Over the weekend we had a brick fall into the MAGA pond, roiling the waters and sending ripples out in all directions. This involved reports that Qatar, the Persian Gulf state of mixed reputation, has made arrangements to “build an air base” at Mountain Home AFB in Idaho. The response was instantaneous and virulent. It was a clear case of treason, another Muslim takeover of U.S. soil, a threat that demanded immediate action. The calm, lucid, and easygoing Laura Loomer went so far as to call it an “abomination.”
It always pays to take a close look at any such story before coming to conclusions. This one immediately revealed some iffy aspects. Why build a new air base when there’s a perfectly suitable Air Force Base right on the spot? Why select southern Idaho, as close to the back of beyond as you can find in the continental United States? What, exactly, are the Qataris supposed to be doing there?
The answers are pretty straightforward. Qatar has purchased 48 F-15QA Eagles from Boeing. As the letter suffix suggests, this version of the venerable and superb F-15 has been optimized for operations with the Qatar Emiri Air Force.
Fighters of the 21st century are quite different animals from the aircraft flown during WW II and the Cold War – and even the earlier models of the F-15. They are extraordinarily advanced, fitted with cutting-edge avionics and weapon systems, and capable of tricks that pilots of an older era would have thought impossible. It requires lengthy and intensive training to use the aircraft at the peak of their capabilities.
And that, playmates, is what is happening here. The new Qatari “air base” is in fact a training installation built to host and service Qatari aircraft flown by pilots brought to the U.S. to receive training from veteran U.S. pilots. There are a number of other nations involved in similar programs at Mountain Home, including the mighty and foreboding Asian giant, Singapore.
Such programs have been going on for decades. During the 1960s, German Luftwaffe pilots were stationed at Luke AFB in Arizona (the only Air Force Base named for a lunatic) to learn to fly the F-104 Starfighter. German pilots had not flown anything at all in the decade following WW II and needed much more than refresher courses to bring them up to speed. This was particularly the case as regards the Starfighter, a difficult aircraft with a bad habit of killing its pilots. (Germany lost 292 F-104s with 116 pilots killed.) For this reason, F-104s flying in the training program were painted in USAF colors. It would not have worked out well if a plane with German markings had crashed into the home of a family that had lost someone during WW II.
Clearly, the Trump administration is going out of its way to baby the Qataris, in an effort to ween them off their fondness for Islamic radicalism and persuade them to join the other Gulf states in the Abraham Accords. It’s all of a piece with Trump’s rebuke of Benjamin Netanyahu for the botched raid on Qatar and the declaration that the U.S. will guarantee Qatar’s security. Trump may well look on Qatar as being the final piece in his effort to box in Iran and promote an epoch of peace in the Middle East. If so, it’s well worth whatever risk it presents.
As for the Qataris building the installation themselves, this ties in closely to Trump’s preference for making allies pay their way, as he has done with NATO. Qatar is one of the wealthiest states on earth and can easily afford to build an aircraft hangar or two. Why should the USAF – not to mention the American taxpayer – build it for them?
So that’s the story. No alien base on U.S. shores, no Qatari jets suddenly taking off to fly support for the Muslim Brotherhood breaking out of Dearborn, just a standard mutual arrangement between nations. Back in the 90s, there was a widespread panic over Russian military trucks being shipped into the United States and stored for some sinister and ungodly purpose. It turned out to be some poor nitwit who thought he could strike it rich selling surplus Soviet gear. Boy, did he get a rude awakening.
This is more of the same, and we should not let it distract us as we watch a new day dawn over the Mideast.
Image: National Archives