Ramstein Air Base

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Ramstein Air Base
C-130 and Ramstein AB Control Tower.jpg
Characteristics
ICAO code ETAR
IATA code RMS
Coordinates

49 ° 26 '13 "  N , 7 ° 36' 1"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 26 '13 "  N , 7 ° 36' 1"  E
Height above MSL 237 m (778  ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center 1 km east of Ramstein-Miesenbach
Basic data
opening April 1951
operator United States Air Force
surface 1400 ha
Terminals 1
Runways
08/26 [1] 3200 m × 45 m asphalt
09/27 [2] 3000 m × 45 m asphalt

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The Ramstein Air Base (in short: Ramstein AB / RAB ) is a military airport of the United States Air Force and the Headquarters of the United States Air Forces in Europe , the United States Air Forces Africa and the headquarters of the Allied Air Command , a NATO -Kommandobehörde for command of air forces. The 603d Air and Space Operations Center at Ramstein Air Base coordinates the planning and control of combat drone operations against suspected terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen, as well as the drone attacks in Pakistan .

The military airfield is located immediately southeast of Ramstein-Miesenbach , around ten kilometers west of Kaiserslautern ( Rhineland-Palatinate ). With around 8,225 military personnel, an additional 132 reservists and 831 civil servants working on the base in 2014, Ramstein AB is the largest U.S. Air Force facility outside the United States . Around 52,000 Americans live in the entire Kaiserslautern Military Community (as of September 2013).

The US Air Force uses the base mainly as a European hub for freight and troop transports and as a target for evacuation flights; because in nearby Landstuhl is the largest US military hospital outside the United States, the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center .

Large military transport aircraft such as the Lockheed C-130 Hercules , Boeing C-17 Globemaster , Lockheed C-5 Galaxy , and Boeing 747s operated by private airlines such as Atlas Air take off and land at US Air Base Ramstein  . Furthermore, fighter jets from the US Air Base in Spangdahlem near the city of Bitburg (Rhineland-Palatinate), such as the McDonnell Douglas F-15 , General Dynamics F-16 , and occasionally Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, regularly fly in this area .

The flight space in the greater Kaiserslautern to Bitburg area is therefore part of a restricted flight area and temporarily reserved airspace (TRA). This also serves to improve flight safety , since u. a. the large transport aircraft generate air turbulence on arrival and departure , which can negatively affect flight safety for small powered aircraft and helicopters , among other things . There is a citizens' initiative against military aircraft noise in the area of ​​the federal states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland .

Organizations such as NASA also occasionally use Ramstein Air Base for research flights .

US nuclear weapons were stored in Ramstein , which were allegedly withdrawn in 2005.

history

Central building with Airfield, of Nanstein Castle seen from
An F-4E Phantom II at Ramstein Air Base during the REFORGER '82 maneuver

During the Second World War , the German Air Force used a section of the unfinished Reichsautobahn Saarbrücken - Mannheim (route 38) near the locality of Ramstein as a makeshift airfield . Towards the end of the war, the advancing US forces captured the facility. In April 1951, the Americans began to expand the base together with the French, to whose zone of occupation the area belonged. From 1952 the southern part housed the actual airfield with the Landstuhl Air Base , while the Ramstein Air Force installation with headquarters and administration began operations in the northern part in mid-1953 . Both parts were finally merged on December 1, 1957 under the name Ramstein-Landstuhl Air Base and the name was later simplified to Ramstein Air Base . First, there were combat aircraft of the types F-84 and F-4 stationed.

Transport aircraft of the Military Airlift Command (MAC) (now Air Mobility Command (AMC)) have been stationed in the Palatinate since 1971 . The headquarters of the United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) was relocated from Wiesbaden-Erbenheim to Ramstein in March 1973 . On June 28, 1974, the headquarters of Allied Air Forces Central Europe (AAFCE) was set up as the forerunner of today's headquarters of Allied Air Command on Ramstein Air Base.

In 1994 the last F-16 fighter aircraft permanently stationed here left the base.

In December 2005, the air base hit the headlines for CIA prisoner flights ( extraordinary rendition ). From March 7, 2003 to April 10, 2006, Bundeswehr soldiers secured the entrances and controlled vehicles; around 150 soldiers were deployed in rotation.

Fighter jets were temporarily re-stationed from spring 2015 as part of a so-called “Theater Security Package” (TSP) by F-15Cs of the 125th Fighter Wing of the Florida Air National Guard from Jacksonville.

