facility:camp lemonnier

The most valuable military real estate in the world – POLITICO
▻https://www.politico.eu/blogs/the-coming-wars/2018/01/the-most-valuable-military-real-estate-in-the-world

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As France — the first to maintain a military presence in the country — slowly abandons its bases due to budgetary constraints, others have been moving in. The United States recently opened a second base on Chabelley Airfield — unmentioned in its public list of overseas bases — after its drones interfered with air traffic at Camp Lemonnier.

The country hosts China and Japan’s only foreign military bases. There’s an Italian base too and Saudi Arabia is building one as well. #Djibouti has made overtures to Turkey. And, according to Mohammed, (and later an second independent source) Russia has made inquiries.

India too is rumored to be considering the possibility of acquiring a block of the most prized military real estate in the world. If it does, every major global power will have a Djibouti footprint and the country will resemble a live model of state conflict in the 21st century.

#bases_militaires

Target Africa
▻https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/target-africa

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U.S. Africa Command — the umbrella organization for U.S. military activities on the continent, known as Africom — insists that it maintains only a “small footprint” in Africa and claims that Camp Lemonnier, a former French Foreign Legion outpost, is its only full-fledged base. However, a number of new facilities have been opened in recent years, and even Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has acknowledged that Lemonnier serves as “a hub with lots of spokes out there on the continent and in the region.”

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#armée_américaine #Afrique #drones #surveillance

US moves East African drone base following series of crashes
▻http://rt.com/news/us-base-djibouti-drones-320

The key difference for the US Air Force – in comparison with its flights in Afghanistan – is that in #Djibouti it is obliged to share the skies with civilian aircraft, relying on the same air traffic scheduling and shared runways.

Despite the Djiboutian government’s increasing uncertainty with the arrangement, the Pentagon plans to invest more than $1 billion to expand #Camp_Lemonnier into an even bigger regional hub. The base is considered key to support wider US operations throughout Africa, especially with a much larger deployment of troops across the continent, as well as the Arabian Peninsula and parts of the Indian Ocean. A total of $228 million will be spent on a new compound housing about 700 troops from the secretive Joint Special Operations Command.

As the base is considered too strategically important for the US to lose, moving the #drones inland appears to be the best option in the circumstances.

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While the expansion of the base is in the works, the Pentagon has recently taken measures to extend its campaign of drone warfare for another decade, coming up with “disposition matrix,” or targeting database, as well as a top-secret “#playbook” – a new set of guidelines the US uses to choose whom to eliminate.