Djiboutian Armed Forces
(Forces Armees Djiboutiennes, FAD)
Djibouti Army (L'Armee de terre)

Djibouti has its own armed forces, including a small army, which grew significantly with the start of the civil war in 1991. The armed forces have approximately 8,400 personnel. The army has about 8,000 personnel; the air force, 200; and the navy, 120.

Djibouti’s Army is used for internal security and counterinsurgency. It is divided into three regional commands: the northern, central, and southern commands. The army order of battle consists of the regional commands, a rapid reaction force, an artillery battalion, an airborne company, an armored squadron, and a logistics and supply company.

Border control remains one of the single most important problems in Djibouti as Djibouti receives hundreds of illegal immigrants, refugees, and internally displaced people weekly. Djibouti is 11 miles from the Somali border, and immigrants and refugees walk across daily. The borders are extremely porous and immigration simply does not have the resources or the manpower to institute tighter controls.

French influence is considered significant, reflecting the continued high-level French presence in Djibouti and the legacy of France’s colonial stewardship. France provides Djibouti’s Armed Forces with most of its training. The use of Russian-made equipment has required the use of instructors from Ethiopia and Yemen, and some armored vehicle crews are believed to have been trained in Saudi Arabia.

All service headquarters are in Djibouti City. Army units are deployed throughout each of Djibouti’s military districts, concentrated on the borders with Ethiopia and Somalia. Although Djibouti has negligible military strength, it has French protection. The small armed forces of Djibouti have little military capability and are prone to tribal divisions.

Operating Environment

In the air or on the ground, it is difficult to become oriented in the desert, as there are few checkpoints, and distances are deceiving. Additionally, desert landscapes are monotonous, the sun may be difficult to locate during dust storms, and mirages may distort middle-distance landmarks.

The sharp edges of the terrain can cut a pair of heavy shoes or boots over a period of days. Soft sand, sharp rocks, and thick thorns impede cross-country movement by trucks, especially those that tow trailers.

Level landscapes with little vegetation provide fields of fire for flat trajectory weapons, which are usually employable at maximum range. However, the monotonous color of the desert makes it difficult to distinguish varying elevations, except during early morning and evening hours. Ground-level observation is better on clear nights than at midday, when glare is intense. Radar altimeters help pilots and navigators whenthe sun is high and on bright moonlit nights.

Desert surfaces are dust-covered with thin, fragile crust. Moving directly across country on hard ground reduces dust clouds. Old trails crossing the salt marshes are visible during the dry season; in the wet season, trails may have standing water.

Surface glare is another problem in the desert. It produces an effect similar to snow blindness and hampers effective use of optical instruments. The combined effect of glare, haze, and shimmering blurs the edges and fine details of images, making detection, identification, ranging, and tracking difficult. Radars are unlikely to be affected by heat haze, so they may be valuable on flat terrain during midday heat if optical vision is distorted.