Source : Internet
Trump is hailing his military success. But drones have exposed a deadly US weakness
Donald Trump’s war has exposed vulnerabilities in American air defences at military bases and other sensitive sites across the Middle East as Iran wages a lethal campaign of drone warfare.
Iran has struck US military bases across the region, exploiting gaps in drone and missile defence systems to kill and wound American troops and destroy vital aircraft, communications systems and radar sites.
The US President has boasted of obliterating Iranian military capabilities, but the regime has managed to launch devastating drone and missile strikes across the Gulf and even farther afield, and still possesses thousands of attack drones, roughly 50 per cent of prewar capabilities, according to a CNN report citing sources familiar with US intelligence. Videos released by Iranian state media show underground tunnels housing its enormous drone fleet.
And even as the number of attacks falls, Iran’s hit rate has risen. Thirteen US service members have been killed, with more than 300 injured. Trump and Iran have pledged to hold off on more attacks during a fragile two-week ceasefire. But military analysts are increasingly asking why the US appeared unprepared for the very real – and very predictable – Iranian drone threat.
Drones unleashed over Camp Victory
Iranian proxies appear to have learned the lessons of the Ukraine war, where cheap, FPV drones that combine ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) and strike functions have been used to devastating effect.
Videos show the ease with which small, cheap, first-person view (FPV) drones have been able to hit US bases and other sensitive facilities across the Middle East. In particular, US sites in Iraq, packed with high-value targets such as fuel stores, munitions and aircraft, offer easy pickings.
Camp Victory, the US military base outside the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, has been hit several times since the conflict began in February. One viral video last month, geolocated by The i Paper, showed an FPV drone loitering over the base for two minutes, selecting a target and diving at a hangar. The attack was claimed by Iran-backed Shia militia, Kata’ib Hezbollah.
Other videos show at least five drones striking targets on the base, including a Black Hawk medical evacuation helicopter, in the first known hit of this kind on a US military aircraft, and what appears to be a Sentinel radar installation – a crucial air defence component.
In a separate incident last month, an FPV drone flew for about a mile (1.6km) around the US embassy in Baghdad, apparently conducting reconnaissance without being intercepted – shortly before a massive missile and drone attack on the embassy.
Why drones can threaten military sites
“FPV drones exploit several structural gaps,” said Arun Dawson of the Freeman Air and Space Institute at King’s College London. “Detection remains challenging. These systems fly low, have minimal radar cross-sections and can mask themselves behind terrain and buildings. In many cases, they are only detected at very short range, leaving little time for engagement.”
The principal effect of FPV drones is likely to be tactical and psychological rather than operationally decisive, said Dawson. “Persistent drone presence forces troops to assume continuous surveillance, restricts movement and imposes a constant cognitive burden.”
Already, drone threats have forced thousands of American troops to relocate from regional bases to hotels and offices, The New York Times reported, citing military personnel and US officials.
US bases in Iraq are not protected by dense, integrated air defence networks like those seen in the Gulf. However, the Americans’ lack of preparedness is still surprising. Ukraine’s daring Operation Spiderweb last summer, when dozens of FPVs smuggled into Russia destroyed up to 40 aircraft at military bases around the country, demonstrated the dangers of cheap drones. Years of FPV drone incursions over military bases in the US itself also should have highlighted the threat.
“It is astonishing if they thought the Iranians or their proxies wouldn’t be using FPV drones given Ukraine,” said Frank Ledwidge, senior lecturer at Portsmouth University and former military officer. “We’re only seeing the start of it if they launch ground operations. The FPV drone threat has not been sufficiently taken account of.”
Iran’s counter-air campaign
Iran’s drone and missile barrages against key sites across the Gulf reveal a deliberate campaign to target key enablers of US air power, experts believe.
As well as ballistic and cruise missiles, this involves the Iranian-designed Shahed-136 kamikaze drone, which can carry about 50kg of explosives and has a range of up to 1,000 miles.
