WASHINGTON: The US military is moving forward with plans to build a dedicated facility in Idaho to train pilots from Qatar, an important US ally in the Middle East, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday. Hegseth, who made the announcement during a visit by Qatar&#39;s defense minister, said the facility to be built at the Mountain Home Air Force Base would &ldquo;host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase the lethality, and interoperability.&rdquo; The arrangement is not unusual. Pentagon officials noted that similar facilities have been set up for other allies for decades, and the Idaho base already hosts a fighter squadron from Singapore. But the news drew a sharp rebuke from close Trump ally and right-wing influencer Laura Loomer, who called the plan &ldquo;an abomination&rdquo; and accused the Qataris of being associated with Islamic terror organizations. &ldquo;No foreign country should have a military base on US soil. Especially Islamic countries,&rdquo; Loomer wrote in one of several social media posts just hours after Hegseth&#39;s announcement. Although Loomer holds no formal position within the Trump administration, her online complaints have a history of achieving results. Her criticisms have led to the firing of officials on the National Security Council, Dr. Vinay Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration&rsquo;s vaccine chief, and Gen. Tim Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency. Qatar, which hosts the biggest US military base in the Middle East, made clear that it will not have a base on US soil and that it will cover the costs of building the training facility. &ldquo;This will not be a Qatari air base,&rdquo; the spokesman for the embassy in Washington said in a statement posted on X. &ldquo;Rather, Qatar has made an initial 10-year commitment to construct and maintain a dedicated facility within an existing US air base, intended for advanced training and to enhance interoperability in defending and advancing our shared interests around the world.&rdquo; The statement said the project will create hundreds of jobs for Americans and noted that the planning began several years ago, and it received local approval. When asked for more details about the future facility, Hegseth&rsquo;s office said it had nothing to offer beyond the secretary&rsquo;s remarks. The announcement comes just days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order vowing to use all measures, including US military action, to defend Qatar. Loomer also criticized that decision, writing, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to die for Qatar. Do you?&rdquo; on social media. However, she was not alone. The Wall Street Journal&rsquo;s editorial board also questioned the pledge, writing that &ldquo;this is a decision that can be and should have been debated.&rdquo; &ldquo;Instead, it comes out of the blue &mdash; an executive order following no public debate,&rdquo; the board wrote. The small, gas-rich country played a key role in negotiating the most recent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas aimed at ending the war in Gaza, as well as in several other key negotiations. Doha, the capital of Qatar, came under surprise attack from Israel last month as members of Hamas were in the city last month to discuss a ceasefire. Qatar also lavished a $400 million jumbo jet on Trump for use as Air Force One. However, the Qataris&#39; connection with US military aviation predates these more recent developments. In 2020, the US Air Force announced it had signed a deal with Qatar for the sale of more than 35 F-15 fighter jets. An Air Force environmental study, completed two years later, revealed that Mountain Home Air Force Base was proposing to build a facility that would house 12 Qatari F-15 jets and about 300 additional Qatari and US Air Force personnel. While the US military has a long history of training pilots for allied countries, the practice received scrutiny in 2019 following a deadly mass shooting at Pensacola Naval Air Station that killed three US service members and wounded several others. The shooter, Mohammad Saeed Al-Shamrani, was a Saudi Air Force officer who was training at the Pensacola base. The FBI said he was linked to the al-Qaida extremist group and had been in contact with it before the shooting. In the wake of the shooting, the US sent home 21 other Saudi military students after an investigation revealed each had expressed jihadist or anti-American sentiments on social media pages or had &ldquo;contact with child pornography,&rdquo; including in internet chat rooms, according to officials at the time. However, the US continued to train Saudi pilots. Loomer referenced the incident in her social media posts on Friday. &ldquo;Why are we trying to train more Muslims how to fly planes on US soil? Didn&rsquo;t we already learn our lesson?&rdquo; she wrote on social media.

Americas

The US plans to train Qatari pilots in Idaho, sparking backlash from critics citing past security concerns, though officials stress Qatar will fund the project, creating more American jobs.