As a stopover on the return flight from a troop visit to Iraq, US President Donald Trump visited Ramstein Air Base on December 27, 2018.

Todays use

Panorama over Ramstein Air Base taken from the Bismarck Tower (Landstuhl)
View of Ramstein Air Base with the tarmac, passenger terminal, Ramstein BX / PX and hangar

Management functions

Ramstein is the base of NATO and US military command authorities. This also includes the operations center of the NATO missile defense system .

Flying bandages

After the Rhein-Main Air Base was closed as part of the Rhein-Main Transition Program on December 31, 2005, Ramstein Air Base became the most important European air transport base for the US armed forces . This task is incumbent on the 86th Airlift Wing , to which a number of flying squadrons are subordinate.

The entry and exit of many US soldiers stationed in Europe and their relatives has also been handled via Ramstein since then. To meet the new requirements, a second runway, an additional passenger terminal, a freight terminal and administrative buildings were built. Furthermore, the older runway will be renovated and extended and a new passenger gate will be built. According to the current stationing concept, Ramstein Air Base is referred to internally as the Main Operating Base .

Wounded US soldiers from Arab combat zones are flown in to Ramstein after initial emergency treatment and transferred to the nearby US military hospital Landstuhl Regional Medical Center for further medical treatment.

As part of the planned closure of the British RAF Mildenhall base by 2022 , the KC-135R Stratotankers of the 100th Air Refueling Wing and its squadron, the 351st Air Refueling Squadron , are to be relocated to the Palatinate .

Nuclear weapons depot

One of the last remaining US nuclear weapons depots in Germany was located at Ramstein Air Base (storage capacity: 216 nuclear warheads), which has been cleared since 2005. Presumably 130 tactical atomic bombs of the type B61-3 / 4 were stored there by then , which had an adjustable explosive force in the lower kiloton range, as they were to be dropped by combat bombers against advancing troops. It is not known how many bombs were actually stored on site in bunkers that were guarded around the clock, as the USA did not provide any information on the number and location of its nuclear weapons until May 2010.

Central component of the combat drone operations

A General Atomics MQ-1 Predator fires a Hellfire missile .
General Atomics MQ-9 over Afghanistan with four Hellfire missiles and two 500-pound bombs as typical armament
US secret service diagram depicting drone control over Ramstein via satellite

Since 2011, the flight control center at the US military base in Ramstein has been the linchpin for US drone activities in Africa that are controversial under international law . The NDR, the WDR and the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on this for the first time in May 2013 and thus initiated a debate about Germany's involvement in the drone war. The exact role of Ramstein is not clear in every detail due to the secrecy. However, the US military assured that responsibility for all military operations in Africa rests with the United States Africa Command, which was newly established in 2008 . It has been based in Stuttgart- Möhringen since 2008 , where around 1500 soldiers and civilian employees work. The Süddeutsche Zeitung and Panorama had job advertisements for intelligence analysts in Stuttgart whose job description should be to “nominate” “targets” - including people - for the US target lists. This would apparently plan targeted killings in Africa in Stuttgart . Satellite data from the drones are received in Ramstein and transmitted to the controlling drone pilots in the USA, for example at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico . Suspects are then usually killed by drone attacks from the USA.

US President Barack Obama declared in Berlin on June 19, 2013 in an overly specific denial that Germany was not a “launching point” for drone attacks.

According to a report by the German political magazine Panorama on April 3, 2014, documents from the US military and the testimony of a former drone pilot suggest that the drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen are also being carried out via Ramstein. In Ramstein, the US military and US secret services have been operating the "Distributed Common Ground System 4" (DGS-4) evaluation center for US drone missions worldwide since February 2003. The DGS-4 in Ramstein is one of five globally operating units that evaluate drone images; the others are DGS-1 at the CIA headquarters in Langley , DGS-2 at Beale Air Force Base in California, and DGS 3 in the US South Korean military base Osan Air Base and the DGS-5 on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii. In the DGS-4 unit, the live images from the drones are analyzed and compared with intelligence findings. The US secret service coordinator James Clapper described the DGS in 2010 as the “central nervous system” of US drone operations. The drone pilots, who are mostly based in the USA, then receive analyzes and instructions from the DGS-4 in Ramstein via an encrypted chat program called mIRC . Ramstein is also used as a relay station to transmit control commands to the globally operating drone fleet.

