As you read this, think about how much Pentagon activity adds to global
warming. I have finally gathered myself together enough to read Naomi
Klein's This Changes Everything, which has been on BARD for a while and on
Bookshare, for a year.
Miriam
Tomgram: Nick Turse, A Shadow War and an American Drone Unit Under Wraps
By Nick Turse
Posted on December 17, 2015, Printed on December 17, 2015
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176083/
Am I the only person who still remembers how Pentagon officials spoke of the
major military bases already on the drawing boards as the invasion of Iraq
ended in April 2003? It was taboo back then to refer to those future
installations as permanent bases. No one wanted to mouth anything that had
such an ugly (yet truthful) ring to it when it came to the desires of the
Bush administration to occupy and dominate the Greater Middle East for
generations to come. Charmingly enough, however, those Pentagon types
sometimes spoke instead of enduring camps, as if a summer frolic in the
countryside was at hand. Later, those enormous installations -- Balad Air
Base, the size of a small American town, had its own Pizza Hut, Subway, and
Popeye's franchises, "an ersatz Starbucks," a 24-hour Burger King, two post
exchanges, and four mess halls -- would be relabeled "contingency operating
bases." They were meant to be Washingtons ziggurats, its permanent
memorials to its own power in the region. With rare exceptions, American
reporters would nonetheless pay almost no attention to them or to the
obvious desire embedded in their very construction to control Iraq and the
rest of the Greater Middle East.
In all, from the massive Camp Victory outside Baghdad to tiny outposts in
the hinterlands, not to speak of the three-quarters-of-a-billion dollar
citadel Washington built in Baghdads green zone to house an embassy meant
to be the central command post for a future Pax Americana in the region, the
Pentagon built 505 bases in Iraq. In other words, Washington went on a
base-building bender there. And lest you imagine this as some kind of
anomaly, consider the 800 or more bases and outposts (depending on how you
counted them) that the U.S. built in Afghanistan. Eight years later, all 505
of the Iraqi bases had been abandoned, as most of the Afghan ones would be.
(A few of the Iraqi bases have since been reoccupied by American advisers
sent in to fight the Islamic State.)
Nonetheless, as Chalmers Johnson pointed out long ago (and TomDispatch
regular David Vine has made so clear recently), this was the U.S. version of
empire building. And in this century, despite the loss of those Iraqi bases
and most of the Afghan ones, Washington has continued its global
base-building extravaganza in a big way. It has constructed, expanded, or
reconfigured a staggering set of bases in the Greater Middle East and on the
island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and has been building drone bases
around the world. Then there's the remaining European bases that came out of
World War II, were expanded in the Cold War years, and have, in this
century, been driven deep into the former Eastern European imperial
possessions of the old Soviet Union. Add in another structure of bases in
Asia that also came out of World War II and that are once again added to,
reconfigured, and pivoted toward. Toss in as well the 60 or so small bases,
baselets, sites, storage areas, and the like that, in recent years, the U.S.
military has been constructing across Africa. Throw in some bases still in
Latin America and the Caribbean, including most infamously Guantánamo in
Cuba, and you have a structure for the imperial ages.
But like some madcap Dr. Seuss character, the Pentagon cant seem to stop
and so, the New York Times recently reported, it has now presented the White
House with a plan for a new (or refurbished) network of bases in the most
volatile regions of the planet. These shadowy hubs are meant mainly for
Americas secret warriors -- Special Operations troops and intelligence
operatives who would conduct counterterrorism missions for the foreseeable
future against the Islamic State and its various franchisees. This will
undoubtedly be news for Times readers, but not for TomDispatch ones. For
several years, Nick Turse has been reporting at this site on the building,
or building up of, both the hubs and spokes of this system in southern
Europe and across Africa (as well as on the way the U.S. military's pivot to
Africa has acted as a kind of blowback machine for terror outfits). Today,
hes at it again, revealing wars secretly being fought in our name from this
countrys ever-changing, ever-evolving empire of bases. Tom
Americas Secret African Drone War Against the Islamic State
Predators and the Neutralization of 69 People in Iraq and Syria
By Nick Turse
On October 7th, at an undisclosed location somewhere in Southwest Asia,
men wearing different types of camouflage and dun-colored boots gathered
before a black backdrop adorned with Arabic script. They were attending a
ceremony that mixed solemnity with celebration, the commemoration of a year
of combat that left scores of their enemies slain. One of their leaders
spoke of comraderie and honor, of forging a family and continuing a legacy.
