![]() ![]() Budget documents for 2018 outline another $15 million in new construction. The upgrades are slated to address years of complaints over living conditions at the facility. will wrap up $28 million worth of new construction projects at the base including warehouses, training facilities, dining hall upgrades, and connecting the base sewage system to Qatari system. military spending, the Pentagon will lay out $437 million to keep dozens of military bands active in 2017.īy the end of this year, the U.S. To put that in perspective, when it comes to U.S. troops at the base this year, according to U.S. Air Force will spend $140 million to sustain 9,000 U.S. The United States and France already operate out of the base.īut Washington and its allies have already sunk two decades worth of investments into the facility, with tens of millions in new American construction slated for next year. There are a number of options in the region, including the Al Dhafra air base in the United Arab Emirates, which supports the Saudi blockade. “Losing the base would certainly be logistical headache, and in the near-term harm our ability to keep up the same level of air operations in the region.” “On the one hand al Udeid is quite important, but on the other it doesn’t mean the Qataris have the leverage” to force Washington into fully supporting its position, said Ilan Goldenberg, a former Obama administration official and director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. The Qataris are so far weathering the storm and have refused to make concessions, but the longer the crisis continues the more difficult it may become for the base to continue operating normally. The president has mostly backed Saudi Arabia’s economic and diplomatic blockade of Qatar over Doha’s relationship with Tehran, support for the al Jazeera television network, and its cozy ties with Hamas and other militants. planes a short hop into Iraq and Syria, not to mention allowing American aircraft to cover the entire Gulf within minutes.īut the politics of the region are tricky. There’s also the benefit of a hands-off landlord, little risk of terrorist attack, and an airstrip giving U.S. Air Force less to maintain per year than to keep the Pentagon’s military bands humming. But it turns out that the Pentagon actually has a pretty good thing going at the base, which costs the U.S. While there might not be ten, there are certainly other places in the Persian Gulf where the U.S.-led air wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria could be headquartered rather than the Qatari-built facility at al Udeid. ![]() air base in the tiny Gulf kingdom of Qatar, and “ten countries” in the region would line up to build a new base, “and they’ll pay for it.” ![]() President Donald Trump recently boasted that he could shutter a critical U.S. ![]()
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