Is This the Secret U.S. Drone Base in Saudi Arabia?

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Fri Feb 8 04:59:22 PST 2013


http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/secret-drone-base-2/

Is This the Secret U.S. Drone Base in Saudi Arabia?

BY NOAH SHACHTMAN

02.07.138:12 PM

These satellite images show a remote airstrip deep in the desert of Saudi
Arabia. It may or may not be the secret U.S. drone base revealed by reporters
earlier this week. But the basebs hangars bear a remarkable resemblance to
similar structures found on other American drone outposts. And its remote
location b dozens of miles from the nearest highway, and farther still to the
nearest town b suggests that this may be more than the average civilian
airstrip.

According to accounts from the Washington Post and The New York Times, the
U.S. built its secret Saudi base approximately two years ago. Its first
lethal mission was in September of 2011: a strike on Anwar al-Awlaki, the
American-born propagandist for al-Qaidabs affiliate in Yemen, which borders
Saudi Arabia. Since then, the U.S. has launched dozens of drone attacks on
Yemeni targets. News organizations eventually found out about the base. But
they agreed to keep it out of their pages b part of an informal arrangement
with the Obama administration, which claimed that the disclosure of the
basebs location, even in a general way, might jeopardize national security.
On Tuesday, that loose embargo was broken.

The location of the airfield. Click to enlarge. Image: via Bing Maps

The image of the airfield, available in Bing Maps, would be almost impossible
to discover randomly. At moderate resolutions, satellite images of the area
show nothing but sand dunes. Only on close inspection does the base reveal
itself. In Googlebs catalog of satellite pictures, the base doesnbt appear at
all.

The images show a trio of bclamshellb-style hangars, surrounded by fencing.
Each is more than 150 feet long and approximately 75 feet wide; thatbs
sufficient to hold U.S. Predator and Reaper drones. The hangars are slightly
larger, though similar in shape, to ones housing unmanned planes at Kandahar
Air Field in Afghanistan. Shamsi Air Field in Pakistan, which once held U.S.
drones, boasts a group of three hangars not unlike the ones of the Saudi
base. No remotely piloted aircraft are visible in the images. But a pair of
former American intelligence officers tell Danger Room that they are
reasonably sure that this is the base revealed by the media earlier this
week.

bI believe itbs the facility that the U.S. uses to fly drones into Yemen,b
one officer says. bItbs out in eastern Saudi Arabia, near Yemen and where the
bad guys are supposed to hang out. It has those clamshell hangars, which
webve seen before associated with U.S. drones.b

The former officer was also impressed by the basebs remote location.bItbs
way, way out in the Rub al Khali, otherwise known as Hell, and must have been
built, at least initially, with stuff flown into Sharorah and then trucked
more than 400 kilometers up the existing highway and newly-built road,b the
ex-officer adds in an e-mail. bItbs a really major logistics feat. The way it
fits inconspicuously into the terrain is also admirable.b

Three airstrips are visible in the pictures; two are big enough to land
drones or conventional light aircraft. A third runway, under construction, is
substantially longer and wider. In other words: The facility is growing, and
it is expanding to fly much larger planes.

The growth has been rapid. When the commercial imaging company Digital Globe
flew one of its satellites over the region on Nov. 17, 2010, there was no
base present. By the time the satellite made a pass on March 22, 2012, the
airfield was there. This construction roughly matches the timeline for the
Saudi base mentioned in the Post and in the Times.

bItbs obviously a military base,b says a second intelligence analyst, who
reviewed the images and asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity
of the subject. bItbs clearly an operating air base in the middle of nowhere,
but near the Yemeni border. You tell me what it is.b

If this picture does prove to be of a secret U.S. drone base, it wouldnbt be
the first clandestine American airfield revealed by public satellite imagery.
In 2009, for instance, Sen. Diane Feinstein accidentally revealed that the
U.S. was flying its robotic aircraft from Pakistani soil. The News of
Pakistan quickly dug through Google Earthbs archives to find Predator drones
sitting on a runway not far from the Jacobabad Air Base in Pakistan b one of
five airfields in the country used for unmanned attacks. The pictures proved
that the Pakistani officials were actively participating in the American
drone campaign, despite their public condemnation of the strikes. Until then,
such participation had only been suspected. While the drone attacks
continued, the U.S. was forced to withdraw from some of the bases.

So far, reaction to the Saudi base has been relatively muted. American forces
officially withdrew from Saudi Arabia years ago, in part because the presence
of foreign troops in the Muslim holy land so inflamed militants. Itbs unclear
how the drone base changes this calculation, if at all.

The drone basebs exposure is part of a series of revelations about the
American target killing campaign that have accompanied John Brennanbs
nomination to be the director of the CIA. Brennan currently oversees targeted
killing operations from his perch as White House counterterrorism adviser,
and would be responsible for executing many of the remotely piloted missions
as CIA chief.

In addition to the drone base disclosure, an unclassified Justice Department
white paper summing up the Obama administrationbs criteria for eliminating
U.S. citizens was leaked this week to NBC News; the document argues that a
judgment from an binformed, high-levelb official can mark an American or
robotic death b even without bclear evidence that a specific attack on U.S.
persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.b (.pdf) The
White House has since promised to give select Congressmen the classified and
detailed legal rationales behind the white paper. But Sen. Ron Wyden told
Brennan at his Senate confirmation hearing that the Justice Department is not
yet complying with President Obamabs promise to disclose those legal
memoranda. Feinstein said she was seeking eight such memos in total.

In their hours of questioning Brennan, however, the Senators didnbt once ask
the CIA nominee about the secret Saudi drone base. Perhaps thatbs because
they didnbt have a visual aid.





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