64 Drone Bases Located On American Soil

MikeatWired writes "We like to think of the drone war as something far away, fought in the deserts of Yemen or the mountains of Afghanistan. But we now know it's closer than we thought, writes Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai at Danger Room. There are 64 drone bases on American soil. That includes 12 locations housing Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles, which can be armed. Public Intelligence, a non-profit that advocates for free access to information, released a map of military UAV activities in the United States on Tuesday. Assembled from military sources — especially this little-known June 2011 Air Force presentation (.pdf) — it is arguably the most comprehensive map so far of the spread of the Pentagon's unmanned fleet. What exact missions are performed at those locations, however, is not clear. Some bases might be used as remote cockpits to control the robotic aircraft overseas, some for drone pilot training. Others may also serve as imagery analysis depots."

Comments

Woah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, you mean the American military has bases on American soil?! Well stop the fucking presses!

Re:Woah!

[Robert Zenz]

Yeah! Totally right! We need to end that freaking military occupation of land which rightfully belongs to the Native Americans!

Re:Woah!

[flyingsquid]

Still it must be pointed out that even though we always had at least some standing Federal force, it is historical that there was great distrust of standing armies at the time of the founding of the US

Arguing about the intent of the Founding Fathers is a bullshit argument. Maybe it was the intent of the Founding Fathers not to have a large standing army. So what? It was also the intent of the Founding Fathers that women not be allowed to vote, that black people could be bought and sold as property and counted as 3/5 of a human being, and Indians should be evicted from their lands.

There are certain core principles that are timeless- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, government with the consent of the governed, freedom of speech and religion. But precisely how we promote those things has to change with the times and the technology. We can't all run around in tricorns with muskets, trading negroes and telling our wives to stay home, just because that's how the Founding Fathers would have done it.

You're kidding!?!

[DrgnDancer]

... Really?

There are also more US Army, Air Force, and Navy bases in the US than in the rest of the world combined. Many of them have tanks, warplanes, aircraft carriers, howitzers, and many other weapons that can be loaded and armed with live ammunition and dangerous explosives. I mean, who knew right? Oh wait... Everybody knew. Of course we have drone bases in the US. They have to train people, provide headquarters and on going operational training for units not deployed, stored undeployed hardware... this is the stupidest thing I've ever read.

What did these guys think? They send untested multimillion dollar drones over to Yemen where they hand them to an untrained unit and expect them to just figure out how they work in the field? It's just like any other military operation: for every deployed unit there are probably five waiting in reserve, getting readiness training, refitting, etc. Most of that happens in the US.

Airplanes and Ships have bases too

[Anonymous Coward]

We keep fighter jets, ships and even nuclear missiles on American soil (and waters) should we be worried about those too? It's barely newsworthy! I'd actually be surprised if there weren't drone bases here.

An airbase is an airbase.

[John Hasler]

And the USAF has many of them in the USA. Why do they suddenly become especially evil because some of the aircraft are unmanned?