Qatar’s Fighter Pilots Are Headed For Idaho. Here’s What That Means.

Mountain Home Air Force Base is about to host a new kind of neighbor: a Qatar Emiri Air Force training squadron learning to fly and sustain one of the most sophisticated Eagles on the planet, the F-15QA. Strip away the social-media noise, and the picture gets simple fast. This is not a foreign base in the United States. It is a U.S. Air Force program, on a U.S. Air Force installation, designed to make a key partner smarter, safer, and more lethal in the air.

And in today’s military, lethality is what it’s all about.

Laura Loomer is gonna freak…

The U.S. and Qatar signed an agreement to establish a Qatari Emiri Air Force training facility at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, for joint training with Qatari F-15 jets and pilots, leveraging Qatar’s role in peace talks and prior defense… pic.twitter.com/3LBJK3LKfU

— MJTruthUltra (@MJTruthUltra) October 10, 2025

How Long Has This Been In The Works?

The roots go back to 2017, when the United States approved a multibillion-dollar Foreign Military Sales package for Qatar that included three dozen F-15QAs and U.S.-based training and support. By early 2022, the Department of the Air Force had completed its environmental assessment for “beddown” of a Qatar-led training squadron at Mountain Home and issued a formal Finding of No Significant Impact. That document envisioned an initial 10-year program and targeted early Fiscal Year 2024 for the start of beddown activities.