If a suspect's cell phone number is known, the US military uses the "Gilgamesh system". It is a kind of flying IMSI catcher that is mounted on drones and can locate all mobile phones in the area with an accuracy of one meter. The device works like a mobile cell phone mast. The BND passes on cell phone numbers to US intelligence services, with the federal government taking the view that this would not allow targeted killings .

US President Barack Obama had declared drone attacks to be the most important means in the so-called "global war on terror ". So far, at least three Germans have been killed by US drones, and the Attorney General has investigated all cases. The killing of a suspect with the help of a drone outside of an armed conflict can, if the federal government knows about it and does not protest against it, involve involvement in an offense under international law.

Relatives of US drone victims from Yemen sued the Federal Republic of Germany on October 15, 2014, they want to get the federal government to prevent data transfer across German territory in the event of US drone attacks in Yemen. The plaintiffs see themselves continuously exposed to danger to life and limb. They demand that the Basic Law in Art. 2 2 Clause 1 1st Alt. anchored right to life also applies to them. The human rights organization European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), which supports the plaintiffs, stated: “The federal government must take a clear position that drone attacks are contrary to international law. You have to enforce against the USA that the use of the US Air Base Ramstein is terminated. ”In 2017 it was also claimed that journalists are also on the so-called kill list of the USA.

In March 2019, the Higher Administrative Court in Münster passed a ruling on the US drone war, the judges found that the satellite relay station in Ramstein played a central role in the US drone murder program. Plaintiffs from Yemen thus achieved partial success. Accordingly, the Federal Republic of Germany can not be indifferent to whether a base on its territory is used for military purposes that violate international law. Germany has an obligation to protect the plaintiffs' lives, which has not yet been adequately fulfilled. Such an obligation to protect exists in the case of threats to the fundamental right to life also in matters abroad, "provided that there is a sufficiently close connection to the German state". That is the case here, "because the plaintiffs justifiably fear risk to life and limb from US drone deployments that are contrary to international law using facilities on Ramstein Air Base". The court asked the federal government to examine US drone attacks for their permissibility under international law.

Potentially illegal US arms shipments via Ramstein

In 2015, the Serbian newspaper Večernje novosti reported on deliveries of arms and ammunition that the US military allegedly flown to Syria via Ramstein. At the end of 2017, an anonymous US military stated that the US had used the Ramstein military base to supply weapons to Syrian rebels. According to official information from the German federal government, there was neither a permit nor was it informed about the arms deliveries. The public prosecutor's office in Kaiserslautern is currently examining whether an official investigation should be initiated. Ramstein Air Base is located on German territory, but similar to an embassy , it enjoys immunity , i.e. it is exempt from German jurisdiction . This makes controls of US military activities by German authorities more difficult, because German officials and politicians are only allowed to enter the military base with the consent of the US commander. Past investigations into Ramstein Air Base, such as the kidnapping and transfer of an imam via Ramstein to an Egyptian torture prison, have so far remained unsuccessful. If the US military transported weapons and ammunition to Syria via Ramstein without the approval of German authorities, the War Weapons Control Act was violated.

Special occurrences

RAF bomb attack

Ramstein after the attack by the RAF commando " Sigurd Debus " (1981)

The " Sigurd Debus " command of the Red Army Faction (RAF) carried out a bomb attack on USAFE headquarters on August 31, 1981, in which twenty people were injured, some seriously.

Air conference accident

During the air day held annually at the air base up to and including 1988 , one of the largest disasters that ever occurred in an air show occurred on August 28, 1988 . Three jets of the Italian aerobatic team Frecce Tricolori collided while performing the flight figure Pierced Heart . The causative solo machine fell into the crowd and killed 35 people immediately, hundreds more were injured, some seriously, which later increased the number of deaths to 70. Since then there have been very strict rules for military air shows in Germany. B. concerns the overflight of visitors or particularly risky flight maneuvers.

The German rock band Rammstein has long denied having named themselves after this accident. However, shortly after the band was founded, the band performed under the unique name of Rammstein-Flugschau . When this became known, the band declared that they had not found another name in time.

