The airstrip sits next to giant crop circles at the edge of the Sahara. Military drones take off over enormous fields of wheat, leaving their covert base for one of the world’s biggest drone wars. The base is in Egypt, hidden amid a vast, agricultural project in the country’s Western desert. But the targets are in Sudan.
The clandestine drone operation offers new evidence of how the civil war in Sudan — racked by famine, atrocities and tens of thousands of deaths — is morphing into a sprawling theater for high-tech drone warfare driven by the interests of rival foreign powers. Satellite images, flight records and videos reviewed by The New York Times, as well as interviews with American, European and Arab officials, suggest that for at least six months, advanced military drones based at the Egyptian airstrip have been carrying out strikes in Sudan.

Full report : The covert base offers new evidence of how the Sudanese conflict is morphing into a theater for high-tech warfare, driven by foreign interests.