6 Bases during the Cold War

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squadron at Hong Kong, as the latter’s reversion to China loomed. In Belize, alingering point of tension in connection with Guatemalan irredentist aims, thesupporting British force included four Harriers and also four Puma and fourGazelle helicopters. Gibraltar still saw occasional deployments of Jaguar fighteraircraft. In the Falklands themselves, the U.K. – to deter another invasion whichcould have seen an enhanced Argentinian air assault – maintained on station afull squadron of nine Phantoms and Harrier vertical take-off and landing(VTOL) aircraft, Hercules tactical transports and several Sea King and Chinookhelicopter detachments. This was almost, quixotically, the largest RAF presenceoutside of Europe. Overall, the RAF had some 17,000 personnel stationedabroad.The U.K. also deployed some ASW aircraft at overseas bases, supplementingthe near-global presence of the large U.S. force of P-3C Orions. The Britishequivalent was the nuclear-capable Nimrod MR2 aircraft. These were periodicallydeployed at Wideawake Airfield on Ascension; Kindley Naval Air Station,Bermuda; Akrotiri, Cyprus; Stanley Airfield in the Falklands; Gibraltar;Keflavik, Iceland; Sigonella, Sicily and perhaps also Konya Air Base, Turkey.The French Air Force, again in direct association with army detachments,maintained a fairly significant presence in several African states. These forceshad been directly engaged in some local wars where, even in small numbers,Bases during the Cold War 143İ 2007 Robert E. Harkavythey could be decisive or at least telling because of an absence of counterweights,at least so long as Soviet or Cuban pilots were not directly engaged. Atminimum, they acted as tripwire deterrents – for several Francophone regimes –against local aggression or external involvement.The main points of deployment were in Djibouti, the Central African Republic,Chad, Gabon, the Ivory Coast and Senegal. Jaguar fighter-bombers (codevelopedwith the U.K.) were deployed in the Central African Republic, Chadand Gabon; Mirage F-1C aircraft were also deployed to Chad. Djibouti had asquadron of ten Mirage IIIs. Alouette and Puma helicopter were stationed in allof these countries, in the Ivory Coast they constituted the only French Air Forcepresence. There were C-160 Noratlas transport aircraft deployed to the CentralAfrican Republic, Chad, Djibouti, Gabon and Senegal. In the latter case, Francehad based at Dakar and also at Djibouti Breguet Atlantique maritimesurveillanceaircraft in areas not far from frequent Soviet naval deployments inWest Africa and the Indian Ocean. The Noratlases provided for speedy movementof French or other surrogate forces in case of crisis or conflict.Aircraft based in Chad were earlier military engaged, as were those based inSenegal, which flew missions on behalf of Mauritania and Morocco earlier onduring the Western Sahara war. Outside of Africa, France had no permanentlystationed combat aircraft, though helicopters and utility aircraft were deployedin Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Polynesia, Reunion and the MozambiqueChannel Islands.Otherwise, one can point merely to a few scattered external deployments ofaircraft represented by still other members of the Western alliance. The Netherlandshad deployed some P-3Cs through Keflavik, Iceland and through Britishair bases at St. Mawgan and Machrihanish. Australia had kept two squadrons ofMirages in Malaysia as its contribution to the defense of Southeast Asia. NewZealand up to 1982 had also had a small air presence in Singapore.Concerning technical facilities, the U.K., which deployed SSBNs and SSNsin the eastern Atlantic, had LF transmitters at Bermuda and Gibraltar; the latterwas capable of reaching across the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (until1976 the U.K. had naval communications facilities at Mauritius and Singapore,when it also still maintained a naval presence east of Suez). It had another atPort Stanley in the Falklands, which would obviously have been of value in caseof resumption of hostilities in that area. It also deployed an RAF/UKADGEearly-warning radar at Sornfelli in the Danish-controlled Faeroe Islands.Britain also fielded some additional, scattered C3I assets overseas. It had amajor SIGINT site on Cyprus at Pergamos/Dhekelia. Elsewhere, on Cyprus, theU.K. had a troposcatter communications relay, a Skynet satellite-communicationsterminal and an OTH radar in the Troodos Mountains capable of monitoringmissile tests within the USSR. There were reported Government CommunicationsHeadquarters (GCHQ) SIGINT stations on Ascension (Two Boats) and St.Helena islands; also at Darwin, Australia (earlier, there were others in Botswana,Page 51
