WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is moving forward with plans to build a dedicated facility in Idaho to train pilots from Qatar, an important U.S. ally in the Middle East, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday.

Hegseth, who made the announcement during a visit by Qatar's defense minister, said the facility to be built at the Mountain Home Air Force Base would “host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase the lethality, interoperability.”

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^[1], who called the plan “an abomination” and accused the Qataris of being associated with Islamic terror organizations.

“No foreign country should have a military base on US soil. Especially Islamic countries,” Loomer wrote in one of several social media posts just hours after Hegseth'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^[2], Dr. Vinay Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine chief,^[3] and Gen. Tim Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency^[4].

Qatar would pay for the construction of the new facility, a defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide information not publicly released. When asked for more details, Hegseth’s office said it had nothing to offer beyond the secretary’s remarks.

The announcement comes just days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order^[5] vowing to use all measures, including U.S. military action, to defend Qatar, which hosts the biggest U.S. military base^[6] in the Middle East.

Loomer also criticized that decision, writing “I don’t want to die for Qatar. Do you?” on social media. However, she was not alone.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board also questioned the pledge, writing that "this is a decision that can be and should have been debated.

“Instead it comes out of the blue — an executive order following no public debate,” the board wrote.

The small, gas-rich country played a key role^[7] 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^[8] on Trump for use as Air Force One.

However, the Qataris' connection with U.S. military aviation predates these more recent developments.

In 2020, the U.S. Air Force announced^[9] it has 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 building a facility that would house 12 Qatari F-15 jets and about 300 additional Qatari and U.S. Air Force personnel.

While the U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. sent home^[10] 21 other Saudi military students after an investigation revealed each had expressed jihadist or anti-American sentiments on social media pages or had “contact with child pornography,” including in internet chat rooms, according to officials at the time. However, the U.S. continued to train Saudi pilots.

Loomer referenced the incident in her social media posts on Friday. “Why are we trying to train more Muslims how to fly planes on US soil? Didn’t we already learn our lesson?,” she wrote on social media.

At a memorial service in 2022, veteran Air Force Capt. Monte Watts bumped into a fellow former Minuteman III nuclear missile operator, who told him that she had non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Watts knew other missileers with similar cancers. But the connection really hit home later that same January day, when the results of a blood test revealed that Watts himself had chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

“I don’t know if it was ironic or serendipitous or what the right word is, but there it was,” Watts said.

Within the community of U.S. service members who staff nuclear missile silos scattered across the Northern Rockies and Great Plains, suspicions had long been brewing that their workplaces were unsafe. Just months after Watts was diagnosed in 2022, Lt. Col. Danny Sebeck, a former Air Force missileer who had transferred to the U.S. Space Force, wrote a brief on a potential cancer cluster among people who served at Minuteman III launch control centers on Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.

Sebeck identified 36 former workers^[1] who served primarily from 1993 to 2011 and had been diagnosed with cancer, including himself. Of those, 11 had non-Hodgkin lymphoma; three had died. The Air Force responded swiftly to Sebeck’s findings, launching a massive investigation^[2] into cancer cases and the environment at three intercontinental ballistic missile bases and a California launch facility. The goal is to complete the research by the end of 2025.

The service has released portions of the studies as they conclude, holding online town halls and briefings to highlight its findings. But while former missileers say they are heartened by the rapid response, they remain concerned that the research, which crosses decades and includes thousands of ICBM personnel and administrative workers, may address too large a population or use statistical analyses that won’t show a connection between their illnesses and their military service.

They need that tie to expedite benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Historically, the Department of Defense has been slow to recognize potential environmental diseases. Veterans sickened by exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, Marines who drank contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and service members who lived and worked near burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan fought for years to have their illnesses acknowledged as related to military service.

In the case of the missileers, the Air Force already had studied potential contamination and cancer at Malmstrom in 2001^[3] and 2005^[4]. That research concluded that launch control centers were “safe and healthy working environments.” But with Sebeck’s presentation and the decision to pursue further investigation, Air Force Global Strike Command — the unit responsible for managing nuclear missile silos and aircraft-based nuclear weapons — said the earlier studies may not have included a large enough sampling of medical records to be comprehensive.