While this might sound like the description of a scene from an Islamic State
(IS) video or a clip from a militia battling them, it was, in fact, a U.S.
Air Force inactivation ceremony. There, Lieutenant Colonel Dennis Drake
handed over to Colonel John Orchard the colors of his drone unit as it
slipped into an ethereal military limbo. But that doesnt mean the
gathering had no connection to the Islamic State.
It did.
Within days, Drake was back in the United States surprising his family at a
Disney musical spectacular. Meanwhile, his former unit ended its most
recent run having been responsible for the neutralization of 69 enemy
fighters, according to an officer who spoke at that October 7th ceremony.
Exactly whom the units drones neutralized remains unclear, but an Air Force
spokesman has for the first time revealed that Drakes force, based in the
Horn of Africa, spent more than a year targeting the Islamic State as part
of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), the undeclared war on the militant
group in Iraq and Syria. The Air Force has since taken steps to cover up
the actions of the unit.
Base-Building in the Horn of Africa
From November 20, 2014, until October 7, 2015, Drake commanded the 60th
Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, a unit operating under the auspices
of U.S. Air Forces Central Command (AFCENT), which flew MQ-1 Predator drones
from Chabelley Airfield in the tiny sun-baked African nation of Djibouti.
For the uninitiated, Chabelley is the other U.S. outpost in that country --
the site of Americas lone avowed major military facility in Africa, Camp
Lemonnier -- and a key node in an expanding archipelago of hush-hush
American outposts that have spread across that continent since 9/11.
Last week, in fact, the New York Times reported on new Pentagon plans to
counter the Islamic State by creating a hub-and-spoke network of bases and
outposts stretching across southern Europe, the Greater Middle East, and
Africa by expanding existing bases in Djibouti and Afghanistan -- and
more
basic installations in countries that could include Niger and Cameroon,
where the United States now carries out unarmed surveillance drone missions,
or will soon.
Weeks earlier, TomDispatch had revealed that those efforts were already well
underway, drawing attention to key bases in Spain and Italy as well as 60
U.S. military outposts, port facilities, and other sites dotting the African
continent, including those in Djibouti, Niger, and Cameroon. The Times
cited a senior Pentagon official who noted that some colleagues are
advocating a larger string of new bases in West Africa, a plan TomDispatch
had reported on early last year. The Times didnt mention Djiboutis secret
drone base by name, but that airfield, Drakes home for almost a year, is
now a crucial site in this expanding network of bases and was intimately
involved in the war on the Islamic State a year before the Times took
notice.
A few years ago, Chabelley was little more than a tarmac in the midst of a
desert wasteland, an old French Foreign Legion outpost that had seemingly
gone to seed. About 10 kilometers away, Camp Lemonnier, which shares a
runway with the international airport in Djiboutis capital, was handling
Americas fighter aircraft and cargo planes, as well as drones carrying out
secret assassination missions in Yemen and Somalia. By 2012, an average of
16 U.S. drones and four fighter jets were taking off or landing there each
day. Soon, however, local air traffic controllers in the predominantly
Muslim nation became incensed about the drones being used to kill fellow
Muslims. At about the same time, those robotic planes taking off from the
base began crashing, although the Air Force did not find Djiboutians
responsible.
In February 2013, the Pentagon asked Congress to provide funding for
minimal facilities necessary to enable temporary operations at Chabelley.
That June, as the House Armed Services Committee noted, the Government of
Djibouti mandated that operations of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) cease
from Camp Lemonnier, while allowing such operations to relocate to Chabelley
Airfield. By the fall, the U.S. drone fleet had indeed been transferred to
the more remote airstrip. Since then, Chabelley Airfield has become more
permanent. And it appears to have grown, says Dan Gettinger, co-founder
and co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College and
the author of a guide to identifying drone bases from satellite imagery.
Despite the supposedly temporary nature of the site, U.S. Africa Command
(AFRICOM) directed an expansion of operations at Chabelley and, in May
2014, the U.S. signed a long-term implementing arrangement with the
Djiboutian government to establish the airfield as an enduring base,
according to documents provided to the House Appropriations Committee
earlier this year by the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller).
