American Base in Jordan Where Drone Killed 3 U.S. Troops Dogged by Inadequate Air Defenses

Tower 22, the U.S. base in Jordan where three U.S. troops were killed by a one-way attack drone late last month, suffered from inadequate anti-drone defenses, said military sources who have served on the base.

The lethal attack followed a spate of one-way drone attacks on U.S. bases in neighboring Syria and Iraq in recent weeks, an escalation by anti-American militants since the outbreak of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip. No one was reported killed in the previous attacks, including one on Al-Tanf in Syria, a base just 12 miles away from Tower 22.

Despite the repeated attacks and a well-funded Pentagon’s investment in counter-drone technology, the U.S. military failed to stop the Tower 22 drone attack. 

“We had a radar system called TPS-75 that was broken 80 percent of the time I was there.”

“The air defenses were minimal, if any,” an Air Force airman, who served at Tower 22 last year, told The Intercept. “We relied heavily on aircraft from MSAB” — Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, a nearby Jordanian base that houses a U.S. military presence — “to stop any targets. We had a radar system called TPS-75 that was broken 80 percent of the time I was there.”

A preliminary military investigation reported in the Washington Post on Tuesday concluded that the drone was never detected, likely by flying too low for the bases antiquated radar system. Just a week before the attack, the military announced an $84 million contract to work on a replacement to the TPS-75, a mobile, ground-based radar array from the 1960s.

With inadequate defenses in place, the Tower 22 drone attack led to the deaths of the three U.S. service members and injuries to at least 40 others, casualties that spurred deepening U.S. military involvement in a tense Middle East.

“The small U.S. military contingents in Iraq and Syria have long represented a vulnerability — as convenient targets for anyone wishing to make a violent anti-U.S. statement,” said Paul Pillar, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies. “Over the past four months those targets have become an extension of the Gaza war.”

After the Tower 22 deaths, prominent Republicans in Congress, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called for the U.S. to directly bomb Iran, which backs the militias that took responsibility for the attack. Last Friday, U.S. Central Command, the Pentagon’s combat command for the Middle East, announced that it had conducted airstrikes on over 85 Iranian-aligned targets in Iraq and Syria, the largest U.S. strike on the militias since Israel’s war on Gaza war began.

The recriminations would only deepen U.S. involvement in the conflict, Pillar said: “The U.S. airstrikes on targets in Syria and Iraq — as retaliation for retaliation for the U.S. support for Israel — represents a further extension of the war in Gaza.”

“Plenty of Reason to Harden Defenses”

American service members familiar with Tower 22 outlined the small outpost’s paltry capabilities to detect and defend against air attacks.

“They have outposts surrounding the base, but that does little to nothing when faced with attacking aircraft,” said the airman, who, like other members of the military who had been deployed to Tower 22, requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the sensitive base. “Only solution was to ‘blackout,’” he added, referring to the practice of turning off lights to obscure locations during an air raid. “And even when we had blackouts no one adhered to the rules of the blackout.”

An Army soldier currently deployed to another base in Jordan and who has served at Tower 22 echoed the airman’s account, saying bases in the area lacked key countermeasures for aerial threats, including capable alert systems and two defense systems designed for small, low-flying drones and rocket and artillery attacks, respectively. The network of small outposts in Jordan, Syria, and Iraq have to rely on warnings provided to them from outside the base through a secure phone system, sometimes resulting in service members warning others by knocking on doors, the Army soldier said.

The Associated Press appeared to reference the problem earlier this week, reporting that although the base has some counter-drone systems like the Coyote, “there are no large air defense systems” at Tower 22. The Army has not confirmed the presence of the Coyote, nor whether it was activated or employed during the drone attack. The Coyote is a Raytheon-manufactured small turbine engine-powered missile that is launched in the sky and loiters before undertaking a high-speed attack on low-flying drones.

Spokespeople for the Pentagon could only tell The Intercept that Tower 22 possessed some kind of counter-unmanned aircraft system. When pressed on what specific capabilities the base had on the day of the attack, they declined to comment, citing operational security.

“To maintain operational security, it would not be prudent for us to discuss Tower 22’s defense capabilities,” Pentagon spokesperson Peter Nguyen said. 

When White House national security spokesperson John Kirby was asked how the drone “might have gotten past the defense systems at Tower 22,” he demurred. Kirby said, “I think I’m going to let the Defense Department talk about the forensics on this.” 

At a Pentagon press briefing on Monday, deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said, “We are still assessing what happened and how a one-way attack drone was able to impact the facility.”

The drone attack at Tower 22 was the first instance of U.S. troops being killed by enemy forces since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, but it was far from the first attack on U.S. personnel.

On January 20, U.S. Central Command announced that three one-way drones attacked the Al-Tanf garrison, another U.S. base in Jordan just 12 miles from Tower 22. Multiple drones have also attacked U.S. bases in southern Syria, which Jordan borders.

The airman who spoke with The Intercept said, “The drone attacks at Al-Tanf should’ve given military leadership plenty of reason to harden defenses prior to the attack on Tower 22.”