US race to counter Iranian drones echoes response to roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan | CNN Politics

Facing deadly Iranian drone attacks across the Middle East, the US military has been rushing defensive systems into the region while adjusting to a threat that has come to dominate modern battlefields and carries echoes of a weapon that haunted service members during the 20 years of the war on terror. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing this month that the one-way drones were posing a bigger problem than anticipated, and that US air defenses wouldn’t be able to intercept all of them. A drone was responsible for the first American military deaths of the war, striking a temporary operations center from above, killing six US soldiers and wounding more. George Barros, director of innovation and open source tradecraft with the Institute for the Study of War, said there was some level of shock within the national security community that the US did not appear fully prepared for the threat given how drones have transformed warfare in Ukraine. “We were kind of all aghast,” Barros said, “because it was clear the extent to which the American planners had not been truly implementing or properly