Click here to see a larger version
Chabelley Airfield, satellite photo, April 2013.
Click here to see a larger version
Chabelley Airfield, satellite photo, August 2015.
The Djiboutian Solution to the Islamic State
As 2014 was coming to a close, Lieutenant Colonel Dennis Drake took command
of the 60th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron at Chabelley. Under his
watch, the unit reportedly carried out combat operations in support of three
combatant commanders. AFCENT failed to respond to a request for
clarification about which commands were involved, but Gettinger speculates
that AFRICOM; U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), responsible for the Greater
Middle East; and Special Operations Command were the most likely.
Before U.S. drones moved from Camp Lemonnier to Chabelley, according to
secret Pentagon documents exposed by the Intercept in October, a Special
Operations task force based there conducted a drone assassination campaign
in nearby Yemen and Somalia. Gettinger believes the missions continued
after the move. We know that MQ-1s have been involved in counterterrorism
operations in the Horn of Africa and Predators have for many years been
flying missions over Yemen, he told me recently by phone, noting however
that the strikes in Yemen have slowed of late.
There were no U.S. drone strikes reported in Yemen in November, the second
calendar month this year without a reported attack, researchers with the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism noted earlier this month. After a lull
since July, a November drone strike in Somalia killed at least five people,
according to local reports. And just last week, the Pentagon announced that
another U.S. strike in Somalia had killed Abdirahman Sandhere, a senior
leader of the militant group al-Shabaab.
Drakes 60th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, however, focused its
firepower on another target: the Islamic State. The unit was a large
contributor to OIR, according to Major Tim Smith of AFCENT Public Affairs,
and executed combat flight operations for AFCENT in support of Operation
Inherent Resolve.
Based in Africa, it was, according to Lieutenant Colonel Kristi Beckman,
director of public affairs at the Combined Air Operations Center at al-Udeid
air base in Qatar, a geographically separated unit. By the beginning of
October 2015, drones flown out of Chabelley had already logged more than
24,000 hours of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR),
according to the chief of operations analysis and reconstructions of the
380th Expeditionary Operations Group, its parent unit. (In an Air Force news
release, that officer was identified only as Major Kori, evidently to
obscure his identity.) According to Kori, Chabelleys drones were also
responsible for the neutralization of 69 enemy fighters, including five
high-valued individuals.
AFCENT failed to provide additional details about the missions, those
targeted, or that euphemism, neutralization, which was once a favored term
of the CIAs often muddled and sometimes murderous Phoenix Program that
targeted the civilian infrastructure of Americas enemies during the
Vietnam War. Beckman did, however, confirm that neutralizations took
place in Iraq and/or Syria.
Click here to see a larger version
A satellite photo of Predator and Reaper drones at Chabelley Airfield during
Lieutenant Colonel Dennis Drakes time in command of the 60th Expeditionary
Reconnaissance Squadron.
Despite the loss of a unit that had flown tens of thousands of hours of ISR
missions and attacked scores of targets, Smith says that Americas war on
the Islamic State has not suffered. Coalition efforts in the region are
not hampered, he assured me. Operation Inherent Resolve has the personnel
and assets necessary to continue aerial dominance within the region,
according to Smith. Though the squadron isnt needed anymore, there is
sufficient capability within the AOR [area of operations] to ensure the
needs of the mission are met.
The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning for Drones in Djibouti?
Some commentators have speculated that the transfer of the 60th
Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadrons Predators indicates a possible end
to U.S. drone missions from Djibouti. Others suggest that the move offers a
clear indication of demands for the robot aircraft elsewhere in the world.
Theres no question about the demand for drones. The Air Force pushed back
plans to retire the Predator by a year -- until 2018 -- and began
outsourcing combat air patrols to civilian contractors to deal with a
paucity of drone pilots at a moment of expanding operations. Last week, it
unveiled a $3 billion plan, which must be approved by Congress, to
significantly expand its drone program by doubling the number of pilots,
deploying them to more bases, and adding scores of new drones to its
arsenal.
All of this comes at a time when, according to a top AFRICOM commander, the
Islamic State is making inroads in Africa from Nigeria to Somalia, and
especially in Libya. "If Raqqa [the capital of its caliphate in Syria] is
the nucleus, the nearest thing to the divided nucleus is probably Sirte,
said Vice Admiral Michael Franken, the command's deputy for military
operations, speaking of a Libyan city in which IS fighters are deeply
entrenched. From there they look to export their terror into Europe and
elsewhere.
