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The U.S. military has been forced to relocate a large fleet of UAS from a key counterterrorism base on the Horn of Africa after a string of crashes fanned local fears that the unmanned aircraft were at risk of colliding with passenger planes, according to documents and interviews.
Air Force drones ceased flying this month from Camp Lemonnier, a U.S. installation in Djibouti, after local officials expressed alarm about several accidents and mishaps in recent years. The base serves as the combat hub for counterterrorism operations in Yemen and Somalia, playing a critical role in U.S. operations against al-Shabab, the Somali Islamist militia that has asserted responsibility for the Nairobi shopping mall attack, which killed more than 60 people.
The Pentagon has temporarily moved the unmanned aircraft from the U.S. base in Djibouti’s capital to a makeshift airstrip in a more remote part of the country. U.S. military officials said the disruption has not affected their overall ability to launch UAS strikes in the region, but they declined to say whether it has forced them to curtail the frequency of missions or hindered their surveillance of al-Shabab camps and fighters.
The Djiboutian government’s growing unease over UAS flights casts doubt on its commitment to host the aircraft over the long term. It is unclear whether the temporary drone base can be transformed into a permanent home or whether the U.S. military will have to hunt for another site in the region, according to previously undisclosed correspondence between the Defense Department and Congress.
That uncertainty raises fresh questions about the Pentagon’s plan to invest more than $1 billion to upgrade Camp Lemonnier into a major regional base, supporting operations throughout Africa, as well as in parts of the Arabian Peninsula and Indian Ocean. Those plans include a $228 million compound to house up to 700 personnel from the highly secretive Joint Special Operations Command.
More broadly, however, the concerns about safety present a strategic challenge for the Pentagon as it begins to shift more of the robot planes to new frontiers, where they must share congested airspace with commercial aircraft.
A rash of accidents
Unlike in the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the U.S. military essentially has ruled the skies, the UAS in Djibouti and other foreign locations have flown from the same runways and relied on the same air traffic controllers as civilian pilots.
At least five UAS based at Camp Lemonnier have crashed since January 2011, Air Force records show, including one that ploughed into the ground next to a neighbourhood in Djibouti’s capital, which goes by the same name as the country.
Last year, the Pentagon was forced to suspend UAS operations in Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, after two Reapers crashed on the runway at the main international airport, which serves half a million passengers a year.
Source: The Washington Post