Friday, the U.S. military suffered what in competent hands would've been a potentially game-changing loss in our ongoing war with Iran. At least twelve U.S. servicemembers were wounded, two seriously, and at least two KC-135 aerial tankers, the Wall Street Journal says "multiple," and one E-3 Sentry Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft were seriously damaged. My colleague Ward Clark posted on the attack earlier today; see New: 12 US Troops Injured in Iranian Strike on Saudi Arabian Base.
The Iranians launched a combined ballistic missile and drone attack against the U.S. center of gravity in the theater, the sprawling Prince Sultan airbase. This is the third major attack on Prince Sultan Air Base since the war started. The first, on March 1, resulted in the death of a U.S. Army sergeant. An attack on or about March 13 damaged five KC-135 aerial tankers.
Commercially available satellite imagery confirms the damage. What is noticeable is the lack of evidence of a ballistic missile strike on the base, implying the damage was done by a drone swarm.
One KC-135 appears to be destroyed. If so, this would be the first aerial refueling tanker ever lost to hostile fire.
All of the U.S. military personnel killed or injured by Iranian attacks to date have been killed in facilities that were not hardened or defended from drone attacks.
According to The New York Times, the lack of protection from drones has forced the abandonment of facilities on military bases in favor of remote work from hotel rooms and office complexes in civilian areas.
Many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable, with the ones in Kuwait, which is next door to Iran, suffering perhaps the most damage. Six U.S. service members were killed in a strike on Port Shuaiba that destroyed an Army tactical operations center. Iranian drones and missiles also targeted Ali Al Salem Air Base, damaging aircraft structures and injuring personnel, and Camp Buehring, damaging maintenance and fuel facilities.
In Qatar, Iran struck Al Udeid Air Base, the regional air headquarters of U.S. Central Command, damaging an early-warning radar system. In Bahrain, a one-way Iranian attack drone struck communications equipment at the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet. At Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, Iranian missiles and drones damaged communications equipment and several refueling tankers.
If true, this raises a lot of questions, perhaps the least of which is how information security and force protection are maintained.
The last time U.S. forces came under air attack by a hostile power was on the night of April 15, 1953. Then, a U.S. Army anti-aircraft unit on the North Korean island of Chodo was attacked at night by an undetermined number of North Korean Po-2 biplanes. The biplane's wood-and-fabric construction could not be detected by U.S. radar, and nighttime raids rendered optics useless. The Po-2's slow speed, paradoxically, gave it protection from (most) UN fighter aircraft, which had a stall speed higher than the Po-2's at full throttle, downhill, and with a tailwind.
While there is no doubt that the Iranian's collective butt is being handed to them, we can't let that obscure what has been a major revealed weakness of the U.S. military. We've fought wars with secure rear areas for so long that we seem to have lost the concept of how to defend critical installations from relatively low-tech threats.
There is evidence that the threat has been recognized.
The Defense Department is trying to quickly find vendors who are able to ship pre-made shelters to protect troops in the Middle East as the United States’ war with Iran continues.
The department is looking for information from private contractors who can provide “prefabricated, transportable, hardened shelter systems designed to protect personnel from blast and fragmentation threats,” according to a new federal contract notice posted Monday.
The March 23 notice has a deadline of Friday and asks for companies to submit possible delivery timelines for 3 days, 15 days, and 30 days and include information about the “highest threat level” that the bunkers could withstand, like blast force, fragmentation, or ballistic impact. The bunkers will be sent to the Aqaba Air Cargo Terminal at King Hussein International Airport in Aqaba, Jordan, according to the posting.
Additionally, heavy equipment transporters loaded with the Avenger short-range air defense system have been spotted heading to McDill AFB, the stateside headquarters of U.S. Central Command.
The question remains, though. How can it be that even though Iran has been our principal adversary in the region for two generations, critical logistics and combat support facilities are not hardened? Knowing that Iran is one of the world's main manufacturers of suicide drones, in fact we copied and improved their Shahed, which has been omnipresent over Ukraine for thee years, to make the LUCAS (Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System), how did we not anticipate that swarms of these deadly, but extremely vulnerable to countermeasures, drones would swarm U.S. installations in the region?