Sebeck, who serves as co-director of the Torchlight Initiative, an advocacy group that supports ICBM personnel and their families, told congressional Democrats on April 8^[5] that the Defense Department has not accurately tracked exposures to the community, making it difficult for veterans to prove a link and obtain VA health care and disability compensation.

“I had to go to a VA person and pull some papers,” Sebeck said, referring to the government system for recording service members’ environmental risks. “It says that I visited Poland once. It doesn’t mention that I pulled 148 alerts in a launch control center with polychlorinated biphenyls and with this contaminated air and water.”

PCBs — And the Missileers Exposed to Them

PCBs are synthetic chemicals once used in industry, including missile control electrical components such as display screens, keyboards, and circuit breakers. They have been banned for manufacture since 1979, deemed toxic and a likely carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Air Force’s Missile Community Cancer Study compares 14 types of common cancers in the general U.S. population and the missile community and also studies the environments at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California to determine whether they may have contributed to the risk of developing cancer.

The Malmstrom, Warren, and Minot bases together field 400 Minuteman III missiles, the land-based leg of the U.S. nuclear triad, which also includes submarine- and aircraft-launched nuclear weapons. The missiles are housed in silos spread across parts of Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska, staffed around the clock by missileers operating from underground, bunkerlike launch control centers.

So far, the Air Force investigation has found no “statistically elevated” deaths^[6] from cancer in the missile community compared with the general population, and it found that the death rates for four types of common cancers — non-Hodgkin lymphoma, lung, colon and rectum, and prostate cancer — were significantly lower in missileers than in the general population.

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma accounted for roughly 5.8% of all cancer deaths among people who worked in launch control centers from January 1979 to December 2020.

Early results, derived from Defense Department medical records, found elevated rates of breast and prostate cancers in the missile community, but a later analysis incorporating additional data did not support those findings. The studies also did not find increased rates of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Air Force officials noted during a June 4 online town hall, however, that these assessments are based on roughly half the data the service expects to review for its final epidemiological reports and cautioned against drawing conclusions given the limitations.

The final incidence report will include federal and state data, including information from civilian cancer registries, and delve into subgroups and exposures, which may “provide deeper insights into the complex relationship” between serving in the missile community and cancer risk, wrote Air Force Col. Richard Speakman in a September 2024 memo on the initial epidemiology results.

Gen. Thomas Bussiere, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, said during the June town hall that only the final results will determine whether the missile community’s cancer rates are higher than the general population’s.

Some lawmakers share the concern of missileers about the Air Force study. Following the release of a University of North Carolina review^[7] of Torchlight Initiative data that showed higher rates of non-Hodgkin lymphoma — at younger ages — among Malmstrom missileers, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) introduced an amendment^[8] to a defense policy bill calling for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to review health and safety conditions in the facilities.

“Let’s make sure that we have some outside experts working with the Air Force studying cancer rates with our ICBM missions,” Bacon posted July 30 on the social platform X. “We want to ensure credibility and that whatever results come out, we’ve done total due diligence.”

Regarding additional studies on the working environments at the installations and a possible relationship between exposures and cancer risk, Speakman, who commands the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, said Malmstrom had two types of PCBs that the other two missile wing bases did not.

He added that benzene, found in cigarette smoke, vehicle exhaust, and gasoline fumes, was the largest contributor to cancer risk in reviews of the bases.

The assessment concluded that health risks to missileers is “low, but it’s not zero,” Speakman said. He said it would be appropriate to monitor the health of launch control workers.

Next Steps

Watts, whose story has been highlighted by the Torchlight Initiative, has asked the Defense Department’s inspector general to investigate — the watchdog agency referred his request to Global Strike Command — and is closely watching the Air Force research. He said the bulk of the cancer cases reported to Torchlight occurred in the 2000s, when ICBM personnel still used technology that contained PCBs, burned classified material such as treated paper and plastic coding devices indoors, and possibly were exposed to contaminated water.

“I open the door and there’s guys standing there in pressurized suits with sampling equipment,” Watts recalled. “They said, ‘We’re here to check for contaminated water.’ I look at my crew commander, and we’re standing there in cotton uniforms. I said, ‘Do you see anything wrong with this?’”

