The US military is planning to deploy at least 129 airmen to British territory on Cyprus by next year, Declassified can reveal.
The number of US troops on the UK’s so-called Sovereign Base Areas (SBAs), which comprise 3% of Cyprus’s landmass, has long been secret.
“We do not propose to release the numbers of US personnel participating in current or future operational activities [on British Cyprus]”, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) recently told parliament.
The US Department of Defense (DoD), meanwhile, claims it only has 14 personnel deployed in Cyprus, including nine Marines and just one airman. The department did not respond to Declassified’s request for more information and comment.
But Declassified has seen a US Air Force (USAF) document with details of a construction project on RAF Akrotiri, the UK’s “extremely busy” air base on Cyprus from which it flies bombing sorties across the Middle East.
The document, prepared in March 2019, notes there were then 87 US airmen deployed to RAF Akrotiri in 2018, including 12 officers.
But the US planned to increase its personnel levels by 48% over the next six years. By 2024, the US plan was to have 129 airmen deployed to the base, 15 of them officers.
The real figure for US military personnel based on British Cyprus is likely to be higher.
There are multiple other garrisons and military installations across the two British SBAs – known as Dhekelia in the east of the island and Akrotiri in the west – and at the UK’s so-called “retained sites” in Cyprus proper. These likely host some US military personnel.