The night of January 27, U.S. military personnel were sleeping in a tent serving as temporary living quarters at a forward base called Tower 22 (situated near the Jordan-Iraq-Syria border) when a buzzing kamikaze drone swooped down and exploded. The blast killed three U.S. Army Reservists from the Georgia-based 718th Engineer Company and injured over 40 more troops. Eight were evacuated abroad for treatment, and are thankfully in stable condition.
Established in 2015, Tower 22 is one in all many outposts arrange by the Pentagon throughout the Middle East to support anti-ISIS operations. Together with several other nearby bases, Tower 22 has extensive aviation facilities and hosts logistics, security, and engineering units that support a key U.S. special forces base just 12 miles away across the border in at-Tanf, Syria.
As Tower 22 reportedly housed 350 U.S. soldiers and airmen, roughly one-tenth of its personnel were killed or wounded by the drone attack.
Because the onset of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, 2023, there have already been around 165 attacks mounted on various U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria by Iran-backed militant groups collectively dubbed the ‘Axis of Resistance’. Due to stout air defenses and luck, none had yet proven fatal, but they’d already caused 170 injuries.
This was the primary attack on U.S. forces since October 7 to have lethal results (though two Navy SEALs were also lost at sea during an operation intercepting arms smugglers within the Red Sea).
On eight separate occasions, U.S. warplanes conducted retaliatory or preemptive strikes against groups staging for attacks, and killed senior member of an Iran-back militia in Iraq. But these groups were undeterred, and it seemed only a matter of time before one in all the attackers would get lucky and discover a weak spot.
Latest reporting by the Wall Street Journal suggests that the source of the fatal gap in defenses—whether by design or sheer luck—was the incontrovertible fact that the low-flying kamikaze drone approached at the identical time a U.S. surveillancedrone was expected to land, and was thus not engaged by air defenses.
It resembles, in a way, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor—the attack was spotted by U.S. radars, but dismissed by operators as likely being a formation of B-17s that were scheduled to land in Hawaii at the identical time. And naturally, attacking at night reduces opportunities to visually distinguish a hostile drone from a friendly one.
Tower 22 is thought to have been overwatched by an AN/TPS-75 PESA-type phased array radar typically utilized by the U.S. Air Force for flight control and early warning, and reportedly did have counter-drone defenses. But the character of its kinetic defenses is unclear. Elements may included the routinely guided Guardian C-RAM autocannons and Stinger missiles, either dismounted or mounted on Avenger Humvee systems.
Stingers and C-RAM are each counters against drones. C-RAM can gun down incoming mortar rounds and artillery rockets as well, that are also common types of attack. It’s also likely that some counter-UAS systems (like portable drone jammers or Coyote interceptor drones) were present at the bottom—but, again, not used as a result of the failure to discover the approaching threat.
The bottom was not covered by one in all the U.S.’s few and highly expensive Patriot air defense missile batteries, which—as a result of their high price per shot ($3-4 million per missile)—usually are not considered ideal counters to threats from cheaper drones. Nonetheless, Patriots are preferred counters against ballistic missiles (which Iran has directly launched at U.S. bases within the Middle East on at the least two occasions), and there have been requests for Patriot coverage of U.S. bases in Jordan.
Some rumors suggest that the drone was launched from Imam Ali base near Abu Kamal in southern Syria, which is utilized by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its allied militias.
Nonetheless, a bunch called the “Islamic Resistance of Iraq” has claimed responsibility for attacks on 3 U.S. bases, and has released a video purporting to indicate the rocket-assisted takeoff of the killer drone. As that is an umbrella organization for several Iranian-backed Shia militias, the claim diffuses responsibility, leaving the precise perpetrators unclear, though suspicion reportedly is falling particularly on the group Kataib Hezbollah. Iran has denied launching the attack.
The variety of kamikaze drone used stays unreported for now. Iran is thought to have developed many purpose-designed kamikaze drones just like the Shahed-136 and -131 (which frequently use rocket boosters for launch), and to have transferred each parts for assembly and know-how to regional actors including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi rebels in Yemen. They’ve also been shared with Russia’s military to be used in sustained large-scale attacks on Ukrainian cities.
Regarding the attack on Tower 22, it stays to be confirmed whether the drone was of Iranian lineage or improvised locally. The rocket-boosted takeoff and outline of the drone as relatively ‘large’ may point to a platform like Iran’s Shahed-136.
Overall, the Tower 22 attack reinforces the growing deadly threat posed by drones—even those deployed by non-state actors—and the necessity to systematically deploy anti-drone capabilities all over the place. To be fair, it’s likely that such defenses were present at a base Tower 22’s size, but failed to interact as a result of an identify-friend-or-foe error. No defense is ideal, and given enough possibilities, attackers are more likely to get lucky at the least once.
Why are U.S. troops at Tower 22, and the way may Washington respond?
While the anti-ISIS coalition succeeded in driving ISIS from the urban strongholds it occupied at the peak of its power, the terrorist group has managed to moderately resurge in areas where anti-ISIS coalition forces have withdrawn. Because of this, the U.S. and its coalition partners have maintained some forces within the Middle East to sustain pressure on the group.
Nonetheless, over time, these outposts like Tower 22 and at-Tanf have turn out to be punching bags for various Iranian-armed resistance groups, which dub themselves the ‘Axis of Resistance.’ These non-state actors provide cover for Iran, which seeks to displace the U.S. presence across the Middle East in favor of its own armed proxies like Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces and Houthi rebels controlling much of western Yemen.
Two major U.S. bases (situated in regions of Syria and controlled by Kurdish separatists) are moreover irksome to the Iran-backed Syrian regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad, as they prevent the re-consolidation of his authority across the country.
Iran’s regional proxies, nevertheless, are profiting from surging enthusiasm for attacks on U.S. forces as a result of Israel’s bloody war against Hamas in Gaza. And the U.S.’s regional allies, in turn, are reluctant to openly support the U.S. for fear of being perceived as tacitly supporting Israel. This makes for opportune timing to attack U.S. troops in support of Iran’s agenda while ostensibly showing support for the Palestinian cause. The mere act of attacking Americans (effectually or otherwise), and getting hit back by U.S. forces, pumps up street cred within the region and makes deterring these groups difficult.
The Biden administration has been keen to not reward groups looking for to impress an escalated response that may lead to a broader regional war—one which could suck U.S. forces back into the Middle East and away from arguably more essential foreign policy priorities in Europe and the Pacific.
Nonetheless, the U.S. will undoubtedly be compelled to mount lethal, targeted attacks against the group it deems liable for the Tower 22 incident. This may increasingly require some discerning intelligence work, as groups waging such attacks often diffuse responsibility in hopes of diverting retribution away from themselves. To what extent the retaliation will fall on groups in Iran or Syria, and the way broad the retaliation will probably be beyond the attack’s direct perpetrators, will need determining.
Broadly, the mixture of the Israel-Hamas war and Iran and its proxies are frustrating the U.S.’s general desire to take care of a smaller, lower-profile footprint within the Middle East and focus security efforts elsewhere. This forces the U.S. to selected between unpleasant selections: either withdrawing forces to Iran and ISIS’s profit, reinforcing the U.S. presence and aggressively retaliating vulnerable to larger war within the Middle East, or attempting to sustain the current course weathering constant attacks that—through sheer frequency—are sure to cause more casualties eventually.