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A Small Secret Airstrip In Africa Is the Future of America's Way of War
HughPickens.com writes: Reuters reports that the Pentagon is quietly building up a small airstrip in a remote region of east Africa that is a complex microcosm of how Washington runs military operations overseas — and how America's way of war will probably look for the foreseeable future. Chabelley Airfield is less than 10 miles from the capital of the small African nation of Djibouti but the small airport is the hub for America's drone operations in the nearby hotspots of Somalia and Yemen as part of its war against Islamic militants. "The U.S. military is being pressured into considering the adoption of more of a lily pad basing model in the wake of so much turbulence and warfare across the region," says Dr. Geoffrey Gresh. "Djibouti is a small, relatively safe ally that enables the U.S. special operators to carry out missions effectively across the continent." In September 2013, the Pentagon announced it was moving the pilotless aircraft from its main base at Camp Lemonnier to Chabelley with almost no fanfare. Africom and the Pentagon jealously guard information about their outposts in Africa, making it impossible to ascertain even basic facts — like a simple count — let alone just how many are integral to JSOC operations, drone strikes, and other secret activities. However a map in a Pentagon report indicates that there were 10 MQ-1 Predator drones and four larger, more far-ranging MQ-9 Reapers based at Camp Lemonnier in June 2012 before the move to Chabelley.
The Pentagon does not list Chabelley in its annual Base Structure Report, the only official compendium of American military facilities around the world. "The Chebelley base [is] a reflection of the growing presence of the U.S. military in Africa," says Dr. David Vine, author of 'Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World". "The [U.S.] military has gone to great lengths to disguise and downplay its growing presence in Africa generally in the hopes of avoiding negative attention and protests both in the U.S. and in African countries wary of the colonial-esque presence of foreign troops." American drones fly regular missions from Chabelley, an airstrip the French run with the approval of the Djiboutian government. Washington pays Djibouti for access to Paris' outpost. Part of the reason for this circuitous chain of responsibility could be the fact that the Pentagon's drone missions are often controversial. Critics contend targeted strikes against militants are illegal under American and international law and tantamount to assassination. "The military is easily capable of adapting to change, but they don't like to stop anything they feel is making their lives easier, or is to their benefit. And this certainly is, in their eyes, a very quick, clean way of doing things. It's a very slick, efficient way to conduct the war, without having to have the massive ground invasion mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan."
The Pentagon does not list Chabelley in its annual Base Structure Report, the only official compendium of American military facilities around the world. "The Chebelley base [is] a reflection of the growing presence of the U.S. military in Africa," says Dr. David Vine, author of 'Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World". "The [U.S.] military has gone to great lengths to disguise and downplay its growing presence in Africa generally in the hopes of avoiding negative attention and protests both in the U.S. and in African countries wary of the colonial-esque presence of foreign troops." American drones fly regular missions from Chabelley, an airstrip the French run with the approval of the Djiboutian government. Washington pays Djibouti for access to Paris' outpost. Part of the reason for this circuitous chain of responsibility could be the fact that the Pentagon's drone missions are often controversial. Critics contend targeted strikes against militants are illegal under American and international law and tantamount to assassination. "The military is easily capable of adapting to change, but they don't like to stop anything they feel is making their lives easier, or is to their benefit. And this certainly is, in their eyes, a very quick, clean way of doing things. It's a very slick, efficient way to conduct the war, without having to have the massive ground invasion mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan."
Why the heck did a purely-political article like this one end up on the front page of Slashdot?!
Is it just to stir up argument, to try to get more ad impressions?
It's hilarious that we see so many good Slashdot comments modded "Troll" or "Flamebait" so often, when it's stories like this that are far worse than those comments ever are.
And before anyone wastes their time pointing out that this submission is about drones, let me remind you that it isn't. It's about nothing more than the politics around drones. The technology itself is playing second fiddle in this story, well behind the politics.
Enough with the political articles, Hugh and the editors. We want real stories here, not junk like this!
Slick and efficient if you don't happen to be someone who lives in the affected countries:
30 people die for every "terrorist" killed by a drone, and that's with the Pentagon being about as liberal with the term as they were for "Vietcong" during Vietnam - meaning everyone who had potential to be a Vietcong who had a bullet in them was a Vietcong.
Even assasination doesn't carry that type of collateral damage.
Have gnu, will travel.
"Chabelley Airfield is less than 10 miles from the capital of the small African nation of Djibouti"
So much for the secret base
Same as the stories about Hillary and Flint, GMO crops, etc., etc.