Dan Gettinger sees no end in sight for the use of the Djiboutian airfield or
of American drones flying from there. All the signs point to a more
permanent installation at Chabelley, he says, noting a string of
construction contracts awarded for the base in recent years. Indeed, at the
end of October, Navy Seabees were constructing another aircraft maintenance
pad there. This month, they are working to extend the apron -- where
aircraft can be parked and serviced -- at the drone base. Its the Predator
thats on its way out, he tells me. I think the MQ-1 is becoming old hat at
this point.
Like Gettinger, Jack Serle of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism sees
the larger, more heavily armed cousins of the Predator, MQ-9 Reapers, as the
future of drone operations at the satellite Djiboutian base. I don't think
this means the Predators the 60th launched and recovered are being retired
-- I think they'll have been redeployed, he told me by email. And I don't
think this means Chabelley is denuded of drones. I think it means Reapers
only will be operating out of there.
The personnel that were assigned to the 60th were sent back to the states
to retrain on other weapon systems and the assets were redistributed to the
states, [European Command], and CENTCOM, AFCENTs Major Tim Smith told me.
And this unit has not been replaced with another. Military press
materials suggest, however, that members of the 870th Air Expeditionary
Squadron and the 33rd Expeditionary Special Operations Squadron have
recently been operating at Chabelley airfield. The latter unit has been
known to fly Reapers from there.
Family Planning
U.S. Air Forces Central Command failed to provide additional information in
response to multiple requests for clarification about missions carried out
by the 60th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron. Due to force protection
concerns and operational security, I cannot discuss further, Smith
explained, although how the security of an inactive unit could be
compromised was unclear. Smith also referred me to AFRICOM for answers.
That command, however, failed to respond to repeated questions about drone
operations flown from Chabelley.
During the course of my reporting, the Air Force news release about the
October 7th inactivation ceremony was removed from the AFCENT website,
leaving only an error message -- "404 - Page not found!" -- where an article
with minimalist details about the neutralization of enemy fighters by
drones once stood. AFCENT failed to reply to a request for further
information on the reason the story was withdrawn.
Nor did the command respond to a request for an interview with Lieutenant
Colonel Dennis Drake. Before he traveled home to surprise his own family,
however, Drake spoke of the family he had forged as, in the words of Major
Kori, he engaged enemies of the United States from Chabelley Airfield.
My desire at the beginning was simple: make the squadron a family while
still continuing the tradition of excellence the previous commanders already
established, said Drake. [I]f I took care of the people they took care of
the mission... I am most proud of the family this squadron became.
Today, those words, along with photos of the ceremony, have vanished from
AFCENTs website, joining a raft of information about Americas war against
the Islamic State, operations in Africa, and drone campaigns that the
military has no interest in sharing with the taxpayers who foot the bill for
all of it and in whose name its carried out. For more than a year, U.S.
drones flying out of Djibouti waged a secret war against the Islamic State.
For more than a year, it went unreported on the nightly news, in the
countrys flagship newspapers, or evidently anywhere else.
The New York Times now reports that "the Pentagon has proposed a new plan to
the White House to build up a string of military bases in Africa" and
beyond, "bring[ing] an ad hoc series of existing bases into one coherent
system that would be able to confront regional threats from the Islamic
State, Al Qaeda, or other terrorist groups." But the expansion of Chabelley,
the far flung network of bases of which its a part, and the war on the
Islamic State waged from it suggest that there is little "new" about the
proposal. The facts on the ground indicate that the Pentagons plan has been
underway for a long time. Whats new is its emergence from the shadows.
Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch and a fellow at the Nation
Institute. A 2014 Izzy Award and American Book Award winner for his book
Kill Anything That Moves, his pieces have appeared in the New York Times,
the Intercept, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at
TomDispatch. His latest book is Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and
Secret Ops in Africa.