Launch control operators no longer burn code tapes indoors and the Air Force has made improvements to air circulation in the centers. Sebeck wants Congress to consider including missileers and others sickened by exposure to base contamination in the PACT Act, landmark legislation that mandates health care and benefits for veterans sickened by burn pits and other pollutants.

“It’s documented that there is a large cancer cluster in Montana, probably also in Wyoming. People act surprised, but all they have to do is go to the oncology office in Denver. I can find my missileer buddies there. We are sitting in the same chairs getting chemotherapy,” Sebeck said.

Air Force Global Strike Command spokesperson Maj. Lauren Linscott said in response to Sebeck’s remarks that the unit understands the impact of cancer on its personnel and is committed to supporting them.

“While current findings are preliminary and no conclusions can yet be drawn, we are dedicated to a rigorous, peer-reviewed, data-driven process to better understand potential health risks because the safety of our airmen is our top priority,” Linscott said.

Bills introduced in the House and Senate would address the situation. In addition to Bacon’s amendment, the Senate version of an annual defense policy bill would require a “deep cleaning” of launch control centers every five years until the sites are decommissioned as a new ICBM, the Sentinel, replaces the Minuteman IIIs.

The Air Force aims to release its final epidemiological report by the end of the year.

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(KFF Health News^[9] is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF ^[10]— the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Facing a deadline next week on whether to sign a statement acknowledging new restrictions^[1] on how they do their jobs or risk being thrown out of the Pentagon, journalists who cover the U.S. military appear headed toward a showdown with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Negotiations over changing some of the restrictions “have not been as successful as we had hoped,” the Pentagon Press Association said Wednesday.

The rules limit where reporters can go without an official escort and convey “an unprecedented message of intimidation” for anyone in the Defense Department who might want to speak to a reporter without the approval of Hegseth's team, the association said in a statement.

When the new policy was issued two weeks ago, news organizations were concerned that signing the rules conveyed agreement with them, including to a restriction^[2] that they not report on any news — even if unclassified — without official approval.

The Pentagon is now saying it can't block journalists from reporting news but can revoke the credentials of reporters who ask anyone in the Defense Department for information without an official OK.

“We acknowledge and appreciate that the Pentagon is no longer requiring reporters to express agreement with the new policy as a condition for obtaining press credentials,” the press association said. “But the Pentagon is still asking us to affirm in writing our ‘understanding’ of policies that appear designed to stifle a free press and potentially expose us to prosecution for simply doing our jobs.”

The association is not making any recommendations about whether members should or should not sign. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which has also been talking to the Pentagon about the policy, said it still has concerns and expects “that it will pose a significant impediment as journalists weigh with their employers whether or not to sign.”

RCFP did not respond to messages asking whether it was recommending a course of action for reporters.

Changing rules that have worked for years under different presidents 

The Pentagon Press Association also said it was surprised to learn that the department was planning to move the press corps from its current work space, suggesting it will likely further isolate journalists.

Pentagon reporters have been operating under the same rules since the Eisenhower administration, including President Donald Trump's first term in office, the association said, and any suggestion that they are prowling in offices where they are not allowed is preposterous.

A Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

In an interview with Fox News last weekend, Hegseth said that “we’re not playing games. We’re not allowing everybody to roam around the building.”

“Yes, you can be in the press area, briefing room, but if you want to move around the building, you’re going to have a badge, it’s going to be cleared, you’re going to be escorted when you do so, and we have expectations that you’re not soliciting classified or sensitive information,” he said. “I think the American people see things like that as absolute common sense. The Pentagon press corps can squeal all they want.”

Trump has applied pressure on news organizations in several ways, with ABC News^[3] and CBS News^[4] settling lawsuits related to their coverage. Trump has also filed lawsuits against The New York Times^[5] and Wall Street Journal^[6] and moved to choke off funding for government-run services like the Voice of America^[7] and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty^[8].

“Limiting the media's ability to report on the U.S. military fails to honor the American families who have entrusted their sons and daughters to serve in it, or the taxpayers responsible for giving the department hundreds of billions of dollars a year,” the Pentagon Press Association said in its statement.

“The American people deserve to know how their military is being run.”