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This past week, reports have come out about a top secret US drone base hidden inside Saudi Arabia. The base was built two years ago, had been used for dozens of drone attacks in Yemen, and remained hidden until it was revealed this week. Now, Bing Maps may have found it. Satellite images show a mysterious airfield base in Saudi Arabia that could very well be the same secret US drone base.
Yep, satellite images from Google Maps (which does its fair share of blowing up secrets) doesn’t show any sort of airfield base. Bing Maps does. The mysterious base is on the Eastern Saudi Arabia-Yemen border, and houses three hangars large enough to hold US Predator and Reaper drones. The clamshell hangars, which measure about 45m long and 22m wide, are similar to other bases associated with US drones.
What’s interesting is that this base is expertly hidden. It’s in the middle of no where, and if you were cruising satellite images at typical resolutions, you wouldn’t see anything. The only way to reveal the secret base would be to zoom waaaay in. Also, there was no military base when satellites flew over the region at the end of 2010. Only in early March of 2012 did this base pop up. The sudden existence of the base matches up with the current media reports.
Wired’s Danger Room has sources that are “reasonably sure” that this is the same secret base as the one revealed by the media. If that proves to be true, score one for Bing for discovering it. [Bing Maps via Wired]
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Apple maps also found it, however no one could get there.
There’s no way that place flys any aircraft. Any access to the hangers is blocked by trailers. There are no useable roadways leading from hangers to runway. The runway is in no condition to land aircraft.
Looks like the place is being torn down to me, seems like they already cleared another 3 hangers and buildings in the concrete space to the left of the standing hangers. (Can be seen on the bing maps)
Actually, it looks like it was still under construction when the images were taken. Theres a contractors compound and concrete plant to the south west
Yeah ok i can see that as well. The only reason i went the other way was the state of the runway with blocks missing and roadways not actually going anywhere.
If as the article says the runway was being used to bring in supplies that would have been the first thing completed. But it is in no condition to land aircraft.
Secondly its a very large runway so if this is indeed a drone base the only reason for its length would be for supply aircraft to land. So in my mind you bring in supplies by road, build your concrete plant and contractors area. Use that infrastructure to build your runway then just fly the rest of the supplies in. You dont want massive trucks going to the middle of nowhere im sure that would make people ask questions.