Pentagon to build a training facility for Qatari pilots in Idaho

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plan to address hundreds of US military officials in person Tuesday after the Pentagon suddenly asked top commanders from around the world to convene at a base in Virginia without publicly revealing the reason.&nbsp;The gathering at the Marine Corps base in Quantico near Washington has fueled intense speculation about the purpose and value of summoning such a large number of generals and admirals to one place, with many stationed in more than a dozen countries that include conflict zones in the Middle East and elsewhere.&nbsp;Meetings between top military brass and civilian leaders are nothing new. But experts say the scale of the gathering, the haste with which it was called and the mystery surrounding it are particularly unusual.&nbsp;&ldquo;The notion that the secretary is going to talk to the generals and give them his vision for running the department &mdash; and maybe also for strategy and organization &mdash; that&rsquo;s perfectly reasonable,&rdquo; said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired Marine colonel. <img src="https://paktv-assets-7d41fab8.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/730efb63-83ff-4b17-b620-7eecfdd4ff3f.jpg" style="width: 1000px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"> &nbsp;&ldquo;What&#39;s mystifying is why it&#39;s on such short notice, why it&#39;s in person and what else might be involved,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp;The uncertainty comes as the country faces a potential government shutdown this week and as Hegseth, who has hammered home a focus on lethality and what he calls the &ldquo;warrior ethos,&quot; has taken several unusual and unexplained actions, including ordering cuts to the number of general officers and firings of other top military leaders.&nbsp;News about the abruptly scheduled meeting broke on Thursday, and top Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell confirmed it but declined to release further details.&nbsp;Trump didn&rsquo;t seem to know about it when he was asked by reporters during an Oval Office appearance later that day. The president said he&#39;ll &quot;be there if they want me, but why is that such a big deal?&rdquo;&nbsp;A White House official said Sunday that Trump also will speak at the gathering. The president told NBC News that he and Hegseth would be &ldquo;talking about how well we&rsquo;re doing militarily, talking about being in great shape, talking about a lot of good, positive things.&rdquo;&nbsp;Vice President JD Vance argued last week that the media had turned it into a &ldquo;big story&rdquo; and that it was &ldquo;not particularly unusual that generals who report to&rdquo; Hegseth are coming to speak with him.&nbsp;Italian Adm. Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the chair of NATO&rsquo;s Military Committee, described the meeting as unusual and told reporters Saturday after a NATO meeting in Riga, Latvia, that &ldquo;as far as my 49 years of service, I&rsquo;ve never seen that before.&rdquo;&nbsp;The lack of detailed information has prompted many in Washington to speculate about the meeting&#39;s focus. Whatever it is, Michael O&rsquo;Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said he suspects there will be a dramatic element that may be &quot;as important as any substantive element.&rdquo;&nbsp;&ldquo;Just the sheer scale makes you wonder what kind of meaningful interaction can occur,&rdquo; said O&#39;Hanlon, Brookings&#39; director of research for foreign policy. &ldquo;And therefore, it smacks more of theatrics or of trying to impose than of trying to exchange views.&quot;&nbsp;Bryan Clark, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute, said he expects the meeting to center on the Trump administration&rsquo;s shift in defense policy. The US military is expected to focus less on Europe and Asia and more on the Northern Hemisphere, a change that breaks with decades of precedent, he said.&nbsp;Hegseth has championed the military&#39;s role in securing the US-Mexico border, deploying to American cities as part of Trump&#39;s law enforcement surges, and carrying out strikes on boats in the Caribbean that the administration says targeted drug traffickers.&nbsp;&ldquo;I think they&rsquo;re trying to set the tone, set the context, for these generals and admirals to say the strategy we have coming out is very different from what you&rsquo;re used to &mdash; we need you to all be on board with it,&quot; Clark said.&nbsp;Video teleconferencing across the world is difficult because leaders are spread across time zones, Clark said. Forcing them to attend the meeting in person will drill the point home.&nbsp;&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a way of demonstrating that this is important,&quot; Clark said.

The gathering at the Marine Corps base in Quantico near Washington sparks intense speculation about the purpose and value of summoning such a large number of generals and admirals to one place.

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Pentagon to build a training facility for Qatari pilots in Idaho

Trump, Hegseth set to meet with hundreds of military leaders as speculation grows