Military Enemy drone that killed US troops in Jordan was mistaken for a US drone, preliminary report suggests

[Beijingwalker]

Enemy drone that killed US troops in Jordan was mistaken for a US drone, preliminary report suggests​

BY LOLITA C. BALDOR. AAMER MADHANI AND ZEKE MILLER
Updated 10:20 AM GMT+8, January 30, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. forces may have mistaken an enemy drone for an American one and let it pass unchallenged into a desert base in Jordan where it killed three U.S. troops and wounded dozens more, officials said Monday.

Details of the Sunday attack emerged as President Joe Biden faced a difficult balancing act, blaming Iran and looking to strike back in a forceful way without causing any further escalation of the Gaza conflict.
As the enemy drone was flying in at a low altitude, a U.S. drone was returning to the small installation known as Tower 22, according to a preliminary report cited by two officials, who were not authorized to comment and insisted on anonymity,

As a result, there was no effort to shoot down the enemy drone that hit the outpost. One of the trailers where troops sleep sustained the brunt of the strike, while surrounding trailers got limited damage from the blast and flying debris. While there are no large air defense systems at Tower 22, the base does have counter-drone systems, such as Coyote drone interceptors.

Aside from the soldiers killed, the Pentagon said more than 40 troops were wounded in the attack, most with cuts, bruises, brain injuries and similar wounds. Eight were medically evacuated, including three who were going to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. The other five, who suffered “minor traumatic brain injuries,” were expected to return to duty.

Asked if the failure to shoot down the enemy drone was “human error,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh responded that the U.S. Central Command was still assessing the matter.

The Pentagon identified those killed in the attack as Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Georgia; Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Georgia; and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Georgia.

The three U.S. Army Reserve soldiers were assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade in Fort Moore, Georgia.

The explanation for how the enemy drone evaded U.S. air defenses came as the White House said Monday it’s not looking for war with Iran even as Biden vows retaliatory action. The Democratic administration believes Tehran was behind the strike.

Biden met with national security advisers in the White House Situation Room to discuss the latest developments and potential retaliation.

“There’s no easy answer here,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. “And that’s why the president is meeting with his national security team weighing the options before him.”

The brazen attack, which the Biden administration blames on Iranian-based proxies, adds another layer of complexity to an already tense Mideast situation as the Biden administration tries to keep the Israel-Hamas war from expanding into a broader regional conflict.

“The president and I will not tolerate attacks on U.S. forces, and we will take all necessary actions to defend the U.S. and our troops,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said as he met at the Pentagon with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

The drone attack was one of dozens on U.S. troops in the Middle East since Hamas launched attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, igniting the war in Gaza. But it’s the first in which American service members have been killed.

Biden promised on Sunday to “hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner (of) our choosing” but said the U.S. wasn’t seeking to get into another conflict in the Middle East.

Kirby also made clear that American patience has worn thin after more than two months of attacks by Iranian proxies on U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria and Jordan and on U.S. Navy and commercial vessels in the Red Sea. The proxy groups — including Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Iraq based Kataeb Hezbollah — say the attacks are in response to Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza.

“We are not looking for a war with Iran,” Kirby told reporters. “That said, this was a very serious attack. It had lethal consequences. We will respond, and we respond appropriately.”

Iran on Monday denied it was behind the Jordan strike.

“These claims are made with specific political goals to reverse the realities of the region,” Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency quoted foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani as saying. Iran regularly denies involvement in attacks linked back to it through the militias it arms across the wider Mideast.

Kirby said that U.S. officials are still working through determining which militant group was behind the attack. He noted that Iran has longed equipped and trained the militias.

Republicans have laid blame on Biden for doing too little to deter Iranian militias, which have carried out approximately 165 attacks on U.S. troops in the region since the start of the war.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday called the attack “yet another horrific and tragic consequence of Joe Biden’s weakness and surrender.”

The attack hit a U.S. military desert outpost in the far reaches of northeastern Jordan known as Tower 22. The installation sits near the demilitarized zone on the border between Jordan and Syria along a sandy, bulldozed berm marking the DMZ’s southern edge. The Iraqi border is only 10 kilometers (6 miles) away.

The base began as a Jordanian outpost watching the border, then saw an increased U.S. presence after American forces entered Syria in late 2015. The small installation includes U.S. engineering, aviation, logistics and security troops, with about 350 U.S. Army and Air Force personnel deployed.