Copyright 2015 Nick Turse
© 2015 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176083
Tomgram: Nick Turse, A Shadow War and an American Drone Unit Under Wraps
By Nick Turse
Posted on December 17, 2015, Printed on December 17, 2015
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176083/
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: I was overwhelmed by the generosity of your
response to TDs end-of-the-year appeal for the funds that do keep us
rolling along. I only wish I could thank every one of you individually for
what youve done to help us. Unfortunately, if I did so, TomDispatch might
have to cease operations for the week. But I hope you know how much this
means to us. If, by the way, you meant to give in this final holiday moment
of 2015 and haven't gotten around to it yet, please visit our donation page.
While youre there, check out the range of signed, personalized books you
can get in return for a contribution of $100 or more. Believe me, every
dollar really does count for us! Tom ]
Am I the only person who still remembers how Pentagon officials spoke of the
major military bases already on the drawing boards as the invasion of Iraq
ended in April 2003? It was taboo back then to refer to those future
installations as permanent bases. No one wanted to mouth anything that had
such an ugly (yet truthful) ring to it when it came to the desires of the
Bush administration to occupy and dominate the Greater Middle East for
generations to come. Charmingly enough, however, those Pentagon types
sometimes spoke instead of enduring camps, as if a summer frolic in the
countryside was at hand. Later, those enormous installations -- Balad Air
Base, the size of a small American town, had its own Pizza Hut, Subway, and
Popeye's franchises, "an ersatz Starbucks," a 24-hour Burger King, two post
exchanges, and four mess halls -- would be relabeled "contingency operating
bases." They were meant to be Washingtons ziggurats, its permanent
memorials to its own power in the region. With rare exceptions, American
reporters would nonetheless pay almost no attention to them or to the
obvious desire embedded in their very construction to control Iraq and the
rest of the Greater Middle East.
In all, from the massive Camp Victory outside Baghdad to tiny outposts in
the hinterlands, not to speak of the three-quarters-of-a-billion dollar
citadel Washington built in Baghdads green zone to house an embassy meant
to be the central command post for a future Pax Americana in the region, the
Pentagon built 505 bases in Iraq. In other words, Washington went on a
base-building bender there. And lest you imagine this as some kind of
anomaly, consider the 800 or more bases and outposts (depending on how you
counted them) that the U.S. built in Afghanistan. Eight years later, all 505
of the Iraqi bases had been abandoned, as most of the Afghan ones would be.
(A few of the Iraqi bases have since been reoccupied by American advisers
sent in to fight the Islamic State.)
Nonetheless, as Chalmers Johnson pointed out long ago (and TomDispatch
regular David Vine has made so clear recently), this was the U.S. version of
empire building. And in this century, despite the loss of those Iraqi bases
and most of the Afghan ones, Washington has continued its global
base-building extravaganza in a big way. It has constructed, expanded, or
reconfigured a staggering set of bases in the Greater Middle East and on the
island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and has been building drone bases
around the world. Then there's the remaining European bases that came out of
World War II, were expanded in the Cold War years, and have, in this
century, been driven deep into the former Eastern European imperial
possessions of the old Soviet Union. Add in another structure of bases in
Asia that also came out of World War II and that are once again added to,
reconfigured, and pivoted toward. Toss in as well the 60 or so small bases,
baselets, sites, storage areas, and the like that, in recent years, the U.S.
military has been constructing across Africa. Throw in some bases still in
Latin America and the Caribbean, including most infamously Guantánamo in
Cuba, and you have a structure for the imperial ages.
But like some madcap Dr. Seuss character, the Pentagon cant seem to stop
and so, the New York Times recently reported, it has now presented the White
House with a plan for a new (or refurbished) network of bases in the most
volatile regions of the planet. These shadowy hubs are meant mainly for
Americas secret warriors -- Special Operations troops and intelligence
operatives who would conduct counterterrorism missions for the foreseeable
future against the Islamic State and its various franchisees. This will
undoubtedly be news for Times readers, but not for TomDispatch ones. For
several years, Nick Turse has been reporting at this site on the building,
or building up of, both the hubs and spokes of this system in southern
Europe and across Africa (as well as on the way the U.S. military's pivot to
Africa has acted as a kind of blowback machine for terror outfits). Today,
hes at it again, revealing wars secretly being fought in our name from this
countrys ever-changing, ever-evolving empire of bases. Tom
Americas Secret African Drone War Against the Islamic State
Predators and the Neutralization of 69 People in Iraq and Syria
By Nick Turse
On October 7th, at an undisclosed location somewhere in Southwest Asia,
men wearing different types of camouflage and dun-colored boots gathered
before a black backdrop adorned with Arabic script. They were attending a
ceremony that mixed solemnity with celebration, the commemoration of a year
of combat that left scores of their enemies slain. One of their leaders
spoke of comraderie and honor, of forging a family and continuing a legacy.
