Satellite imagery, journalistic investigations, and diplomatic reports reveal that over recent years, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has built an extensive, overlapping network of military bases, ports, and airstrips across Yemen and the Horn of Africa. This growing web, increasingly integrated with Israeli military technology, has transformed into a joint security-intelligence infrastructure serving Tel Aviv’s strategic interests in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
According to Middle East Eye, Abu Dhabi has deployed an Israeli ELM-2084 radar system — the same multi-mission radar used in the “Iron Dome” — in Bosaso (Puntland, Somalia). The installation reportedly forms part of a covert arrangement to protect Emirati facilities and monitor Houthi attacks and maritime movements in the region.
A broader investigation by the same outlet maps an expanding “ring of bases” stretching from the Somali coast to Socotra Archipelago and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait — granting the UAE a powerful maritime footprint and deepening its security coordination with Israel.
Crucially, these positions are not on Emirati soil, but secured through local proxies:
- The Southern Transitional Council (STC) and Tariq Saleh’s forces in Yemen,
- The authorities of Puntland and “Somaliland” in Somalia.
This layered proxy structure allows plausible deniability, reduces political cost, and gives the UAE — and, by extension, Israel — a strategic reach without formal bases.
The Yemeni Front: The Heart of Emirati Ambition
At the centre of this network lies Mayun (Perim) Island, located in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait — one of the most critical chokepoints for global trade and energy flows.
Since 2021, satellite imagery has revealed construction of a military airbase with a runway stretching nearly 1.85 km. The Associated Press and Yemeni officials have confirmed Emirati involvement, citing the island’s immense symbolic and strategic value.
Updated imagery shows continued development, integrating Mayun into a logistical chain linking Yemen to the Horn of Africa.
Further east, in the Socotra Archipelago — particularly Abd al-Kuri and Samha Islands — the UAE has been building airstrips and infrastructure to enhance surveillance over shipping routes from the Indian Ocean to Bab al-Mandeb.
Reports from 2024–2025 document new airstrip construction in Abd al-Kuri, amid escalating Houthi attacks on maritime traffic and missile launches toward occupied Palestine.
Some leaks even allege the presence of a joint Emirati-Israeli base on Socotra aimed at consolidating maritime dominance — a claim that remains contested and awaits official verification.
The African Coast: A Gateway for Israel
Across the water, Bosaso and Berbera serve as twin logistical anchors.
In Bosaso, 2024–2025 satellite and OSINT analyses show fortified installations, drone launch pads, and radar towers, including the Israeli ELM-2084 radar — providing early-warning coverage across the Gulf of Aden.
Meanwhile, Berbera’s 4.1-km airstrip — one of the longest in the region — and its deep-water port, expanded by UAE-linked companies, make it a critical supply hub between Yemeni and Somali outposts. It can host heavy transport aircraft sustaining cross-shore logistics.
But this network extends beyond Somalia and Yemen — it now touches the war in Sudan.
While Abu Dhabi officially denies arming the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), UN expert panels and major news agencies have tracked suspicious cargo flights, including IL-76 transport aircraft to Chad, allegedly delivering supplies to the RSF.
In December 2024, Reuters detailed a sequence of Emirati flights to a border airstrip the UN accused of funnelling arms to the militia — though Abu Dhabi insisted its shipments were humanitarian.
In September 2025, the Washington Post published open-source evidence of advanced weapon systems flowing into Sudan’s conflict, naming multiple sources — including the UAE — while Abu Dhabi continued to deny involvement.
Sudan has since filed a case against the UAE before the International Court of Justice, accusing it of supporting the RSF — a process that could take years.
Israeli Technology, Emirati Expansion
This sprawling structure fuses financial power, military hardware, and flexible alliances.
- Operationally, Israeli radars and drone platforms provide real-time early warning and surveillance coverage across the Bab al-Mandeb–Aden–Indian Ocean corridor, directly benefiting efforts to intercept Yemeni missiles and drones and to monitor maritime routes linked to occupied Palestine.
- Geopolitically, operating through local intermediaries — the STC, Puntland, and “Somaliland” — enables the UAE and Israel to bypass international sovereignty constraints, undermining already fragile state structures in Yemen, Somalia, and Sudan.
The outcome is a “sub-state network” — bases without flags, logistics routes without accountability, yet forming a de facto intelligence-maritime state structure serving Israeli security architecture.
A Forward Arm of the Gaza War
This regional network cannot be separated from the ongoing war on Gaza.
The integration of Israeli radar and air-defence technology — such as the ELM-2084 and Iron Dome components — across Bosaso, Socotra, and Mayun effectively transforms the Horn of Africa into an advance-warning and interception belt against Yemeni operations targeting Israeli and Western vessels.
Thus, the UAE’s military footprint functions not as independent policy, but as part of a larger Western-Israeli security umbrella — one that reallocates the cost of “regional security” to unstable Arab and African territories, while reinforcing Tel Aviv’s strategic depth.
What emerges is not merely a map of Emirati bases, but an architecture of dominance — a system that controls maritime chokepoints and reshapes Red Sea security in Israel’s favour, at the expense of the sovereignty of fragmented states.
