We’ve watched for four years Russia continuing to not always adapt to protect their assets from drones and missiles, and now the US seems to be failing in the same way.
The US can only confirm that they destroyed a third of Iran’s missiles, and Iran doesn’t need that many missiles to damage neighbors and the global economy. Our assessments may not be good either. Iran could be secretly building more missiles and drones.
The Houthis haven’t entered the war yet, but they may.
The US military is not ready for drone warfare. Iran will post videos of Americans’ faces before being exploded by drones. Iran has been training in FPV drone warfare and gets advice from Russia who has been fighting in an FPV drone war.
The US is already taking equipment and personnel losses from drones. The US has mostly abandoned bases near Iran because it can’t defend them. If the US goes in close, they will be swarmed.
US bases in Iraq are getting hit by FPV drones. At least a radar and helicopter have been destroyed. The US does not seem prepared for this advancement in warfare. If the US sends ground troops to Iran, a lot of them will be killed by FPV drones. These are short range, cheap drones, that can be used as suicide drones or to drop explosives.
The Ukraine-Russia war has shown that this is a new factor in warfare, and the US doesn’t seem to have adapted fast enough.
America’s rolling thunder of destroying things from the air is not convincing the Iranian regime to budge or the Iranian people to rise up.
Ukraine’s drone killers are much cheaper than many US interceptors, and the US and Gulf countries are running out of such interceptors, so want these cheaper Ukranian drone killers to defend against Iranian drones.
Iran was prepared for the US to dominate with “overwhelming” airpower. Iran saw the US take out Saddam’s centralized command with airpower and decided to focus on missiles, drones, and decentralization. Taking out the snake’s head is less effective when there are many snakes with their own weapons, each able to lash out. Iran knew it couldn’t go toe to toe with the US in the skies, so scattered and hid their weapons. Iran knows that the US would not like a long war, so they planned for a long war where a determined Iran can outlast a US that grows weary with the costs of war.
“High-end missile interceptors can run into the millions of dollars per shot.
Many of the drones they are designed to defeat are far cheaper and produced in large numbers — creating what defense officials have described as a growing “math problem” in modern warfare. The U.S. can end up firing expensive missiles at relatively inexpensive drones, a dynamic that becomes harder to sustain if attacks come in waves.
That imbalance is accelerating a push inside the Pentagon to expand a layered counter-drone strategy — combining short-range interceptors, electronic warfare tools and emerging technologies such as high-energy lasers.
For U.S. forces in the region, larger drone waves increase the odds that defenses are stretched, and that even one drone could reach a base or ship.
This marks the first sustained confrontation in which U.S. forces are facing large-scale, state-backed drone waves as a central feature of the battlefield — forcing commanders to adapt in real time and draw on lessons learned from Ukraine, where mass-produced Shahed drones reshaped air defense strategy.”
Producing Iran’s shahed drone requires many advanced components. Logistic supply lines need to remain open for Iran to continue producing many of those. Not only can the US and Israel bomb the factorites themselves, but it can also disrupt these supply lines.
Looks like a Kuwaiti pilot, trying to defend against Iranian drones that were hitting his country, mistaked three American planes for attacking drones and shot them down.
“The first American service members to die in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran were killed in an apparent Iranian drone attack on a makeshift office space in Kuwait, three U.S. military officials with direct knowledge of Iran’s attack told CBS News.
At least six Americans were killed in a strike on a tactical operations center at the Shuaiba port in Kuwait, one of several U.S.-allied countries in the Persian Gulf region that have faced intense Iranian missile and drone attacks since the U.S. and Israel began striking Iran early Saturday. U.S. Central Command has publicly confirmed the deaths.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the deadly strike was caused by a powerful Iranian weapon that made it through both air defenses and the operations center’s fortifications.
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three U.S. military officials questioned the assertion that the building was adequately fortified. They told CBS News the operations center was a triple-wide trailer made into an office space — a common setup at U.S. bases abroad.
The trailer’s only fortifications were T-walls, which are 12-foot-tall, steel-reinforced concrete barriers used to protect military personnel from explosions, rocket attacks and shrapnel, the military officials said.
But T-walls could not protect the facility from an overhead strike. Two officials told CBS News that the strike appeared to hit dead-center on top of the building.
Three officials also told CBS News, speaking under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media outlets, that prior to the attack, there were discussions on the ground about whether the tactical operations center in question should not have been used, as it concentrated too many U.S. troops in a location that wasn’t defendable.
Preliminary battle damage assessments suggest the operations center in Kuwait was attacked by a one-way drone, according to three U.S. military officials with direct knowledge of Iran’s attack
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two sources said there was no American counter-rocket, artillery and mortar system at Shuaiba port that could be used to bring down incoming drones or other deadly munitions. Kuwait had interceptors in the vicinity, but it’s unclear if those were employed.