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.