Satellite images find possible US drone base in Saudi Arabia
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These satellite images show a remote airstrip deep in the desert of Saudi Arabia. It may or may not be the secret US drone base revealed by reporters earlier this week. But the base's hangars bear a remarkable resemblance to similar structures found on other American drone outposts. And its remote location -- dozens of kilometres from the nearest highway, and farther still to the nearest town -- suggests that this may be more than the average civilian airstrip.
According to accounts from the
Washington Post and
The New York Times, the US 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-Qaida's affiliate in Yemen, which borders Saudi Arabia. Since then, the US has
launched dozens of drone attacks on Yemeni targets. News organisations eventually found out about the base. But they agreed to keep it out of their pages -- part of an informal arrangement with the Obama administration, which claimed that the disclosure of the base's location, even in a general way, might jeopardize national security. On 5 February, that loose embargo was broken.
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"I believe it's the facility that the US uses to fly drones into Yemen," one officer says. "It's out in eastern Saudi Arabia, near Yemen and where the bad guys are supposed to hang out. It has those clamshell hangars, which we've seen before associated with US drones."
The former officer was also impressed by the base's remote location. "It's 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 kilometres up the existing highway and newly-built road," the ex-officer adds in an email. "It's a really major logistics feat. The way it fits inconspicuously into the terrain is also admirable."
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.
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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. It's unclear how the drone base changes this calculation, if at all.
The drone base's exposure is part of a series of revelations about the American target killing campaign that have accompanied John Brennan's 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.
Satellite images find possible US drone base in Saudi Arabia (Wired UK)