In the past, force multipliers like rifles, grenades, and rockets were used to up the death toll while keeping the participants hands from being as bloodied, and it is unclear this has been for the better.
A rational young man forced to war by draft or patriotism is much, much more likely to quickly have his fill of it standing close to the death and horror.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It seems like whatever moral victory was obtained in the decolonization process in the 50s and 60s was lost (and then some) in the chaos and kleptocracy that followed.
Were the British colonies horrible, apartheid-style military dictatorships or were they something perhaps paternalistic but not repressive? Were many of them evolving in terms of local autonomy or civil rights, or just staying repressive?
I guess I'm trying not to assume their past was rosy, but I wonder how many adults who remember 1950s Rhodesia look back from Mugabe's Zimbabwe and think maybe being Rhodesian wasn't so bad.
I'd have to guess that access to the UK economy would have been beneficial and that the colonial officials would have made sure the roads and electricity worked.
Totally agree. I love technology. For politics and shit there is the everyday news
Now we have to move. Again. You'll pay for that.
Critics contend targeted strikes against militants are illegal under American and international law and tantamount to assassination.
Against American citizens? Sure, there's shaky legality there. Tell the IRS that you're not an American citizen and they'll laugh at you. So no, Derpa Derpa Bin Target saying, "I'm not a citizen!" doesn't cut it as an excuse, unless you're a robe-wearing idiot crapping down Lady Justice's mouth.
For everyone else?
Yeah, sorry, it's not the 17th century where you'd send a horseman with a very strongly worded protest because Conscript McGee took a potshot at General Butthead. Shit hasn't worked that way for centuries, and there's no going back. Don't want a Hellfire dropped on your head? Don't bring a rusty ass Toyota and an AK-47 up against a superpower.
So sorry that military action isn't tilting upon the field of chivalry.
I blame Rome. Rome burned out and didn't go deep enough in to Africa.
Rome laid waste across Western Europe, and "de-tribed" it, knocking down the small units of people bent on killing each other. From this void (when Rome retracted), we got the rise of the nation states, which while still bent on killing each other, it was much more macro than the tribalism that remained in Africa. 10-15 states killing each other is much more manageable (and costly) than 100-200 states do it. So, they tend to Not Do That, and use different sources of power to get their way.
If Rome pushed on and consolidated Africa, we'd probably have fewer issues with the continent today.
The goal is destabilization to scare off competing 'investments' and keep the Russians in a box. Mission accomplished!
Small, distributed bases make a lot of sense. A lesson I would hope was learned in Pearl Harbor. You know, *eggs in one basket*, etc. And not just for the drones, they blend in a tiny bit better... Could even make them unmanned, with automated fueling spigots and and weapons loading, operating in the dark.
When does Genesis launch?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
has been around for years. The US gets "invited" in by some emerging democracy, leader and builds a small camp with a runway.
Just like in another few nations in the region.
Just how very "very slick" and "efficient" can be found in the Drone Papers https://theintercept.com/drone...
The Pentagon's New Generation of Secret Military Bases (Jul. 16, 2012)
How the Pentagon is quietly transforming its overseas base empire and creating a dangerous new way of war.
http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
As for the US 'French" connection? Clinton Email Shows that Oil and Gold Were Behind Regime Change In Libya (01/09/2016)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...
Will the US vision of a remote war work? For that the US needs constant signals intelligence ie people have to walk around with electronics that is "on" and been in use. Shared electronics or electronics thats just been driven around randomly could be another part of the puzzle.
Another method was to hand out tagging and tracking systems to local "freedom fighters" or US trained "moderates" to then place near people of interest. Such efforts can get used to quickly settle local issues rather than the US expected role for easy leadership decapitation.
The US is still trying to reduce flight time and get more loitering time.
Great news for the contractors and mercenaries working hours. Just like the Vietnam war base funding, pacification ideas and search and destroy zones but no complex draft politics back home.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I don't like this kind of stuff very much. It seems like this administration is willing to get us involved in every conflict on the globe... but not very much involved. Enough to piss all the locals off, but not enough to affect the outcome of whatever is going on. I'd rather see the US adhere to the so-called "Powell Doctrine" (much older than Powell) - stay out of other peoples' business until significant national interests are really at stake. And if you have to go to war you don't do it half-assed.
It's not much of a "war" if your opponent has no way to defend themselves much less retaliate against your attacks.
