Ali al-Salem Air Base and al-Jaber Air Base, as well as
Seeb Air Base in Oman. <br><br>
At Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the air force runs an air operations
command and control facility, critical to the drone wars in Afghanistan
and Pakistan. The new secret CIA base on the Arabian Peninsula, used to
assassinate Anwar al-Awlaki, may or may not be the airstrip in Saudi
Arabia whose existence a senior US military official recently confirmed
to Fox News. In the past, the CIA has also operated UAVs out of Tuzel,
Uzbekistan. <br><br>
In neighboring Afghanistan, drones fly from many bases including
Jalalabad Air Base, Kandahar Air Field, the air base at Bagram, Camp
Leatherneck, Camp Dwyer, Combat Outpost Payne, Forward Operating Base
(FOB) Edinburgh and FOB Delaram II, to name a few. Afghan bases are,
however, more than just locations where drones take off and land.
<br><br>
It is a common misconception that US-based operators are the only ones
who "fly" America's armed drones. In fact, in and around
America's war zones, UAVs begin and end their flights under the control
of local "pilots". <br><br>
Take Afghanistan's massive Bagram Air Base. After performing preflight
checks alongside a technician who focuses on the drone's sensors, a local
airman sits in front of a Dell computer tower and multiple monitors, two
keyboards, a joystick, a throttle, a rollerball, a mouse and various
switches, overseeing the plane's takeoff before handing it over to a
stateside counterpart with a similar electronics set-up. After the
mission is complete, the controls are transferred back to the local
operators for the landing. Additionally, crews in Afghanistan perform
general maintenance and repairs on the drones. <br><br>
In the wake of a devastating suicide attack by an al-Qaeda double agent
that killed CIA officers and contractors at Forward Operating Base
Chapman in Afghanistan's eastern province of Khost in 2009, it came to
light that the facility was heavily involved in target selection for
drone strikes across the border in Pakistan. The drones themselves, as
the Washington Post noted at the time, were "flown from separate
bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan". <br><br>
Both the air force and the CIA have conducted operations in Pakistani air
space, with some missions originating in Afghanistan and others from
inside Pakistan. In 2006, images of what appear to be Predator drones
stationed at Shamsi Air Base in Pakistan's Balochistan province were
found on Google Earth and later published. <br><br>
In 2009, the New York Times reported that operatives from Xe Services,
the company formerly known as Blackwater, had taken over the task of
arming Predator drones at the CIA's "hidden bases in Pakistan and
Afghanistan". <br><br>
Following the May Navy SEAL raid into Pakistan that killed Bin Laden,
that country's leaders reportedly ordered the United States to leave
Shamsi. The Obama administration evidently refused and word leaked out,
according to the Washington Post, that the base was actually owned and
sublet to the US by the United Arab Emirates, which had built the
airfield "as an arrival point for falconry and other hunting
expeditions in Pakistan". <br><br>
The US and Pakistani governments have since claimed that Shamsi is no
longer being used for drone strikes. True or not, the US evidently also
uses other Pakistani bases for its drones, including possibly PAF Base
Shahbaz, located near the city of Jacocobad, and another base located
near Ghazi. <br><br>
<b>The new scramble for Africa</b> <br>
Recently, the headline story, when it comes to the expansion of the
empire of drone bases, has been Africa. For the past decade, the US
military has been operating out of Camp Lemonier, a former French Foreign
Legion base in the tiny African nation of Djibouti. Not long after the
attacks of September 11, 2001, it became a base for Predator drones and
has since been used to conduct missions over neighboring Somalia.
<br><br>
For some time, rumors have also been circulating about a secret American
base in Ethiopia. Recently, a US official revealed to the Washington Post
that discussions about a drone base there had been underway for up to
four years, "but that plan was delayed because 'the Ethiopians were
not all that jazzed'." Now construction is evidently underway, if
not complete. <br><br>
Then there is that base on the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. A small
fleet of navy and air force drones began operating openly there in 2009
to track pirates in the region's waters. Classified diplomatic cables
obtained by WikiLeaks, however, reveal that those drones have also
secretly been used to carry out missions in Somalia. <br><br>
"Based in a hangar located about a quarter-mile from the main
passenger terminal at the airport," the Post reports, the base
consists of three or four "Reapers and about 100 U.S. military
personnel and contractors, according to the cables." <br><br>
The US has also recently sent four smaller tactical drones to the African
nations of Uganda and Burundi for use by those countries' militaries.
<br><br>
<b>New and old empires</b> <br>
Even if the Pentagon budget were to begin to shrink, expansion of
America's empire of drone bases is a sure thing in the years to come.
Drones are now the bedrock of Washington's future military planning and -
with counterinsurgency out of favor - the preferred way of carrying out
wars abroad. <br><br>
During the eight years of George W Bush's presidency, as the US was
building up its drone fleets, the country launched wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq, and carried out limited strikes in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia,
using drones in at least four of those countries. <br><br>
In less than three years under Obama, the US has launched drone strikes
in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. It maintains
that it has carte blanche to kill suspected enemies in any nation (or at
least any nation in the global south). <br><br>
According to a report by the Congressional Budget Office published
earlier this year, "the Department of Defense plans to purchase
about 730 new medium-sized and large unmanned aircraft systems" over
the next decade. In practical terms, this means more drones like the
Reaper. <br><br>
Military officials told the Wall Street Journal that the Reaper "can
fly 1,150 miles [1,850 kilometers] from base, conduct missions, and
return home ... [T]he time a drone can stay aloft depends on how heavily
armed it is." According to a drone operator training document
obtained by TomDispatch, at maximum payload, meaning with 3,750 pounds
worth of Hellfire missiles and GBU-12 or GBU-30 bombs on board, the
Reaper can remain aloft for 16 to 20 hours. <br><br>
Even a glance at a world map tells you that, if the US is to carry out
ever more drone strikes across the developing world, it will need more
bases for its future UAVs. As an unnamed senior military official pointed
out to a Washington Post reporter, speaking of all those new drone bases
clustered around the Somali and Yemeni war zones, "If you look at it
geographically, it makes sense - you get out a ruler and draw the
distances [drones] can fly and where they take off from." <br><br>
Earlier this year, an analysis by TomDispatch determined that there are
more than 1,000 US military bases scattered across the globe - a shadowy
base-world providing plenty of existing sites that can, and no doubt
will, host drones. But facilities selected for a pre-drone world may not
always prove optimal locations for America's current and future
undeclared wars and assassination campaigns. So further expansion in
Africa, the Middle East and Asia is a likelihood. <br><br>
What are the air force's plans in this regard? Lieutenant Haynes was
typically circumspect, saying, "We are constantly evaluating
potential operating locations based on evolving mission needs." If
the past decade is any indication, those "needs" will only
continue to grow. <br><br>
<b><i>Nick Turse</b> is a historian, essayist, and investigative
journalist. The associate editor of TomDispatch.com and a senior editor
at Alternet.org, his latest book is</i>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1844674517/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20">
The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan</a> <i>(Verso Books). This
article marks another of Turse's joint Alternet/TomDispatch investigative
reports on US national security policy and the American empire.</i>
<br><br>
(Copyright 2011 Nick Turse.) <br><br>
(Used by permission
<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/">Tomdispatch</a>) <br><br>
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