Source: AlterNet.orgNick Turse
A ground-breaking investigation examines the most secret aspect of
America's shadowy drone wars and maps out a world of hidden bases
dotting the globe.
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 that almost no one talks about at an air
base in the United Arab Emirates.
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 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.
Run by the military, the
Central Intelligence Agency, 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.
Using military documents, press
accounts and other open source information, an in-depth analysis by
AlterNet has identified at least 60 bases integral to U.S. 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.
A Galaxy of Bases
Over the last 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 21st, 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.” 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 (suspected of being
Saudi Arabia).
Post journalists Greg Miller and Craig Whitlock reported that the “Obama administration is
assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism
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-Aulaqi in Yemen.
With the killing of al-Aulaqi,
the Obama Administration has expanded its armed drone campaign to no
fewer than six countries, though the CIA, which killed al-Aulaqi,
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 AlterNet
that, “for operational security reasons, we do not discuss worldwide
operating locations of Remotely Piloted Aircraft, to include numbers of
locations around the world.”
Still, those 60 military and
CIA bases around the world, directly connected to the drone program,
tell us a lot 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 continued
expanding as they have for more than a decade. 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, Lieutenant Colonel Haynes responded, “I have nothing
further to add to what I’ve already said.”