Considering we also have a problem with cruelty, being able to determine when we are bombing a hospital and stopping the act, and making little kids fear the sky, I don't think assassination goes quite far enough to describe the US governments use of drones in combat. It's pure murder, caused by people who have gone insane with power, accountable to no one. Who will complain? The dead victims families? Who never saw the attacks coming? Who would take responsibility? A government that places no value on the lives of others during war, and places so much money into their war machine that attempting to get them to back down would require support from the entire world? No one should be able to kill like that. Not an individual, not a government, no one. The US government should be condemned and punished for their actions and the use of these things. I say that as a US Citizen, albeit as an AC, as even I would fear those drones being used on us.
The U.S. government has killed, or caused the death of, an estimated 11,000,000 people since the end of the 2nd world war.
War is extremely profitable for some corporations: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger. Bush and Cheney started a war that was profitable for them.
In some ways, the U.S. government is the most violent government on earth. For example, the U.S. has the largest percentage of its citizens in prison, of any country, in any century. The prison system is hugely profitable for prison corporations.
ACLU: With only 5% of the world's population, the U.S. has 25% of the world's prison population.
ThinkProgress: The United States Has The Largest Prison Population In The World -- And It's Growing.
The idea was that internal secret police had to be used to keep independence movements contained. The US did not want to be seen in public supporting such a role in post ww2 Africa. The US liked the idea of supporting new nations that would then be totally dependant on the US and its brands, services with no political issues.
The UK and some other EU powers tried to stay on for as long as they could under their own local leaders or more direct rule.
The West was even ready to swap to military dictatorships as long as their NSA and GCHQ stations got to stay in the region.
eg Silvermine, HMS Vacoas, Heliopolis, Kagnew Ethiopia.
Keeping a massive secret police was expensive for the UK. Other EU powers had cash flow issues after ww2 into the 1970's.
The wider media started to note the methods needed to keep independence movements down and what local leaders did under the cover of their colonial masters.
The cost and optics started to catch up with EU nations selling a freedom loving message into the 1950-70's.
Local autonomy or token civil rights was not freedom from another nations monarchy, rules, taxation, military.
Would any nation like to have its leadership, faith, courts ruled from another nation?
For the West it was often just about trade and mil access at the lowest cost. Full independence and huge new bank loans was cheaper than troops been lost on the ground.
Re "UK economy would have been.. " The UK did not have the free cash to run, police control parts of Africa and support its own internal post ww2 rebuilding.
Too many camera crews would have seen the results of UK police or mil actions and told the world after the 1950's.
The UK role in more Mau Mau Uprising like events would not have made for good TV every night if seen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Other nations had the same raw materials much cheaper or new advanced materials became more interesting globally.
Now the US has to go back and do the same deals with local leaders for bases.
China, even Vietnam had the real smarts when it came to supporting Africa. Help the locals with growing food, building rail, energy, mines, jobs ie not just huge cash loans that the West liked giving nations leadership so much.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Seriously, the summary is way too long.
What a bunch of text.
"It's hilarious that we see so many good Slashdot comments modded "Troll" or "Flamebait" so often, when it's stories like this that are far worse than those comments ever are."
Because Troll == 'I strongly disagree' and Flamebait == "Not only do I strongly disagree, but the poster might even be a Republican."
'cause STAR TREK already did this! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Because (frequent) submitter runs Peace Corp Online.
I come here for the love
I wonder if they yet have plans to rigged up a custom C130 refit for launching drones aerially and a C130 refit for recovery.
put C&C on an AWACS or similar aerial refuelable platform and you could just shit out some drones over a problem area 1000 miles away, perform whatever strikes necessary to start, then second refit c130 recovers the now weaponless drones.
course once the area is softened you could then established a small land based C&C / airstrip installation for long term coverage.
It's a curious argument, but Rome did colonize Africa. Most of North Africa was controlled by Rome and largely part of the Roman empire after the fall of Carthage and the Jugurthine war. And the Romans controlled most of the middle East, although beyond Damascus it was frequently challenged by the Parthians.
And pretty much all of those places are a train wreck now, with plenty of tribal conflicts. In fact, bribing tribal leaders to abandon loyalty to al Qaeda was one of the principal counterinsurgency strategies of the US in Iraq.