Iraq’s government condemned the drone strike. Spokesman Bassem al-Awadi said in a statement that Iraq was “monitoring with a great concern the alarming security developments in the region” and called for “an end to the cycle of violence.” The statement said that Iraq is ready to participate in diplomatic efforts to prevent further escalation.

An umbrella group for Iran-backed factions known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed dozens of attacks against bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria since the Israel-Hamas war began. On Sunday, the group claimed three drone attacks against sites in Syria, including near the border with Jordan, and one inside of “occupied Palestine” but so far hasn’t claimed the attack in Jordan.

John Bolton, who served as national security adviser to Trump, said Iran hasn’t paid a price for the havoc that its proxies have unleashed in the region. He suggested the Biden administration could send a strong message to Tehran with strikes on Iranian vessels in the Red Sea, Iranian air defenses along the Iraqi border, and bases that have been used to train and supply militant groups for years.

“So until Iran bears a cost, you’re not going to reestablish deterrence, you’re not going to put the belligerence on a downward slope.”

The attack came as U.S. officials were seeing signs of progress in negotiations to broker a deal between Israel and Hamas to release the more than 100 remaining hostages being held in Gaza in exchange for an extended pause in fighting. While contours of a deal under consideration would not end the war, Americans believed that it could lay the groundwork for a durable resolution to the conflict.

Qatar’s prime minister said Monday that senior U.S. and Mideast mediators had achieved a framework proposal to present to Hamas for freeing hostages and pausing fighting in Gaza.

Prime Minister Mohammed al-Thani’s comments at the Atlantic Council in Washington came after talks Sunday in Paris among U.S., Israeli, Qatari and Egyptian officials seeking a new round of hostage releases and a cease-fire in Gaza.

Enemy drone that killed US troops in Jordan was mistaken for a US drone, preliminary report suggests

An enemy drone that killed three American troops and wounded dozens of others in Jordan may have been confused with an American drone returning to the U.S. installation.

apnews.com

 

[Beijingwalker]

Enemy drone that hit US base in Jordan possibly confused with American drone​

Three U.S. service members were killed when the enemy drone got past defenses.
ByLuis Martinez, Anne Flaherty, and Shannon K. Crawford
January 30, 2024, 7:21 AM

An enemy drone was probably able to slip past defenses at a U.S. base in Jordan because American personnel mistook the enemy drone for one of their own returning from a surveillance mission, two U.S. officials confirmed Monday.

The officials say that the explosive-laden attack drone approached the base at a low altitude and hit a housing area at the remote Tower 22 base in the Jordanian desert near the border with Syria and Iraq.

The attack on Sunday by Iran-backed militants killed three American service members and wounded at least 40 others, U.S. officials said, with President Joe Biden warning that the strike will be met with American retaliation as Iran denied involvement.

The Pentagon on Monday announced the names of the three Army reservists killed as Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Georgia.; Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Georgia.; and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Georgia., all from an Army Reserve engineering unit from Georgia.



While Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh couldn't say at a Monday briefing where the one-way attack drone came from, she said it had the "footprint of Kataib Hezbollah" and that U.S. officials believe Iran is behind the attack.

The drone hit early in the morning while many troops were still in bed, she added.

"Iran continues to arm and equip these groups to launch these attacks, and we will certainly hold them responsible," she said, adding, "We don't seek a wider conflict with Iran. We don't want to go to we don't want a war with Iran."

The deaths are expected to spur more U.S. involvement in the region since they mark the first in the line of fire for American troops since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October in response to Hamas' terror attack.

The U.S. has supported Israel against Hamas in Gaza while trying to prevent the fighting from enveloping the broader Middle East, even as the U.S. has said Iran-supported militants carried out a series of strikes in Iraq, Syria and Yemen in opposition to Israel's campaign.

But Pentagon officials have also said that the deaths of American service members would elicit a strong response -- though such a step could draw the U.S. and other regional and international powers further into a mushrooming conflict.

"Have no doubt -- we will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner our choosing," Biden said in a statement Sunday.

Later, during an event in South Carolina, Biden held a moment of silence for the dead and said, "We shall respond."

