Confusion seized the base to us before the deadly drone Hit Tower 22: Investigation

Information had come before the deadly strike from the American military base that an imminent attack was possible. Basic soldiers responsible for monitoring threats were monitoring the situation. But they say they have never seen the hostile drone coming.

Business Insider obtained the investigation into the command of the American army on the attack on January 28, 2024, a small logistics tour in northeast Jordan. An explosive packaged drone launched by a militia group aligned by Iranian killed three American troops and injured more than 100 others.

After the deadly explosion, a soldier whose name and position were both expared in the investigation jumped from the bed and rushed into the basic defense operations center responsible for the supervision of the defenses, asking why they did not catch it.

Another soldier interviewed for the investigation characterized the requests for information differently, indicating that they were shouting, asking: “How did you see it?”

Everyone in the Bdoc said that nothing was on any of their systems, apart from a few tracks that they have rejected like balloons or waste.

“I could have swears to look at the radar 30 seconds before the attack and that I saw nothing on it,” recalls a soldier, adding that they “do not remember seeing anything that was even close.”

Just before the attack, however, the comic book focused on a Reconstructed scan drone that landed at the base. This soldier admitted that it could have been a distraction.

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Army investigation Discovered many problems among the command and control soldiers giving the safety of the base.

Threat assessments were carried out regularly in Tower 22, and all determined that there was a high risk of attack. The investigation said that the basic defenders at the time of the attack were not prepared to respond to the threat.

The report has identified several failures, including a key presence in leadership, “the cumulative exhaustion of an insufficient number of” basic defense team changes and “inadequate, badly repeated and too centralized combat exercises”.

He also stressed the fact of not recognizing the threat of attacks of certain directions. For example, he indicates that the basic staff wrongly assumed that the southern approach of the base was safe. There was a certain confusion on the origin of the drone.

The investigation said that all the soldiers working a quarter -night at the Bdoc when the drone attack said he saw two tracks south of Tower 22 on radar but did not look at them.

The soldiers shared that the tracks observed south of the Tour 22 before the attack were “too far away”, “moved too slowly”, or were “possibly birds or garbage,” said the investigation, noting that this indicated “their departure neglecting in relation to their own” standard operational procedure.

The investigation said that “at the time of the attack, the Bdoc crew also admitted that they were very focused on monitoring the recovery of Eagle CT and did not question or evaluated the unknown airways south of Tower 22 with the night camera.” A scan drone is a low -altitude surveillance and recognition plane that is manufactured by the American aerospace company Boeing.

The soldiers said that the Eagle scan drone returned to the 22 for a few moments before an explosion shakes the base around 5:30 am

The missteps reported for a few moments before the attack indicate a failure of the command for the Bdoc crew which was supposed to monitor threats. The soldiers were confused about management positions at the time and thought they could not make major decisions, “even in the face of an imminent danger for the base,” said the investigation.

“We assess that the crew of the Bdoc Night Shift was not properly inhabited with the level of rank and the appropriate experience required of these positions given the current threat environment in Tower 22 and the important decisions necessary to protect the staff on the basis”, even if the senior leaders were available, said the report.

US Central Command did not respond to Business Insider on the responsibility measures taken before the publication.

A document included in the survey indicated that there was no advanced warning of a radar or another system at Tour 22 or at the Al-Tanf garrison nearby, a American military base several kilometers in Syria. The enemy drone loaded with bombs destroyed a housing unit of six people and damaged the surroundings, killing three soldiers of the National Army Guard and injuring 104 others.

The incident Deadly Tower 22 occurred in the middle of a greater campaign of militia attacks supported by Iran against the American forces through the Middle East on the American position of the War of Israel-Hamas. The Biden administration responded a few days later with air strikes widespread on the targets linked to Tehran in Iraq and Syria.

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Drone challenges

Above all, the Tower 22 incident highlights the challenges of detecting small drones filled with explosives and related preparation requirements. These ammunition, increasingly used in combat, are very different from traditional threats such as missiles. They are more easily acquired by threat actors, have small radar signatures which can be confused with other things and demand vigilance to engage. And even then, they can be missed.

The United States recognizes that drones is an important problem, representing a major threat to force. In December, the defense secretary of the time, Lloyd Austin, said that opponent drones “have evolved quickly” in recent years, adding that “cheap systems are increasingly changing the battlefield, threatening American facilities and injuring or killing our troops”.

Towards the end of the Biden administration, the Ministry of Defense described its approach to the threat of the drone. The United States seeks to accumulate its inventory of counter-drone capacities. Such systems were in place in Tower 22, but something else went wrong.

In the recommendations of the Tower 22 survey, it was suggested that the US Army Central, in charge of operations in the Middle East, establishes a complete and standardized “Bdoc / Counter-Drone” crew training program for all units before deploying in a region where capacities or counter-ground missions may be necessary.

The report recommended that the program “Understands recent experiences, TTP (tactics, techniques and procedures) and lessons learned through” the area of ​​responsibility Centcom.