You might make the argument that the Romans didn't really eliminate tribalism, but what they did was Romanize them so that while they may have remained kind of tribal they adopted enough Roman culture that their commonalities outweighed their tribal differences to the point where trade and cooperation made the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
President Obama pointed out that our military spending is extensive and our enemies can't escape us. Glad our pilots can keep out of return fire.
Uhhhrrr. First of all, the colonies in Africa were not just British, everyone in Europe had a go. Not saying it was a proud thing, just stating a fact. Second of all, the arrogance that my country and all the other colonial countries had to Africa was in every sense of the word, repulsive. Imagine you are just going about your business, happily enjoying your life, drinking your milk, etcetera etcetera, and suddenly some shithead decides that isn't good enough, they are going to either abduct you and put you on the other side of the world farming cotton, if you are lucky enough to survive the trip (anglo-american version) or keep you where you are, and brutalise you into farming rubber on pain of having one or more your more favourite extremities hacked off (lesser known, but no less shitty belgian version)
That is colonialism. Take it at face value, if colonialism was beneficial and paternalistic, then it would not have the shitty reputation it has today, and it has the shitty reputation it has today, because it came with crimes committed so casually that you would rather drink your own shit than admit to them. Never mind the fucking fact that the buses ran on time.
You may as well be saying "well, so we killed your family... but we gave you a playstation! can you imagine what life was like before the playstation?! do you know where to get a playstation?"
Yes, Africa is a fucked up place. Can you even imagine for a second, how fucked up it would have been without our help?
That is how indefensible your point of view is.
Debunking venerated myths or persons is also unwelcome: viz
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
There should be a new mod category for this: -1, Apostasy.
The British colonies were not horrible apartheid-style military dictatorships, but French, Dutch and a couple of the Italian ones were.
There was a saying amongst the plantation owners in French Indochina (now Vietnam) that "Under every banana tree there is a lazy man" - It was not referring to the workers taking breaks, but to the bodies that were used as fertilizer.
I think the argument isn't that colonialism was good, but that just as European powers grew enough of a conscience to treat people decently and maybe clean up their mess, they instead left suddenly. This left nations underprepared and unstable.
LOL! +1, insightful!! :)
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
There have always been politics on Slashdot?
You must be new here.
It turns out you can be a nerd about warfare, too.
Killing the enemy is killing, not murder. They decided they wanted to make war on the US and it allies and now they are paying the price.
Your lines about "people who have gone insane with power" and "accountable to no one" are bullshit.
You don't like it? Vote for someone else. I'll let you in on a secret - pretty much anyone likely to win will do the same thing. The US isn't going to let them kill American citizens and allies without paying a price.
Yes and no. Killing an enemy in a time of war is by definition not murder, but is killing with legal justification. (I.e. a designated enemy in a time of war, plus usually in self-defense or defense of others if the war is legal, since almost every legal war today is couched in self-defense).
That does not necessarily mean "They decided they wanted to make war on the US and it allies and now they are paying the price." Because (1) the guy you're killing is almost never the one who made that decision, and (2) sometimes you kill the wrong guy. Someone can be an enemy and be just as honorable as an American soldier, just like an American soldier can be just as dishonorable as someone acting on behalf of a bad guy.
Dehumanizing the enemy is as old as war.
I'm not defending ISIS--the shit they've pulled, every decision-maker deserves more than whatever happens to him. But some guy holding an AK who's standing near one of the decision-makers may just not want to get his family shot.
Says the right-wing crybaby whose parent comment is currently at +5
Witness right-wing fragility in action, people.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Why the heck did a purely-political article like this one end up on the front page of Slashdot?!
Drones?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Yeah. We need to get back to classic Slashdot topics like misandry, or whether or not black people have lower IQs.
You stupid fuck. You didn't even bother to read the entire comment before replying to it! If you had, you would have seen this part of it:
Boy, does that make you look like a total dumbass!
I don't even know why I'm here. Slashdot jumped the sharks years ago. The news is old and stale. More and more click bait.
It's a very slick, efficient way to conduct the war, without having to have the massive ground invasion mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Have we gone completely schizo now. I thought the narrative was it was the surge and boots on the ground that finally brought some order to those places, or are we only talking about the narrow context of defeating the traditional military forces there?
Given the great success that Libya, Yemen, Syria, and to a lessor extent Iraq and Afghanistan I am not see much in the form of experiences we want to repeat. This whole air-power only strategy does not seem to be securing the outcomes we want. I think we could argue that its done little but destabilize the region going all the way back to William Cruise-missile Clinton.
