U.S. CITES MIX-UP IN DEADLY DRONE ATTACK
Officials: Strike in Jordan occurred as U.S. aircraft was returning to base
American air defenses failed to intercept an attack drone that killed three U.S. troops and wounded dozens in Jordan amid confusion about the identity of approaching aircraft, officials said Monday as more details emerged about the incident and the Biden administration deliberated how to respond.
While the Pentagon scrambled to identify what went wrong at the isolated facility with the goal of preventing more bloodshed from ongoing attacks by Iranian proxy forces, President Joe Biden’s vow to retaliate raised questions about whether the United States could tip the region into the full-scale conflict that Washington has sought to avoid. The incident also prompted concern about whether U.S. personnel are adequately prepared to defend against the proliferation of attack drones.
The dead were identified as Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46; Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24; and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23. They were members of an Army Reserve unit, the 718th Engineer Company, from Fort Moore in Georgia and the first American troops killed by hostile fire since the war in Gaza triggered a steep rise in violence across the Middle East.
Two officials said an initial assessment suggested that the weaponized drone may have been mistaken for an American aircraft returning to Tower 22, a base in northeastern Jordan close to where the country’s border converges with Syria and Iraq. Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, told reporters that the attack occurred early Sunday and struck living quarters, described as containerized housing, where personnel were still in bed asleep.
More than 40 troops were injured, Singh said. Another official, who spoke on the condition of ano
nymity to describe the military’s ongoing assessment of the incident, said the attack left 47 wounded. Tower 22, which functions as a support site for a separate U.S. outpost across the border in Syria, houses about 350 American personnel.
Though a potential target for any U.S. response remained close-held, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group for Iranianlinked militias in the region, including Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah alNujaba, has claimed responsibility for the attack. The U.S. government, which as of Monday had not publicly identified who it believes to be responsible, has accepted the group’s claim, according to two former officials familiar with the ongoing investigation into the incident.
John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, told reporters at the White House that Biden met with his national security team Sunday and Monday and that the United States will respond to the attacks on its own schedule.
“I hope you can understand why I’m not going to telegraph any punches here from the podium, nor will I get in front of the president or his decision-making,” Kirby said. He added, though, that the United States will respond “fully cognizant of the fact that these groups, backed by Tehran, have just taken the lives of American troops.”
Exactly why the attacking drone was missed remained unclear Monday. The base’s air defenses were operating at the time, and incoming U.S. drones are equipped with automated “friend-or-foe” identification systems that normally distinguish them from enemy aircraft, according to one former U.S. official briefed on the military’s investigation into the incident.
U.S. personnel are exploring the possibility that the group responsible for the attack deliberately positioned the weaponized drone near a returning American drone to make it harder to spot, the person said.
A key question for investigators is whether U.S. drones were being flown in a predictable pattern — departing and returning at roughly the same time — such that outsiders might have noticed and exploited it. If the group that conducted the attack was able to mimic the flight patterns of U.S. aircraft, “that would mean they would have had significant signals intelligence,” possibly suggesting help from a friendly government, the former U.S. official said.
The targeting appears to have been deliberate and precise. While Americans and Jordanians are based at Tower 22 — Jordanians provide security for the compound — the drone struck an exclusively American facility that housed a lounge and barracks used by personnel, the person said.
The apparent confusion over the drone’s identity was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
While the U.S. military has long deployed systems such as the Patriot and CRAM (short for Counter Rocket Artillery Mortar) to defend American positions against enemy attack, officials have scrambled in recent years to develop new means for shielding installations from rapidly evolving drone attacks, which have often involved swarms of armed devices that can evade traditional air defense systems.
The effort to evade detection and confuse air defense systems, while not new, exposes a need for redundant capabilities at vulnerable outposts such as Tower 22 and a means to more thoroughly search for anomalies, said Tom Karako, director of the missile defense project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Masking of the signature is certainly a problem,” he said.
Administration officials said Monday that they are still assessing where the drone originated. The former official said it was launched from Iraqi territory, although the precise location has not been pinpointed. The area has seen intense drone activity over the past two years, but there had never been a successful attack on Tower 22 before now.
The potential involvement of Iraq-based militants injects added tension into the Biden administration’s already fraught relationship with Iraq, whose leaders in recent weeks have called for the reduction or withdrawal of remaining American forces. While U.S. forces returned to Iraq in 2014 to help battle extremists from the Islamic State, Washington’s long-running confrontation with neighboring Tehran, and its affiliated groups in Iraq, has increased political pressure on the Baghdad government to seek the departure of foreign troops.
Iran sought to distance itself from Sunday’s violence. The country’s foreign ministry accused the United States of “exacerbating insecurity” by maintaining its military presence in the region.
Sunday’s deadly violence marked a significant escalation by the Iranian-backed militants blamed for neardaily assaults on deployed U.S. forces since the war in Gaza ignited wider violence. There have been at least 165 attacks on troops in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17, according to Pentagon data.