<\/p>\n
Top defense officials<\/span> are expressing increasing worry about the vulnerability of U.S. bases around the world and even within the United States as cheap drone technology upends long-standing defense strategies.<\/p>\n The fear is mounting after a series recent attacks and threats against ground targets, including the destruction of key bases in the Middle East by Iran, plots against mega-bases in Europe, including to U.S. bombers at a British air base, and a Russian campaign that damaged European military facilities, according to two government officials.<\/p>\n While the Pentagon is notorious for inflating threats to press for additional funding<\/a>, the officials stressed that the anxiety is real, not invented. Despite the U.S. military\u2019s enormous budget<\/a>, they say, the United States now finds itself scrambling strengthen its fortifications, protect its costly equipment, and recall personnel from some locations.<\/p>\n \u201cNow all the world knows what the SecDef should have,\u201d said one of the officials.<\/p>\n Foreign adversaries have taken notice of Iran\u2019s ability to defeat<\/a> U.S. air defenses using missiles and drones<\/a>, they said. The officials drew specific attention to Tehran\u2019s ability to damage or destroy bases that have been the key to U.S. power-projection and war-making for decades in the Middle East.<\/p>\n An Iranian missile and drone attack on February 28 destroyed Navy facilities in Manama, Bahrain, the region\u2019s most critical logistics hub. The\u00a0Combined Air Operations Center\u00a0at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, was severely damaged by Iranian missiles<\/a> early in the war, rendering it inoperable.\u00a0Both were recently attacked again<\/a>, raising questions about whether either will ever be rebuilt. The destruction of these bases has fundamentally altered America\u2019s future force posture in the region, according to the officials. One of them called it a \u201cseismic shift.\u201d<\/p>\n On Friday, the Trump administration leaked highly classified intelligence to Fox News<\/a> and Axios<\/a> suggesting Iran has \u201csubstantially increased\u201d efforts to target U.S. diplomats and other officials in the Middle East and beyond. The October 23 memo claimed that \u201cthe lethal plotting efforts by the Iranians against U.S. citizens have reached advanced stages.\u201d A U.S. official confirmed the accuracy of the intelligence but questioned the motives of the \u201cofficial leak,\u201d suggesting it\u2019s part of a case being built to justify renewing<\/a> the failed war<\/a>.<\/p>\n The leak came as the State Department ordered a further reduction in staff at multiple diplomatic posts across the Middle East, including in Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. One of the officials said the move \u201cdefinitely\u201d spoke to America\u2019s inability to defend its assets overseas. Those fears now extend to the United States, according to the officials.<\/p>\n Last month, buried in an unhinged address to troops in which he attacked the press and those within the military he calls beardos<\/a>, weirdos, and wimps, self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth tacitly acknowledged the vulnerability of U.S. domestic bases, noting that the Pentagon was now \u201chardening every installation on American soil\u201d against \u201csabotage and drones.\u201d And last week, the Pentagon quietly began seeking advice on new ways to protect bases by using innovative advanced materials, camouflaging facilities, obscuring their thermal and electromagnetic signatures, hiding them underground, and making them more resilient in the face of successful attack by adversaries, according to a special notice issued by a top Pentagon official.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As the Pentagon refines this \u201cbase of the future\u201d concept, Iran is teasing a \u201cwar of the future<\/a>\u201d effort that builds on its successes<\/a> in throttling the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, regionalizing the war, and battering U.S. bases, according to Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the lead negotiator and speaker of Parliament. \u201cThe second generation of surprises will be on their way; at the time and place of our choosing, in the manner we have devised, and with the creativity that only our unparalleled fighters can muster,\u201d he wrote on X<\/a>, teasing how Iran would respond if America ramps up the war.<\/p>\n Iran\u2019s successful attacks on U.S. bases have added to the growing realization that foreign adversaries, proxies, terror groups, and lone wolf actors can use low-cost, easily obtained drones to attack the military bases, aircraft, and military personnel of the U.S. and its allies.<\/p>\n While Iran dominated the headlines for months, officials became increasingly worried about danger from Russian attacks. \u201cWhen do we stop calling it gray zone?