The military facility reportedly has no adequate defenses against air strikes, despite claims by the Pentagon
Six US soldiers were killed in an Iranian attack on a military installation in Kuwait on Sunday, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth confirmed. While Pentagon chiefs said the base’s defenses were penetrated by a single munition, media reports indicated it had no proper fortifications or anti-aircraft capabilities.
The US military originally said three soldiers were killed at the tactical operations center in the port of Shuaiba, but on Tuesday Hegseth admitted the death toll had doubled.
“Once in a while, you have (a munition), unfortunately, we call it a squirter, that goes through it. And in that particular case, it happened to hit a tactical operations center that had a fortress, but these are powerful weapons. Hegsate told a news conference at the Pentagon.
Three unnamed US military officials with direct knowledge of the incident told CBS News the operations center was a makeshift office housed in a triple-wide trailer — a setup common to US military bases overseas.
According to sources, the only fortifications at the site are so-called T-walls, prefab steel-reinforced concrete barriers up to 3.6 meters (12 feet) high. Such barriers are widely used by the US military to construct the perimeter walls of their installations. Although they provide protection from shrapnel, small arms fire, and rockets, barriers do not help against air strikes.
The facility is believed to have been hit by a kamikaze drone, which scored a direct hit on the operations center, sparking a large fire at the site, sources said. Some of them said the installation at the port did not have the means to intercept drones or other munitions.
“We basically didn’t have the ability to defeat any drone” A source said.
Two sources additionally told the broadcaster that they did not recall hearing the warning sirens associated with systems designed to detect incoming missiles. Sources said the alarms went off repeatedly in the days before the deadly strike, and in some incidents the drones were still inside the base when the sirens went off.
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