I am of the opinion if we are not willing to put troops on the ground to create a reasonable security situation after we disrupt whatever it is that is going on we probably have no business meddling. If various groups around the world are upset at our presence and don't like our bases nearby I saw we pack up and go home. My suspicions are they will change their tune when they experience what its like to not have us there. The economic impacts of not having US troops and facilities to create demand in their local economies, our not being a deterrent to the ambitions of would be local bad actors, the suddenly greater influence of regional powers like Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc, and finally the influence of other world powers China, Russia; I suspect all of these things would have them begging for us to come back.
Much like Russia/(old USSR) did ( intentionally or otherwise ) the best thing we could do is retreat from the world stage for awhile. We have enough lead in weapons tech, and plenty of money and economic influence still to re-assert ourselves once are detractors realize how good things were.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
you will know full well that this war machine is coming and you may contribute by providing negative test cases.
get to work! we expect many bug reports.
The US is not fighting a war against Islamic militants. Congress has made no declaration of War. Obama is illegally using the military to engage in unlawful world-wide imperial police actions. That is all that it is. Period. Full stop.
the poster might even be a Republican
It's funny, because I would have said "socialist/Democrat" or "SJW". Soylent might actually be on to something with the Disagree mod, but the troll voting blocks would probably ignore it because it doesn't count as a -1.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It seems like whatever moral victory was obtained in the decolonization process in the 50s and 60s was lost (and then some) in the chaos and kleptocracy that followed.
Well, the colonialist states - and the newer powers - made the Africans, Arabs and Asians pay dearly for rising up against their rule. At times this was by setting collaborationst regimes against popular movements; at other times (and places) - direct military actions to quell rebellions; at other times - coopting the new governments from the get-go; and for particularly successful and intransigent independence movements, there's still a lot they can do: Trade emargos, funding and arming rebel factions (which are usually, though not always, worse than the bunch in government), influencing neighboring states to be belligerent or escalate border disputes and so on. Finally, in the economic sphere - the relations are usually super-exploitative, especially when it comes to the private sector.
Now, it's true that African states have had their share of ethnic/racist/tribal violence breaking out, corrupt officials, military dictatorships and what-not. But, you know, that's like accusing a child beat up by his parents and who didn't get a decent education of not succeeding enough in life. It's true that he can't just lay the blame with others, but statistically - these things happen.
Were the British colonies horrible, apartheid-style military dictatorships or were they something perhaps paternalistic but not repressive?
The former. Not the latter. Incredibly repressive. If they had been the latter, they would have evolved into non-colonies by mere advancement of the colonized population.
Were many of them evolving in terms of local autonomy or civil rights, or just staying repressive?
I'd say fluctuating. But - Europe was evolving as well; what the Belgians could afford to get away with in the 19th century in the Congo (read up on it if you haven't) was no longer acceptable, even to Europeans, in the latter half of the 20th century. The thing is, you can't extricate the changes in Europe, and maybe the US, with the de-colonization in the most of the rest of the world; those weren't independent processes.
I guess I'm trying not to assume their past was rosy, but I wonder how many adults who remember 1950s Rhodesia look back from Mugabe's Zimbabwe and think maybe being Rhodesian wasn't so bad.
That is a false dichotomy. I mean, Rhodesia was bad, and Mogabe's rule is bad (although that too is kind of complicated), but there's no reason why the people of Zimbabwe should not enjoy a non-authoritarian, pro-education, pro-dialog, sustainable-development kind of society.
I'd have to guess that access to the UK economy would have been beneficial and that the colonial officials would have made sure the roads and electricity worked.
Let's just say that if the UK economy returned some of the benefit it got from the colonies in the form of proper training and fostering of independent development, the roads and the electricity would have worked anyway.
It really depends on who has mod points at the time, I think. I find that a lot of those controversial articles see everyone get modded down, with maybe a few exceptions. People seem to like modding opposing opinions down more than supporting opinions up.
I also think most Democrats don't get modded down a lot, unless they're really far left. Moderate left seems to fair better than moderate right here, although YMMV.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Disagree. Everything is political. You sound like Free-Space demanding SJW. You want your tech porn news without having to look at what affects these things actually have on the world. Slashdot is a site for intelligent and tech savvy users who are able to think critically and want to have some real discussion about how our creations and innovations affect the world around us.
Go to some mainstream news site if you prefer your news simplified with all the sharp edges removed so you can't hurt yourself.