A common strategy among drone operators and other pilots seeking to reduce or evade radar detection is to fly low to the ground. Another US official confirmed the military's belief that the drone flew too low to be detected. The two officials, like some others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive and ongoing investigation. Defense officials stressed that assessments could change as investigators learn more.
Taken together, the preliminary findings appear to undermine previous assertions that U.S. air defenses mistook the attacking aircraft for a U.S. drone returning to the base at around the same time, and raise new questions about the Pentagon's ability to keep up with threats facing U.S. personnel. They have been deployed across the Middle East since the war in Gaza accelerated the violence.
US Central Command, which oversees military activity throughout the region, declined to say whether officials believed the militants responsible knew about the base. Limited defenses.
Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said in a statement that Central Command continues to review the attack. “For operational security reasons, we will not discuss specific force protection measures or potential changes in the situation,” she added. However, as always, we are committed to taking the necessary measures to protect our forces [who serve] In harm's way.”
Tower 22 is located at the connecting point between the common Jordanian borders with Syria and Iraq. It serves as a support site for another US outpost, the isolated Al-Tanf garrison in Syria, and is located along the main highway linking Tehran to Damascus. From Al-Tanf, US forces sought to disrupt Iran's efforts to supply partners and proxies with weapons and equipment in Syria and beyond.
The January 28 attack in Jordan killed three Army reservists from Georgia, the first American death by hostile fire since the Israeli war in Gaza led to repeated attacks on American positions in Iraq and Syria by groups affiliated with Iran. There have been at least 168 such incidents since mid-October, according to Pentagon data.
In Tower 22, dozens of other personnel were injured in the explosion that struck a housing unit in the early morning while many of the 350 soldiers deployed there were sleeping. In response to the deadly violence, US warplanes on Friday struck more than 85 targets in Iraq and Syria that military officials said were linked to the Quds Force, a unit of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the local militias it supports.
Although Tower 22 was equipped with multiple electronic warfare systems capable of stopping drones, it had limited means of protecting itself. The defense official with direct knowledge of the early military assessment said the site was considered a relatively low-threat environment. “This was based on the vast majority of threats and 99 percent of threats [Iranian-proxy] The official told the newspaper that the attacks target facilities in Iraq and Syria.
The official said that the base's defensive position changed following the attack, but he refused to go into details.
The official said: “We are not waiting for the investigation to be completed to implement changes from the lessons learned from the tragic attack on Tower 22.”
While the U.S. military has long deployed systems like Patriot and C-RAM (short for counter-rocket mortar) to defend American positions against enemy attack, there is a limited stockpile of those weapons and officials have had to prioritize their deployment based on the perceived threat. Which faces specific locations. Meanwhile, the Pentagon in recent years has scrambled to develop new ways to protect facilities from rapidly evolving drone attacks that can evade conventional air defense.
The second US official said the immediate takeaway from last week's deadly attack in Jordan is the need for better drone detection systems that could give US personnel more time to identify and destroy such threats before they put people's lives in danger.
Experts point out that there are other solutions, known as passive defenses, that can be used to obscure or protect against air attacks. For example, anti-drone nets, and other barriers such as chain link fences They were installed high up in vulnerable locations in Ukraine to prevent or blow up drones before they could hit their intended targets.
Experts say ideal air defense strategies involve a mix of systems, sensors and passive solutions.
Container residential buildings in Tower 22 They appear to be the standard units typically found in US installations overseas. They are made of relatively thin metal that is not designed to withstand explosions on their own, and are easily identifiable from commercial satellite images and services such as Google Maps.
Officials did not say whether protection had been installed over the units before the attack. Officials said that concrete barriers placed on the ground between residential units helped mitigate the severity of the explosion.
“You have to continually improve your defenses based on the threat,” the second official said, adding that additional recommendations would likely come from analysis of the attack.
Iran has deployed drones of various types and sizes, including the Shahed unidirectional attack drones used by the Russian military in Ukraine. Tehran has also provided drones to allied militias in the Middle East. One official described the drone used in the Jordanian attack as Shahed-101, a weapon used by militants in Iraq. The Pentagon did not publicly specify what type of system was used.
Previous threat assessments concluded that Tower 22 encountered it The lower risk of attack meant the base was not “equipped with other active countermeasures similar to what other sites were across the region,” said Paul Loshenko, associate professor and director of special operations at the U.S. Army War College. He has studied and written about drone warfare.
“What we're realizing here in real time is that this vulnerability is emerging from the airspace that we have to think about more intentionally, and that these type of outposts may not be as protected in the future,” he said.
He said the military should consider a wide range of negative measures to combat drones, including ways to physically prevent them Even if they manage to evade Missile defenses.
“We have to think about something like this, certainly in some of these vulnerable locations that contain our most precious assets, which are our soldiers,” Loshenko said.