Iran’s fast, low-flying attack drones have already wreaked extensive damage on many of the 13 US bases in the region and other sites used by US troops. Targets include radars and sensors that form the basis of the integrated air defence network shared by the US, Israel and Gulf allies.
Among these were an early-warning radar system at Al Udeid air base in Qatar, the regional air headquarters of US Central Command, where British troops are stationed and communications equipment at the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.
In Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, six US personnel were killed in a strike on an Army tactical operations centre. Radar systems in Jordan and the UAE have also been hit.
These attacks “demonstrate a deliberate targeting pattern of radar, communications arrays, air base infrastructure and aircraft by Iran”, said Christoph Bergs, research analyst for air power at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) think-tank in London.
Photos showed the devastating aftermath of the most significant breaches of US air defence last month at Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan air base, south-east of the capital, Riyadh. A rare E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) radar plane and at least two KC-135 refuelling tankers were hit in an apparent drone and missile attack that wounded a dozen troops. The pictures revealed a direct hit to the E-3’s radar dome, suggesting a precision drone strike.
“The US lack of preparedness for an Iranian attack here was obvious from the inadequate passive defences,” said Ledwidge, pointing to how aircraft were parked in lines, as if back on a US air base. “The E-3 and refuelling aircraft were lined up close together, so they presented an easy target.”
Kelly Grieco, of the Stimson Centre think-tank in Washington, DC, said Iran’s chosen targets are well planned. “Look at what Iran has been hitting since Feb 28: radar systems, Satcom terminals, tankers, and now an AWACS. That’s not random. It’s a systematic attack on the infrastructure that makes US air power function. Iran’s running an asymmetric counter-air campaign,” she said in a post on X.
The challenges faced by the US are made harder by Russia’s help with targeting intelligence, including the position of aircraft at US bases, as well as providing more advanced Shaheds to Tehran. These upgraded Shaheds seen in Ukraine, the Geran-1 and Geran-2, can carry a 90kg warhead.
Drones can wear out costly US defences
Even as the US and Israel degrade Iran’s arsenal, Iran’s accuracy rate has risen, according to military analysts. Iran has made a deliberate choice to change strategies, Grieco said on X, shifting “toward smaller, more precisely targeted salvos aimed at specific high-value targets”.
The sustained pace is exhausting the US’s high-end interceptors, a Rusi assessment found, using low-cost munitions to deplete stockpiles of expensive Patriot, THAAD and National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS).
“A core issue is that US air defence systems remain optimised for fundamentally different threats – fast jets, cruise and ballistic missiles – rather than small, low-cost FPV drones operating at relatively short ranges,” said Dawson.
US military commanders are understood to have voiced concern in recent years that bases in the Gulf were vulnerable to Iranian missile and drone attacks, proposing stationing key aircraft in the west of Saudi Arabia – further from Iran, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The US has miscalculated – and must recalibrate
Iran’s tactics must prompt a rethink of how the US approaches air defence, experts say.
“The losses and damage at these bases, especially to one-way strike drone attacks, demonstrate the urgent need to integrate sufficient and scalable modern short-range air defence systems, cost-effective counter-drone systems and passive hardening measures at forward air bases for this sort of event,” said Bergs.
Iran’s tactical wins suggest US air defence capabilities are not ready for modern warfare, said Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at the Defence Priorities think-tank in Washington, DC. “Going forward, reliance on ground-based sensors and radars may become increasingly ineffective and unsustainable. The Pentagon will need to rapidly speed up its shift toward space- and satellite-based systems for tracking and interception.”
The US needs to re-evaluate its military posture in the Middle East and elsewhere, she said. “More fallible air defence will require removing personnel from these locations for good.”
For now, however, the most urgent requirements should be repairing and hardening the US network of ground-based sensors and radars.
“The implications of even a partial failure of the US air defence network in the Middle East would be far reaching, threatening US operations in the current war, future conflicts in other theatres, and homeland defence,” Kavanagh said.
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