\u201d asked a third official briefed on the intelligence, referring to a Russian drone attack on a massive air freighter, used to carry military assistance to Ukraine, at Leipzig\/Halle Airport in Germany<\/a> in August. One drone hit the cargo plane but failed to explode, another struck a different aircraft, and a third<\/a> was found near the airport. \u201cThat\u2019s what Putin always does. He keeps testing us, pushing us, to see how far he can go,\u201d said the official. That official and another said that the intelligence proved there was \u201cno question\u201d that Russia was behind<\/a> the operations. Russia has denied responsibility.<\/p>\n The August drone attack was part of a monthslong campaign of nonstop sabotage, cyberattacks, and psychological operations against NATO nations. \u201cThese were happening in sequence from earlier in the year, through August, through September and they didn\u2019t show any signs of stopping,\u201d said the third official. But the attacks slowed or stopped after President Donald Trump announced earlier this month that the United States would buy Russian diesel<\/a> in an effort to bring down fuel prices before the midterm elections and called on Ukraine to stop striking oil Russian refineries.<\/p>\n The officials noted that Pentagon leadership has been slow to respond to the changing nature of warfare, specifically drawing attention to tactics honed by Ukraine in its war with Russia. Earlier this month, for example, intelligence suggested that Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was planning a complex drone attack on U.S. B-1 bombers used to attack Iran, and U.S. personnel at Royal Air Force Fairford air base. The plot, they said, was to launch small drones from just beyond the bases\u2019 fenceline, attacking the supersonic bombers, which were not in hardened shelters but in the open on the tarmac. They noted that the plot appeared to be patterned on a Ukrainian attack, dubbed Operation Spider\u2019s Web, against Russia last year. The plot so unnerved top military officials that the bombers were flown out<\/a> while some aerial refueling aircraft were still being deployed to support their panicked flights back to the U.S. In addition to RAF Fairford, U.S. officials referenced additional threats against other bases in Europe, including Ramstein Air Base in Germany.<\/p>\n Last August, Hegseth established Joint Interagency Task Force 401 to deliver \u201cC-sUAS\u201d or counter-small unmanned aircraft system \u201ccapabilities to America\u2019s warfighters, [to] defeat adversary threats, and promote sovereignty over national airspace.\u201d But an inspector general report<\/a> from January said \u201cimmediate attention\u201d was required to protect the most critical bases in the U.S. against drones and noted that Pentagon \u201cdocuments contradict one another and do not speak to certain aspects of C-UAS authorities and capabilities.\u201d The IG found also that key \u201cmilitary installations, government-owned, contractor-operated facilities, and contractor-owned, contractor-operated facilities conducting critical missions\u201d were not even designated for protection.<\/p>\n In March, small drones flew over Louisiana\u2019s Barksdale Air Force Base, the home of Global Strike Command which oversees America\u2019s bomber fleet and its intercontinental-ballistic missiles.\u00a0And the IG report mentions \u201c10 DoD installations and activities where Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) incursions have occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n Late last month, the Air Force awarded a contract<\/a> for counter-drone systems for Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey. The military has also been looking into drone-killing technologies to defend Yokota Air Base in Tokyo, Japan; Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota; Battle Creek Air National Guard Base in Michigan; and Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, among other facilities.<\/p>\n Two of the officials suggested that new Pentagon plans for military base modernization are rooted in an uneasy acknowledgment that U.S. outposts<\/a> around the world<\/a> \u2014 including within the continental United States \u2014 are increasingly vulnerable to complex and asymmetric attacks. A recent Pentagon inspector general report revealed<\/a> Iranian strikes \u201cdamaged and destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at U.S. bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan during the conflict.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Hegseth\u2019s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment by The Intercept.<\/p>\n One U.S. official told The Intercept that the cost of repairing and rebuilding these Middle East outposts could be \u201cupwards of $50 million,\u201d but said the \u201creal cost\u201d might be \u201cfar higher.\u201d The Pentagon, however, refuses to disclose the price tag of the damage, which has only been shared in a classified briefing.<\/p>\n \u201cThe American people deserve to know the full cost of the Trump administration\u2019s unauthorized war against Iran. Even if DoD has not yet determined which facilities it is planning to rebuild, disclosing these costs represents the bare minimum transparency DoD owes the public,\u201d wrote<\/a> Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumentha, Mazie Hirono, Tammy Duckworth, and Gary Peters in a recent letter to Adm. Brad Cooper, the chief of Central Command<\/a>. CENTCOM did not reply to a request from The Intercept for the total cost.<\/p>\n