Said General Waldhauser when asked about the Chinese base so close to our base in Djibouti:
“We’ve never had a base of, let’s just say a peer competitor, as close as this one happens to be. so there’s a lot of learning going on, a lot of growing going on. Yes, there are some very significant operational security concerns, and I think that our base there is significant to us because it’s not only AFRICOM that utilizes” Djibouti, he said, noting it’s also used by CENTCOM, Special Operations Command and EUCOM. Some U.S. allies also use the base when they operate with the US military.
Yeah, I know I'm not happy about the potential Chinese burn:
I'm not real comfortable with the Chinese being able to watch over us so continuously. Who knows what they might learn from us or who they'll tip off just to take a shot at us.
But as I also noted, we could work around that proximity:
AFRICOM should create a power projection platform that can avoid prying eyes by equipping a Modularized Auxiliary Cruiser for drones, land attack missiles, and special forces capable of moving around and avoiding wandering Chinese observers on land.
We could yet get The AFRICOM Queen (see page 50) modularized auxiliary cruiser to evade Chinese surveillance.
Or to engineer what we let them see.