While this might sound like the description of a scene from an Islamic State
(IS) video or a clip from a militia battling them, it was, in fact, a U.S.
Air Force inactivation ceremony. There, Lieutenant Colonel Dennis Drake
handed over to Colonel John Orchard the colors of his drone unit as it
slipped into an ethereal military limbo. But that doesnt mean the gathering
had no connection to the Islamic State.
It did.
Within days, Drake was back in the United States surprising his family at a
Disney musical spectacular. Meanwhile, his former unit ended its most
recent run having been responsible for the neutralization of 69 enemy
fighters, according to an officer who spoke at that October 7th ceremony.
Exactly whom the units drones neutralized remains unclear, but an Air Force
spokesman has for the first time revealed that Drakes force, based in the
Horn of Africa, spent more than a year targeting the Islamic State as part
of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), the undeclared war on the militant
group in Iraq and Syria. The Air Force has since taken steps to cover up the
actions of the unit.
Base-Building in the Horn of Africa
From November 20, 2014, until October 7, 2015, Drake commanded the 60th
Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, a unit operating under the auspices
of U.S. Air Forces Central Command (AFCENT), which flew MQ-1 Predator drones
from Chabelley Airfield in the tiny sun-baked African nation of Djibouti.
For the uninitiated, Chabelley is the other U.S. outpost in that country --
the site of Americas lone avowed major military facility in Africa, Camp
Lemonnier -- and a key node in an expanding archipelago of hush-hush
American outposts that have spread across that continent since 9/11.
Last week, in fact, the New York Times reported on new Pentagon plans to
counter the Islamic State by creating a hub-and-spoke network of bases and
outposts stretching across southern Europe, the Greater Middle East, and
Africa by expanding existing bases in Djibouti and Afghanistan -- and
more
basic installations in countries that could include Niger and Cameroon,
where the United States now carries out unarmed surveillance drone missions,
or will soon.
Weeks earlier, TomDispatch had revealed that those efforts were already well
underway, drawing attention to key bases in Spain and Italy as well as 60
U.S. military outposts, port facilities, and other sites dotting the African
continent, including those in Djibouti, Niger, and Cameroon. The Times cited
a senior Pentagon official who noted that some colleagues are advocating a
larger string of new bases in West Africa, a plan TomDispatch had reported
on early last year. The Times didnt mention Djiboutis secret drone base by
name, but that airfield, Drakes home for almost a year, is now a crucial
site in this expanding network of bases and was intimately involved in the
war on the Islamic State a year before the Times took notice.
A few years ago, Chabelley was little more than a tarmac in the midst of a
desert wasteland, an old French Foreign Legion outpost that had seemingly
gone to seed. About 10 kilometers away, Camp Lemonnier, which shares a
runway with the international airport in Djiboutis capital, was handling
Americas fighter aircraft and cargo planes, as well as drones carrying out
secret assassination missions in Yemen and Somalia. By 2012, an average of
16 U.S. drones and four fighter jets were taking off or landing there each
day. Soon, however, local air traffic controllers in the predominantly
Muslim nation became incensed about the drones being used to kill fellow
Muslims. At about the same time, those robotic planes taking off from the
base began crashing, although the Air Force did not find Djiboutians
responsible.
In February 2013, the Pentagon asked Congress to provide funding for
minimal facilities necessary to enable temporary operations at Chabelley.
That June, as the House Armed Services Committee noted, the Government of
Djibouti mandated that operations of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) cease
from Camp Lemonnier, while allowing such operations to relocate to Chabelley
Airfield. By the fall, the U.S. drone fleet had indeed been transferred to
the more remote airstrip. Since then, Chabelley Airfield has become more
permanent. And it appears to have grown, says Dan Gettinger, co-founder and
co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College and the
author of a guide to identifying drone bases from satellite imagery.
