What we know about the U.S. airbase in Qatar targeted by Iran

CBC

4 days ago

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Iran retaliated Monday for the U.S. attacks on its nuclear sites by targeting Al Udeid airbase, a sprawling desert facility in Qatar that serves as a main regional military hub for American forces.
U.S. President Donald Trump said in a social media post that no Americans were harmed and "hardly any damage was done." A Qatari military officer said one of the 19 missiles fired by Iran was not intercepted and hit the base.
As of this month, the U.S. military had about 40,000 service members in the Middle East, according to a U.S. official. Many of them are on ships at sea as part of a bolstering of forces as the conflict escalated between Israel and Iran, according to the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations, a research and policy centre.
Bases in the Middle East have been on heightened alert and taking additional security precautions in anticipation of potential strikes from Iran while the Pentagon has shifted military aircraft and warships into and around the region during the conflict.
The U.S. has military sites spread across the region, including in Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the United Arab Emirates.
Al Udeid hosts thousands of service members
The base hosts thousands of U.S. service members and served as a major staging ground for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the height of both, Al Udeid housed some 10,000 U.S. troops, and that number dropped to about 8,000 as of 2022.
The forward headquarters of the U.S. military's Central Command, it also was used in the fight against the Islamic State. or ISIS, in Iraq and Syria.
Al Udeid is built on a flat stretch of desert about 30 kilometres southwest of Qatar's capital, Doha.
Over two decades, the gas-rich Gulf country has spent some $8 billion US in developing the base, once considered so sensitive that American military officers would say only that it was somewhere "in southwest Asia."
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Trump has visited Al Udeid
Trump visited the airbase during a trip to the region last month.
It was the first time a sitting U.S. president had travelled to the installation in more than 20 years.
Al Udeid cleared its tarmacs
Last week, ahead of the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, Al Udeid saw many of the transport planes, fighter jets and drones typically on its tarmac dispersed. In a June 18 satellite photo taken by Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by The Associated Press, the airbase's tarmac had emptied.
The U.S. military has not acknowledged the change, which came after ships off the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet base in Bahrain also had dispersed. That's typically a military strategy to ensure fighting ships and planes aren't destroyed in case of an attack.