Iran retaliated against our recent air strikes by launching missiles and drones against our military bases in the Middle East. They hit on and near our U.S. Navy base in Bahrain, which is the headquarters for our Fifth Fleet. Iran also hit a U.S. base in Kuwait with drones that killed six and wounded a number of our military members. The dozen destroyers prepositioned in the region were able to shoot down some of the missiles and drones. Looking to the future, U.S. Navy warships are typically scattered over the world’s oceans. They would not be available to quickly concentrate to counter a surprise attack.
It appears some of our military bases in the Middle East are targets for missile and drone attacks that are designed to overwhelm our air defense systems with huge numbers of incoming missiles and drones. We need to increase the number of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Patriot systems available at our bases to counter the missile attacks. Larger quantities of interceptors are also needed. Unfortunately, these systems are very expensive and take time to produce.
Iran, Russia, China and other adversarial countries have huge quantities of drones available due to the low cost to produce these weapons. Large numbers of attacking drones fired in rapid succession from many locations can overwhelm air defense systems. Apparently, Ukraine has shown that these slow-moving drones can be shot down by high caliber machine guns. Machine guns and ammunition can be mass produced at relatively low cost.
We should consider the implementation of multiple high caliber machine gun systems at some of our military bases.
Donald Moskowitz
Londonderry, New Hampshire