US signals intelligence (SIGINT) activities in Japan 1945 – 2015: A Visual Guide

Nobody, probably not even the Pentagon, knows exactly how many military bases the United States maintains in foreign countries, or how many have come and gone in the past. Today, there are certainly more than a t h o u s a n d (http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175338/), and still increasing, and expanding into new fronts , espec ia l ly in Centra l Afr ica (https://theintercept.com/2016/02/25/us-extend s-drone-war-deeper-into-africa-with-secretivebase/). A 'base' can mean many different things, but the ones that usually receive most attention are those where the mechanics of American power projection are most evident – US Marines on the ground or large weapons platforms in place or coming and going: warships, aircraft, submarines, and major ground force equipment. Important to scrutinise as these are, other, less conspicuous types of US foreign military facilities are arguably even more important in the US empire of bases. Before a missile can be launched , the target – and i t s ro le , characteristics, and defences has to be known and found. There are different types and layers of intelligence that feed into such targeting matrices, ranging from flash time-sensitive observations through to the longterm maintenance of adversary electronic order of battle documents recording, for example, the location and capacities of opposition armed forces, air and missile defence radars, and their precise role in the event of combat. But all of this means that for those concerned to assess the consequences of US bases in foreign countries need to attend to signals intelligence bases whose constant and efficient functioning is a necessary prerequisite for power projection.