Videos of FPV drone strikes on American assets in Iraq provide another data point the US is not as prepared for modern drone warfare as it ought to have been before picking a fight with Iran.
The attack hit the former Camp Victory base in Baghdad, appearing to strike multiple targets, including a helicopter and a radar system, purportedly carried out by a pro-Iranian militia. The US transferred the Victory Base Complex to the Iraqi government in 2011 — portions of the base are used by Iraq's military, while some diplomatic support facilities are operated by the US Department of State.
The video identifies the helicopter as a UH-60 Black Hawk, although it looks more like an HH-60M meant for medical evacuations, with the red cross painted on the chopper blurred out.
Another video appears to show an FPV attack on an AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel radar, which is used by the NASAMS air defense system. The attack looks like it used multiple drones in a swarm, with the explosion on the radar system being recorded from a different UAV.
The videos don’t show any attempts to shoot the drones down or, indeed, any defending personnel.
This isn’t the first time that the facility was struck by FPVs. Last week, videos of hangars at the base getting hit were posted online, though it was not immediately clear whether the drones did any significant damage.
This time, they appear to have gotten closer, with one drone striking the rotor of the helicopter and the other detonating close to the radar system.
It's not clear how much damage the attacks may have caused. Still, both the Blackhawks and Sentinel radars cost millions of dollars — at least seven figures, into the low eight figures, depending on variants, upgrades, and level of technical support subsumed into the price. FPV drones can cost just hundreds of dollars.
Drones of Damocles
The full-scale war in Ukraine has taught the world the effectiveness of UAVs, transforming how warfare works, especially when it’s asymmetrical. This tech and methods for using it have naturally proliferated. Drones are ideal weapons for a force on a budget, be it an outgunned national military or a ragtag militia. Or a ragtag militia supported by a national military.
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By now, isolated strikes are receding into the past, replaced by persistent surveillance and a constant overhanging threat. Probing strikes and saturation waves, followed by precision attacks can come at any moment and from any direction.
“The sky is no longer neutral. The question is who controls the low-altitude battlespace,” said an American combat veteran and senior NCO in the Ukrainian armed forces.
Fortifications are no longer adequate to keep one’s enemies at bay, especially when said enemies can blend into the terrain or the surrounding population, watching and waiting for a chance to strike with cheap, easily-concealed, hard-to-detect weaponry.
This can be a protracted problem for bases and facilities in the Middle East. It may even be an issue on the American mainland.
In fact, a US Department of Defense audit found that key US military sites are undefended against drones. These sites include the Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, where 75% of the world's F-35 pilots train; a key aircraft plant in California; and a major naval facility in Virginia.
Some of these sites had “active drone incursions,” which were never dealt with.
“The next attack on the US won’t come from across the continent with ballistic missiles, it’s going to come from across the parking lot,” James Poss, a former Air Force intelligence official told journalist Sasha Ingber in July.
