Correction:
An earlier version of this story
incorrectly reported that
the drones flying from the Ethiopian base were armed. It also described the Ethiopian city of Arba Minch as being 600 miles east of the Somali border. It is 600 miles west of that border. This version has been corrected.
The compound is about half an acre in size and is surrounded by high fences, security screens and lights on extended poles. The U.S. military personnel and contractors eat at a cafe in the passenger terminal, where they are served American-style food, according to travelers who have been there.
Arba Minch is located about 300 miles south of Addis Ababa and about 600 miles west of the Somali border. Standard models of the Reaper have a range of about 1,150 miles, according to the Air Force.
The MQ-9 Reaper, known as a “hunter killer,” is manufactured by General Atomics and is an advanced version of the Predator, the most common armed drone in the Air Force’s fleet.
Ethiopia is a longtime U.S. ally in the fight against al-Shabab, the militant group that has fomented instability in war-torn Somalia and launched attacks in Kenya, Uganda and elsewhere in the region.
The Ethiopian military invaded Somalia in 2006 in an attempt to wipe out a related Islamist movement that was taking over the country, but withdrew three years later after it was unable to contain an insurgency.
The U.S. military clandestinely aided Ethiopia during that invasion by sharing intelligence and carrying out airstrikes with AC-130 gunships, which operated from an Ethiopian military base in the eastern part of the country. After details of the U.S. involvement became public, however, the Ethiopian government shut down the U.S. military presence there.
In a present-day operation that carries echoes of that campaign, Kenya launched its own invasion of southern Somalia this month to chase after al-Shabab fighters that it blames for kidnapping Western tourists in Kenya and destabilizing the border region.
Although U.S. officials denied playing a role in that offensive, a Kenyan military spokesman, Maj. Emmanuel Chirchir, said Kenya has received “technical assistance” from its American allies. He declined to elaborate.
The U.S. military deploys drones on attack and surveillance missions over Somalia from a number of bases in the region.
The Air Force operates a small fleet of Reapers from the Seychelles, a tropical archipelago in the Indian Ocean, about 800 miles from the Somali coast.
The U.S. military also operates drones — both armed versions and models used strictly for surveillance — from Djibouti, a tiny African nation that abuts northwest Somalia at the junction of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. About 3,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, the only permanent U.S. base on the African continent.
The U.S. government is known to have used drones to mount lethal attacks in at least six countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.
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