Despite the supposedly temporary nature of the site, U.S. Africa Command
(AFRICOM) directed an expansion of operations at Chabelley and, in May
2014, the U.S. signed a long-term implementing arrangement with the
Djiboutian government to establish the airfield as an enduring base,
according to documents provided to the House Appropriations Committee
earlier this year by the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller).
Click here to see a larger version
Chabelley Airfield, satellite photo, April 2013.
Click here to see a larger version
Chabelley Airfield, satellite photo, August 2015.
The Djiboutian Solution to the Islamic State
As 2014 was coming to a close, Lieutenant Colonel Dennis Drake took command
of the 60th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron at Chabelley. Under his
watch, the unit reportedly carried out combat operations in support of three
combatant commanders. AFCENT failed to respond to a request for
clarification about which commands were involved, but Gettinger speculates
that AFRICOM; U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), responsible for the Greater
Middle East; and Special Operations Command were the most likely.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608464636/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608464636/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20Before U.S.
drones moved from Camp Lemonnier to Chabelley, according to secret Pentagon
documents exposed by the Intercept in October, a Special Operations task
force based there conducted a drone assassination campaign in nearby Yemen
and Somalia. Gettinger believes the missions continued after the move. We
know that MQ-1s have been involved in counterterrorism operations in the
Horn of Africa and Predators have for many years been flying missions over
Yemen, he told me recently by phone, noting however that the strikes in
Yemen have slowed of late.
There were no U.S. drone strikes reported in Yemen in November, the second
calendar month this year without a reported attack, researchers with the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism noted earlier this month. After a lull
since July, a November drone strike in Somalia killed at least five people,
according to local reports. And just last week, the Pentagon announced that
another U.S. strike in Somalia had killed Abdirahman Sandhere, a senior
leader of the militant group al-Shabaab.
Drakes 60th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, however, focused its
firepower on another target: the Islamic State. The unit was a large
contributor to OIR, according to Major Tim Smith of AFCENT Public Affairs,
and executed combat flight operations for AFCENT in support of Operation
Inherent Resolve.
Based in Africa, it was, according to Lieutenant Colonel Kristi Beckman,
director of public affairs at the Combined Air Operations Center at al-Udeid
air base in Qatar, a geographically separated unit. By the beginning of
October 2015, drones flown out of Chabelley had already logged more than
24,000 hours of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR),
according to the chief of operations analysis and reconstructions of the
380th Expeditionary Operations Group, its parent unit. (In an Air Force news
release, that officer was identified only as Major Kori, evidently to
obscure his identity.) According to Kori, Chabelleys drones were also
responsible for the neutralization of 69 enemy fighters, including five
high-valued individuals.
AFCENT failed to provide additional details about the missions, those
targeted, or that euphemism, neutralization, which was once a favored term
of the CIAs often muddled and sometimes murderous Phoenix Program that
targeted the civilian infrastructure of Americas enemies during the
Vietnam War. Beckman did, however, confirm that neutralizations took place
in Iraq and/or Syria.
Click here to see a larger version
A satellite photo of Predator and Reaper drones at Chabelley Airfield during
Lieutenant Colonel Dennis Drakes time in command of the 60th Expeditionary
Reconnaissance Squadron.
Despite the loss of a unit that had flown tens of thousands of hours of ISR
missions and attacked scores of targets, Smith says that Americas war on
the Islamic State has not suffered. Coalition efforts in the region are not
hampered, he assured me. Operation Inherent Resolve has the personnel and
assets necessary to continue aerial dominance within the region, according
to Smith. Though the squadron isnt needed anymore, there is sufficient
capability within the AOR [area of operations] to ensure the needs of the
mission are met.
The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning for Drones in Djibouti?
Some commentators have speculated that the transfer of the 60th
Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadrons Predators indicates a possible end
to U.S. drone missions from Djibouti. Others suggest that the move offers a
clear indication of demands for the robot aircraft elsewhere in the world.
Theres no question about the demand for drones. The Air Force pushed back
plans to retire the Predator by a year -- until 2018 -- and began
outsourcing combat air patrols to civilian contractors to deal with a
paucity of drone pilots at a moment of expanding operations. Last week, it
unveiled a $3 billion plan, which must be approved by Congress, to
significantly expand its drone program by doubling the number of pilots,
deploying them to more bases, and adding scores of new drones to its
arsenal.