Aden, Bahrain, Malta, Mauritius, Singapore and on Oman’s Masirah Island).There was a COMINT and HF/DF facility at Gibraltar. Two other SIGINT144 Bases during the Cold Warİ 2007 Robert E. Harkavystations were located at Hong Kong, a major one at Diepholz in West Germany,along with other signals units at Teufelsberg, Jever, Celle, Dornenberg and Gorleben.A former U.S.-run nuclear-detection site at Pearce, Australia was operatedby the British Atomic Energy Authority. Earlier, there was acommunications relay facility on Mauritius.Britain also contributed to the overall Western intelligence effort via somejointly operated facilities. In conjunction with Australia, it operated an oceansurveillanceradar at Hong Kong, once directed against the People’s Republic ofChina, used to monitor Soviet fleet movements in the SLOCs between Siberiaand Vietnam. (Australia and New Zealand jointly operated a similar facility atSingapore.) The U.S. and U.K. jointly operated such a facility at Diego Garcia.These and other such facilities – an Australian installation at Darwin, U.S.-operated bases at Edzell, Scotland and Brawdy, Wales, constituted a globalsystem codenamed Bullseye for direction-finding interception of ships at sea.These and related activities were discussed by Richelson and Ball in the contextof the multilateral U.K./U.S. arrangement entered into by the U.S., U.K.,Canada, Australia and New Zealand in 1947 in the aftermath of World War II.Summary – Cold War basing patternsThe 45-year long Cold War presented in some cases patterns that were reminiscentof previous periods, but others that were entirely new, pertaining both topolitics and technologies.Reminiscent of the past was the geopolitical heartland/rimland structure of abipolar struggle. The U.S. rimland basing structure, increasingly leapfrogged asthe period progressed, was similar by degree with the earlier Portuguese, Dutchand British basing networks, calling to mind Thompson’s thesis about systemleader lineage patterns.But, the ideological nature of the bipolar conflict (earlier, only the religiousdivide between Islam and Christianity provides a partial analog) resulted infairly stable alliance and alignment/clientship patterns over several decades.That translated also into stable, long-term basing relationships between sovereignstates that had no discernible historical precedent.The basis for basing in this period was also historically unique, increasingly soas the period progressed. As previous imperial control over much of the world bythe European powers collapsed, so too collapsed basing access networks based onthat imperial control. In its place, both the U.S. and USSR, largely previouslybereft of overseas empires, acquired and maintained access to bases largely via acombination of the provision of security to regional states against the rival superpowerand its regional clients and with that, the provision of security assistance inthe form of arms transfers, training, economic assistance etc.During the Cold War period, the proliferation of new types of basing accesswas driven by rapid and profound technological change. Up to the interwarperiod, the story for bases had mostly to do with surface naval bases and related“forts” or ground force deployments utilized mostly for colonial control. By theBases during the Cold War 145İ 2007 Robert E. Harkavy1930s, air bases and those for submarines had become important, so too someinitial “technical facilities,” such as those for communications and communicationsintercepts, early-on radars, terminals for underwater communicationscables etc. But later in the Cold War, particularly paced by developments insatellites, there was developed a whole range of new basing requirements:various form of communications, satellite downlinks and control stations, satellitesurveillance, sonar submarine tracking networks, early warning for ballisticmissile attacks, elaborate networks of radars, nuclear detection facilities andmany more. Technologically speaking, military operations and the bases thatsupport them had moved into several dimensions and the relations betweenthem, i.e., naval and land surfaces, the underseas, the airspace and outer space.That is, there were many, many new types of bases in addition to traditionalnaval bases and army installations.Page 52Page 53
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6 Bases during the Cold War

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