Ramstein Air Base
 Ramstein Air Base(Base)    | |
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| One of the biggest and most important US bases in the world |
Ramstein Air Base is a United States Air Force base in Rhineland-Palatinate, a state in southwestern Germany. It serves as headquarters for the United States Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa (USAFE-AFAFRICA) and also for NATO Allied Air Command (AIRCOM). Ramstein is located near the town of Ramstein-Miesenbach, which stands outside the base's west gate, in the rural district of Kaiserslautern.
Ramstein AB is part of the Kaiserslautern Military Community (KMC), where more than 54,000 American service members and more than 5,400 US civilian employees live and work. U.S. organizations in the KMC also employ the services of more than 6,200 German workers. Air Force units in the KMC alone employ almost 9,800 military members, bringing with them nearly 11,100 family members. There are more than 16,200 military, U.S. civilian and U.S. contractors assigned to Ramstein AB alone.
Hospital
Near the Ramstein Air Base is the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (LRMC), the largest US military hospital outside the continental United States. It is operated by the United States Army. Although part of the Kaiserslautern Military Community, LRMC has a separate history and was never a part of Ramstein or Landstuhl Air Bases, although both facilities have utilized the medical facilities at LRMC since they were established in 1953. Currently there are plans on the drawing board from the U.S. Department of Defense to build a new Medical Center on the current U.S. Army Weilerbach Storage Installation just to the east of Ramstein AB. Construction is to begin in early 2012 and to be completed in and around 2024. A twelve-story facility to house all departments of LRMC and the current Ramstein AB Clinic along with Dental Clinic facilities for the whole KMC.
Drone war control center
In April 2015 the Ramstein Air Base was reported by German and international media as an important control center in the drone war staged under the Obama administration against targets in areas like Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia. The German government claimed not to have been informed about this function of the U.S. base.
Illegal arms and munition transports
In 2015, the Serbian newspaper Večernje novosti reported about Ramstein Air Base being used by the United States Armed Forces to transport arms and munitions to Syria.[18] At the end of 2017, an anonymous US official stated that the US does indeed use Ramstein Air Base to supplement Syrian rebels with arms and munition. The Cabinet of Germany stated that it did not grant the necessary permits for these transports, nor that it had been informed about them. The public prosecutor's office of Kaiserslautern is currently auditing whether an official investigation should be launched. However, such investigations are complicated by the fact that despite Ramstein Air Base being located on German territory, German officials and politicians are not allowed to enter the base without permission of the US commander.
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