All of this comes at a time when, according to a top AFRICOM commander, the
Islamic State is making inroads in Africa from Nigeria to Somalia, and
especially in Libya. "If Raqqa [the capital of its caliphate in Syria] is
the nucleus, the nearest thing to the divided nucleus is probably Sirte,
said Vice Admiral Michael Franken, the command's deputy for military
operations, speaking of a Libyan city in which IS fighters are deeply
entrenched. From there they look to export their terror into Europe and
elsewhere.
Dan Gettinger sees no end in sight for the use of the Djiboutian airfield or
of American drones flying from there. All the signs point to a more
permanent installation at Chabelley, he says, noting a string of
construction contracts awarded for the base in recent years. Indeed, at the
end of October, Navy Seabees were constructing another aircraft maintenance
pad there. This month, they are working to extend the apron -- where
aircraft can be parked and serviced -- at the drone base. Its the Predator
thats on its way out, he tells me. I think the MQ-1 is becoming old hat at
this point.
Like Gettinger, Jack Serle of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism sees
the larger, more heavily armed cousins of the Predator, MQ-9 Reapers, as the
future of drone operations at the satellite Djiboutian base. I don't think
this means the Predators the 60th launched and recovered are being retired
-- I think they'll have been redeployed, he told me by email. And I don't
think this means Chabelley is denuded of drones. I think it means Reapers
only will be operating out of there.
The personnel that were assigned to the 60th were sent back to the states
to retrain on other weapon systems and the assets were redistributed to the
states, [European Command], and CENTCOM, AFCENTs Major Tim Smith told me.
And this unit has not been replaced with another. Military press materials
suggest, however, that members of the 870th Air Expeditionary Squadron and
the 33rd Expeditionary Special Operations Squadron have recently been
operating at Chabelley airfield. The latter unit has been known to fly
Reapers from there.
Family Planning
U.S. Air Forces Central Command failed to provide additional information in
response to multiple requests for clarification about missions carried out
by the 60th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron. Due to force protection
concerns and operational security, I cannot discuss further, Smith
explained, although how the security of an inactive unit could be
compromised was unclear. Smith also referred me to AFRICOM for answers. That
command, however, failed to respond to repeated questions about drone
operations flown from Chabelley.
During the course of my reporting, the Air Force news release about the
October 7th inactivation ceremony was removed from the AFCENT website,
leaving only an error message -- "404 - Page not found!" -- where an article
with minimalist details about the neutralization of enemy fighters by
drones once stood. AFCENT failed to reply to a request for further
information on the reason the story was withdrawn.
Nor did the command respond to a request for an interview with Lieutenant
Colonel Dennis Drake. Before he traveled home to surprise his own family,
however, Drake spoke of the family he had forged as, in the words of Major
Kori, he engaged enemies of the United States from Chabelley Airfield.
My desire at the beginning was simple: make the squadron a family while
still continuing the tradition of excellence the previous commanders already
established, said Drake. [I]f I took care of the people they took care of
the mission... I am most proud of the family this squadron became.
Today, those words, along with photos of the ceremony, have vanished from
AFCENTs website, joining a raft of information about Americas war against
the Islamic State, operations in Africa, and drone campaigns that the
military has no interest in sharing with the taxpayers who foot the bill for
all of it and in whose name its carried out. For more than a year, U.S.
drones flying out of Djibouti waged a secret war against the Islamic State.
For more than a year, it went unreported on the nightly news, in the
countrys flagship newspapers, or evidently anywhere else.
The New York Times now reports that "the Pentagon has proposed a new plan to
the White House to build up a string of military bases in Africa" and
beyond, "bring[ing] an ad hoc series of existing bases into one coherent
system that would be able to confront regional threats from the Islamic
State, Al Qaeda, or other terrorist groups." But the expansion of Chabelley,
the far flung network of bases of which its a part, and the war on the
Islamic State waged from it suggest that there is little "new" about the
proposal. The facts on the ground indicate that the Pentagons plan has been
underway for a long time. Whats new is its emergence from the shadows.
Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch and a fellow at the Nation
Institute. A 2014 Izzy Award and American Book Award winner for his book
Kill Anything That Moves, his pieces have appeared in the New York Times,
the Intercept, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at
TomDispatch. His latest book is Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and
Secret Ops in Africa.
Copyright 2015 Nick Turse
© 2015 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176083
