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US scopes out new bases for Pakistan drone missions

17 February 2014, 13:54

The United Sates is making contingency plans to transform airbases in Central Asia to execute drone attacks in Pakistan. High consideration is being put into this possibility should the White House have no other choice but to withdraw its military troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, according to a Los Angeles Times report.

In the report, which quoted anonymous US officials, it said the CIA's fleet of armed Predator and Reaper drones could be moved to airfields 'to the north' if Washington is forced to evacuate bases in Afghanistan. "There are contingency plans for alternatives in the north," it quoted an unnamed official as saying. Out of all the officials, not one revealed what specific nation could potentially be used as an alternative to carry out drone missions.

The officials also kept their mouths shut on whether or not the US was trying to get permission to base its drones in Tajikistan. One month ago, Maj-Gen Michael K Nagata, commander of US special operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, paid a visit to Tajikistan for talks on "issues of bilateral security cooperation" and "continued military cooperation", according to a US Embassy statement in Dushanbe. Acquiring such bases for military drones in Central Asia could be blocked by Russia, according to what many officials were quoted as saying.

Should alternate bases be locked in place and ready for use, the CIA's effectiveness of collecting intelligence data to find al-Qaeda clans and swiftly launch drones at set targets in Pakistan's tribal area will lose a prime advantage if the agency does not have a spot for its drones in Afghanistan.

"People think of drones as if they fly to a place, shoot and go home… but there is a large amount of coordination and intelligence gathering that takes place, and it takes a lot of time and patience," the report quoted an ex-US official familiar with counter-terrorism operations as saying.

Voice of Russia, Tribune.com.pk

Source: http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_02_17/ US-scopes-out-new-bases-for- Pakistan-drone-missions-5222/