America's Secret Empire of Drone Bases: Its Full Extent Revealed for the First Time By Nick Turse AlterNet and TomDispatch

America's Secret Empire of Drone Bases: Its Full
Extent Revealed for the First Time
By Nick Turse
AlterNet and TomDispatch
Posted October 16, 2011; Printed October 23, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152756/

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."

Even in the face of government secrecy, however, much
can be discovered .  Here, then, for the record is a
AlterNet accounting of America's drone bases in the
United States and around the world.

The Near Abroad

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. Beside them, sensor operators manipulate
the TV camera, infrared camera, and other high-tech
sensors on board.  Their faces lit up by digital
displays showing video feeds from the battle zone, by
squeezing a trigger on a joystick one of these Air Force
"pilots" can loose a Hellfire missile on a person half a
world away.

While Creech gets the lion's share of attention -- it
even has its own drones on site -- numerous other bases
on U.S. soil have played critical roles in America's
drone wars.  The same video-game-style warfare is
carried out by U.S 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).
According to a factsheet provided to AlterNet 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.

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.  While at Langley Air
Force Base in Virginia, according to a report by the New
York Times earlier this year, 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 -- what they call "Death TV" -- while
instant-messaging and talking to commanders on the
ground in order to supply them with real-time
intelligence on enemy troop movements.

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.

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).  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.

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,
according to a report by National Defense magazine, "the
world's largest UAV training center."  There, hundreds
of employees of defense giant General Dynamics train
military personnel to fly smaller tactical drones like
the Hunter and 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.

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.  Recently,
Fort Benning also saw the early testing of true robotic
drones - which fly without human guidance or a hand on
any joystick.  This is considered, wrote the Washington
Post, 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."

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.  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, Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, and
Florida's Mayport Naval Station and Jacksonville Naval
Air Station.  The latter base was also where the Navy's
Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) unmanned aerial
system was developed and is now, along with Naval Air
Station Whidbey Island in Washington State, based.

Foreign Jewels in the Crown

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 for one in that
region, as well.  It already has Global Hawks perched at
its base in Sigonella, Italy.

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 Raven-B's  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 Airbase,
miniature Desert Hawk drones launched from Tallil Air
Base, and Scan Eagles based at Al Asad Air Base.

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."
There are unconfirmed reports that the CIA may be
operating drones from that country as well.  In the
past, at least, 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.

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-Aulaqi, may or may not be an airstrip in Saudi
Arabia whose existence a senior U.S. military official
recently confirmed to FOX News.  In the past, the CIA
has also operated UAVs out of Tuzel, Uzbekistan.

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.

It is a common misperception that U.S.-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."
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 and oversees 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.

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."

Both the Air Force and 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.  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."

Following the May Navy SEAL raid into Pakistan that
killed Osama 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 U.S. by the
United Arab Emirates, which had built the airfield "as
an arrival point for falconry and other hunting
expeditions in Pakistan."

The U.S. and Pakistani governments have since claimed
that Shamsi is no longer being used for drone strikes.
True or not, the U.S. evidently also uses other drone
bases in Pakistan, including possibly PAF Base Shahbaz,
located near the city of Jacocobad, and another base
located near Ghazi.

The New Scramble for Africa

Recently, the headline story, when it comes to the
expansion of the empire of drone bases, has been Africa.
For the last decade, the U.S. 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.

For some time, rumors have also been circulating about a
secret American base in Ethiopia.  Recently, a U.S.
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.

Then, of course, there is that drone 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.  "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."

The U.S. has also recently sent four smaller tactical
drones to the African nations of Uganda and Burundi for
use by those countries' own militaries.

New and Old Empires

Even if the Pentagon budget were to begin to shrink in
the coming years, 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.

During the eight years of George W. Bush's presidency,
as the U.S. 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.  In less than three years under President
Obama, the U.S. 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).

According to a report by the Congressional Budget office
published earlier this year, "the Department of Defense
(DoD) 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.

Military officials told the Wall Street Journal that the
Reaper "can fly 1,150 miles from base, conduct missions
and return home. the time a drone can stay aloft depends
on how heavily armed it is."  According to a drone
operator training document obtained by AlterNet, 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.  Even a
glance at a world map tells you that, if the U.S. 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."

Earlier this year, an analysis by TomDispatch.com
determined that there are more than 1,000 U.S. military
bases scattered across the globe -- a shadowy base-world
that provides 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 likely.

What are the Air Force's plans in this regard?
Lieutenant Colonel John Haynes was typically
circumspect.  "We are constantly evaluating potential
operating locations based on evolving mission needs," he
said.  If the last decade is any indication, those
"needs" will only continue to grow.

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com
and a senior editor at AlterNet. His latest book is The
Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso). You can
follow him on Twitter @NickTurse, on Tumblr, and on
Facebook. This article marks another of Turse's joint
Alternet/TomDispatch investigative reports on U.S.
national security policy and American empire.