The United Arab Emirates (UAE) appears to have stopped building a runway on Yemen’s Mayyun (Perim/Barim) island in the Bab al-Mandab strait, but is pushing forward with a base near Berbera in Somaliland.
Using satellite imagery and ship-tracking data, Jane’s revealed in February 2017 that the UAE had begun constructing a 3.2 km-long runway on the volcanic island in late 2016, probably to support its military operations in southern Yemen and/or help secure the strategically important maritime chokepoint.
But the construction is halted. Or perhaps just suspended.
Or maybe the Berbera base is considered sufficient without the island base.
As the article notes, this just isn't about the Yemen conflict but about securing the southern access to the Red Sea. Iran would love to have the ability to block that so that Gulf oil exporting states can't bypass the Strait of Hormuz as effectively.
So even if the UAE sees the Yemen war winding down, there is still reason to build the base.
As Strategypage notes, Iranian-backed forces in Yemen struck a Saudi tanker in the Red Sea. This is not a shock under the circumstances:
The U.S. warned a month ago that Iran is succeeding in building up a stock of anti-ship missiles, naval mines and remotely controlled bomb boats on rebel held areas of the Red Sea coast. These would threaten, as they already have, military ships maintaining the blockade as well as commercial shipping in the Red Sea (a vital sea lane for Saudi Arabia and, because of the Suez Canal, Egypt.)
More on Yemen.
This base issue highlights my occasional comments that if we have land bases, why don't we just base carrier air wings on land to do what a carrier off shore would do?
Isn't keeping more carrier air wings ready for combat in excess of carriers at sea a way to increase naval air power even if we can't keep more carriers forward deployed?
And if you say that's the Air Force's job, being land-based air power, why do we speak of an aircraft carrier shortage to provide air power? Shouldn't the Air Force be covering that shortage with land-based air power already?
