U-Tapao
The US military(or any other branch of US aviation) do not have aircraft of any description based at U-Tapao.They visit on a regular basis,but that's all.
As to taking liquids through security,the Thai phrase 'Mai pen rai' sums up the situation here.The same goes for smoking airside.Security,IMHO at both BKK and DMK is nowhere near perfect on this score,either.
Seeing some of the pond-life brain-dead farang(regretably usually the British ones) that make up the SLF on the PG flights out of UTP,none of this surprises me.
For the record,PG currently operate 2 flights daily from UTP,one to Phuket and the other to Samui.Both are with ATR-72s.The only only other regular operator here at the moment is Finnair with a B757 flight every 2 weeks to Helsinki.There was one of those today.