America's secret Africa drone war

This is a very interesting read about the secret UAV operations going on in the Somalia region of Africa. It includes AC-130 strikes, Special Forces teams inserted by submarine, and numerous UAV strikes. A lot of it is educated and informed guesses, but based on the information available, they are highly informed.

The CIA, while attempting to build an intelligence network used the carrot and stick method with the Somali warlords. Cash to bring them over to the American side as the carrot, and the threat of UAV strikes as the stick. The only thing is that the UAVs were all busy in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time, so they bluffed the warlords into thinking that they were flying overhead at will, and it apparently worked.

The evidence for what is going on includes crash reports, of UAV accidents that occurred in a "forward operating location". If they were talking about Iraq and Afghanistan, they would be mentioned by name. If you look at the AIB Report webpage, accidents in both of those countries are named. Based on reports, UAVs have flown a minimum of 25,000 hours over the Somalia region. They have recently had an accident rate of 7 per 100,000 hours flown, with four to five Predators, and two Reapers lost in East Africa (since 2009).

It's a very interesting, very in depth read, and while it remains mostly speculation, I'm impressed at the amount of investigation put into this article, and from what I've followed, it seems to match closely to the information being released by the press.

Wired article

reply to post by Zaphod58
The AFRICOM was setup not too long ago. But many saw it coming as there are several countries interested in the African Continent for resources and economic partnerships. Its a vast continent after all with many untapped/properly administered natural resources. LINK1
LINK2

reply to post by hp1229


It's also one of the most contested regions in the world. I don't think that it's possible for anyone to set up a stable government in that part of the world, because of all the corruption, and butting in by other countries over the resources, and perceived insults, and ancient grudges.

reply to post by Zaphod58


I think thats on purpose though. Turmoil has reigned in that region for far too long, and its being fed by corrupt organizations that want cheap labour and resources. Nothing can be established because no one really has the financial means to. This is caused because a handful of individuals over there found that as long as they control the guns, they control the resources and can sell them to big manufactures dirt cheap and simply pay off their hired guns. Others sunk to the level of developing child armies.

As for the drones this really doesn't suprise me. It's not suprising either that ths has been kept quiet for so long. I mean it's only one peice of machinery thats only an extremly small portion of the budget. Add to that the fact that half your budget is classified its not that hard to keep something like that from showing up on the radar.

reply to post by openeyeswideshut


Exactly. What better way to keep things like raw diamonds or other resources "cheap" than by keeping the region destabilized. Throw in some corrupt "gov't officials" that live in the area (read warlords) that have access to guns and weapons, and you have a ready made powder keg.

Most countries aren't going to overtly go into that region after watching the US "failure" during the 1990s. On a side note it always amazes me how US Army victories can be turned into completely devastating failures (ie Somalia, Tet Offensive). In fact very few countries are willing to go in at all because of all the unrest. UAV intervention is the cheapest, and best way to intervene in any way.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Yeah but I don't necessarilly believe that there should be intervention at all. In fact I think we should have the opposite. If we could find a way to "lock out" the destablized areas of africa then stop their deporting and importing we could cut the funds that the warlords have as well as the suplies.

ETA: Its just a shame that no one who has the power to do something like this wants it.

reply to post by openeyeswideshut


I agree, and think that we should try to block them out. But there's no one to sanction, since there's not really a gov't. And they don't really have anything to sanction anyway. The only even remotely tenable action is some kind of intervention.

I read this article yesterday! I was going to post it, but apparently you beat me to the punch. S&F to you sir!

This article is interesting, epsecially how they have pieced all of this information together from various sources.

reply to post by TheHistorian


It's amazing what you can find if you know the right places to look. There's a lot more out there than people realize, it's just all about putting the bread crumbs back together into a piece of bread.

I'll take that bread
Slap some butter on it and insert some crispy bacon

I was due to return 'dropped off' to east Africa any day now for a training, mentoring and advisory role.
But due to recent events I've been re-tasked and another team is going ( shame I was looking forward to getting back to the trees and 'white mans coffin' )

You may be the sme in military aviation dude ........but this is my playground ( told you before I look forward to the day when we're in a thread and I'm the SME ......remember )

I can't get u2u to work on my current device ......and let's just say I'm cautious about what I could post ........but we should chat sometime



SnF
Keep it up dude

"From what I've heard" you can count on the new cold war to be in Africa mostly between us and China.

Learn African languages if you want to be in on the next big surge of intel workers. We can't afford to lose Africa - too many of our next round of resources will have to come from there.

And yeah, 3rd, 5th and 20th are starting to deploy there in more numbers than in the past.

reply to post by Neocrusader


Yeah I'm gonna be on my laptop later. Sitting at the repair shop until tomorrow. We definitely need to put some info together.

I can tell you with 100% certainty that the US Navy and Marine Corps has been operating off and on along the east coast of Africa for about a decade now. It is all part of an anti-piracy initiative.

In fact, in 2005, we had to go pick up several hundred marines and deliver them to northern Somalia after the USS Juneau supposedly busted a propeller shaft and was stuck in Madagascar.

It isn't a secret war. It just isn't written about by the mainstream media. Much like our operations in the Philippines against the Abu Sayyaf are not written about. I was there. I know it happened. I got a medal for it. And some tax free combat zone pay.

reply to post by allenidaho


Parts of it aren't. The Navy operations are open ops. They even almost lost two rotor wing UAVs there that ended up grounding the entire fleet of Fire Scouts. The secret portion of it is what's happening on the continent. Even looking for it I couldn't find much information at all about it, and that wasn't going with just mainstream sources.

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