Further

On August 29, 1990, a Lockheed C-5 A Galaxy military transport of the US Air Force crashed immediately after take-off, killing 13 of the 17 crew members.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Ramstein Air Base  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 3rd Air Force - Units ( Memento of the original from December 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.3af.usafe.af.mil
  2. ↑ A War waged From German Soil: US Ramstein base in Key Drone Attacks - International. In: Spiegel Online . April 22, 2015, accessed December 27, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Drones: USA controlled drones in Afghanistan from Ramstein. In: zeit.de . September 24, 2014, accessed December 27, 2016 .
  4. ^ The Drone Papers. In: theintercept.com. May 23, 2013, accessed December 27, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Secret US drone bases in Germany revealed. In: icij.org. December 11, 2013, accessed June 22, 2015 .
  6. ^ Matthias Bartsch, Maik Baumgärtner, Nikolaus Blome, Thomas Darnstädt, Matthias Gebauer, Hubert Gude, Marcel Rosenbach, Jeremy Scahill, Jörg Schindler, Fidelius Schmid, Holger Stark, Alfred Weinzierl: Alliance. The war via Ramstein . In: DER SPIEGEL . No. 17 . Spiegel Verlag, April 18, 2015, ISSN  0038-7452 , OCLC 4927901 , p. 20-26 .
  7. ↑ a b US drone war running over Germany , Panorama May 30, 2013, cf. the statement of international lawyer Thilo Marauhn .
  8. ↑ (Status: Sept. 30, 2014 of the BASE STRUCTURE REPORT - FISCAL YEAR 2015 BASELINE , page 200)
  9. ↑ US Army Garrison Kaiserslautern: Community Overview ( Memento from September 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ).
  10. ↑ News - BI against aircraft noise, ground noise and environmental pollution. Retrieved April 22, 2020 .
  11. ↑ NASA's flying laboratory comes to Ramstein. U.S. Air Force Ramstein Air Base, accessed April 22, 2020 (American English).
  12. ↑ DLR - Institute for Atmospheric Physics - DLR - NASA flight tests for alternative fuels. German Aerospace Center (DLR), accessed on April 22, 2020 .
  13. ↑ a b USA have cleared nuclear arsenal in Ramstein Spiegel Online, July 9, 2007.
  14. ^ History of CC-Air Ramstein ( Memento from May 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  15. ↑ "Steering took place via Ramstein, deadly missions via Germany" , ORF.at, May 31, 2013.
  16. ↑ Combat drone use: Obama versus Panorama , Panorama , July 26, 2013.
  17. ^ Ndr: Germany: control center in the drone war. In: daserste.ndr.de. April 3, 2014, accessed December 27, 2016 .
  18. ↑ Ramstein is the data hub of the US drone world , SWR, April 4, 2014.
  19. ^ No US drone war without Ramstein ( memento from April 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), tagesschau.de, April 3, 2014.
  20. ↑ Ramstein Airport is at the center of the US drone war , Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 3, 2014.
  21. ↑ John Goetz and Frederik Obermaier: US drone war: “The data is always flowing over Ramstein” , Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 4, 2014.
  22. ↑ John Goetz and Hans Leyendecker: Death Blow from Ramstein , Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 16, 2014.
  23. ↑ Relatives of US drone victims are suing the federal government , NDR, October 15, 2014.
  24. ↑ Constanze Kurz: Do drones hunt journalists? In: FAZ April 3, 2017, accessed on April 3, 2017 .
  25. ↑ US drone operations in Yemen: Plaintiffs achieve partial success , March 19, 2019
  26. ↑ a b Michael Weißenborn: “Don't say anything, don't ask”. Stuttgarter Nachrichten, September 13, 2017, accessed on January 1, 2018 .
  27. ^ A b Frederik Obermaier & Paul-Anton Krüger: Delicate freight from Ramstein. Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 12, 2017, accessed on January 1, 2018 .
  28. ^ A b c Frederik Obermaier & Paul-Anton Krüger: Millions of rounds of ammunition for Kalashnikovs. Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 20, 2017, accessed on January 2, 2018 .
  29. ↑ Scientific services of the German Bundestag : The Ramstein military base, legal issues and possible consequences in the event of violations of the stationing law (2017). Accessed May 24, 2019.
  30. ↑ Deutsche Welle: The US is said to have supplied Syrian rebels with weapons via Ramstein. Deutsche Welle, September 13, 2017, accessed January 2, 2018 .
  31. ^ Gert Hof: Rammstein . Die Gestalten Verlag , 2001, ISBN 3-931126-32-3 , p. 34.
  32. ↑ Aircraft accident data and report Lockheed C-5A Galaxy 68-0228 on the Aviation Safety Network , accessed on June 24, 2017.
  33. ↑ Aircraft accident data and report of the aircraft accident number 43 from 1990 in the Accident Database of Plane Crash Info (English), accessed on June 24, 2017.