In response to the strikes, a spokesperson for the Iranian Mission for the U.N. said late Sunday, "Iran has nothing to do with the attacks in questions. The conflict has been initiated by the United States military against resistance groups in Iraq and Syria; and such operations are reciprocal between them."



Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin lamented the attack in his own statement, promising that "the president and I will not tolerate attacks on American forces, and we will take all necessary actions to defend the United States, our troops, and our interests."

CENTCOM initially said 25 troops were injured in the attack by a one-way drone, also known as a "suicide" drone. The number of injured later increased to at least 40, officials said. and then to at least 34. At least eight were evacuated for high-level treatment.


Some of the injured service members received serious wounds from shrapnel and some were being screened for traumatic brain injuries, an official with the White House National Security Council said.

President Biden bows his head in a moment of silence for the three American troops killed Sunday, Jan...Show more
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Biden was briefed multiple times in the hours after the strike and said in his statement on Sunday that the U.S. was "still gathering the facts" surrounding the "wholly unjust attack," which he said occurred Saturday night.

The White House clarified that the attack occurred early Sunday in Jordan, or late Saturday Eastern time.

The president in his statement on Sunday hailed the killed service members for being "unwavering in their bravery. Unflinching in their duty. Unbending in their commitment to our country."

Located in the northeastern region of Jordan, the Tower 22 is a small outpost that supports operations across the border at the U.S. base at al-Tanf in Syria and contributes to the Pentagon's advise-and-assist mission for the Jordanian military.

Iran-backed militias have in recent months carried out more than a hundred attacks in the region, primarily on U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and Syria but also on American ships and international commercial vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The strikes have wounded scores of American troops, including one who sustained a serious injury on Christmas Day in an attack on the Erbil air base in Iraq.

Two Navy SEALS were also presumed dead after they were lost at sea during a mission that successfully intercepted a vessel carrying Iranian-made missile parts destined for Yemen.

U.S. forces began conducting targeted, retaliatory strikes on fighters in the Middle East in October, which the Pentagon has consistently described as defensive measures intended to degrade the militias' proficiency and deter them from escalating.

After months of attacks primarily targeting commercial vessels in the waters surrounding Yemen, the U.S. also launched a number of strikes against the country's Houthi rebels in January.

U.S. officials initially expressed hope that carrying out operations in the two theaters would diminish the belligerent groups' capabilities for further conflict, but the tit-for-tat exchanges with militants in Syria, Iraq and Yemen have instead steadily escalated.

That protracted pattern has fueled questions about the broader military strategy.

"What do they [critics of the current approach] want? A broader conflict? Do you want us in a full-scale war?" Gen. CQ Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a recent interview with ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz.

Some lawmakers have also criticized the White House for not first seeking authorization from Congress for the Yemen strikes, though the administration maintains it acted under existing legal authority to carry out such operations.

This satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows a military base known as Tower 22 in northeastern Jo...Show more
Planet Labs PBC via AP, FILE
In the hours after the Jordan strike was confirmed, a growing number of members of Congress spoke out. Many of them offered condolences to the slain and wounded service members, and Republicans argued that the Biden administration had failed to adequately address Iran.

"We need a major reset of our Middle East policy to protect our national security interests and restore deterrence," House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said in a statement as House Speaker Mike Johnson called for "a crystal clear message across the globe that attacks on our troops will not be tolerated."

In the interview taped last week with "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz, Gen. Brown was asked if Americans being killed in the Middle East would impact his decision making.

He said the military was doing "everything we can to protect our forces" and noted the U.S. does not want "broader conflict" in the region -- and that he doesn't believe Iran wants war with the U.S., either.

"We don't want to go down a path of greater escalation that drives to a much broader conflict within the region," Brown said.

Before the start of the Israeli-Hamas war, U.S. forces in the Middle East experienced a two-year period of relative calm.

The last major attack to result in multiple American service members killed in action was the bombing outside of the Kabul, Afghanistan, airport in August 2021, which claimed the lives of 13 U.S. troops and more than 180 Afghan citizens.

Enemy drone that hit US base in Jordan possibly confused with American drone

Iran-backed militant groups killed three American service members and wounded 34 others in an aerial drone attack in Jordan, President Joe Biden said

abcnews.go.com

 

[Beijingwalker]

U.S. troops had little warning before deadly drone attack in Jordan​