US base in Kuwait where six troops were killed lacked fortifications – media
Six US servicemen were killed in an Iranian strike on a military installation in Kuwait on Sunday, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has confirmed. While the Pentagon chief claimed the base’s defenses were penetrated by a single munition, media reports suggest it lacked proper fortifications and anti-air capabilities.
The US military originally said three soldiers were killed at the tactical operations center at the Shuaiba port, yet Hegseth admitted on Tuesday that the death toll has doubled.
“Every once in a while, you might have [a munition], unfortunately, we call it a ‘squirter’, that makes its way through. And in that particular case, it happened to hit a tactical operations center that was fortified, but these are powerful weapons,” Hegseth told a news conference at the Pentagon.
However, three anonymous US military officials with direct knowledge of the incident told CBS News that the operations center was a makeshift office comprised of a triple-wide trailer – a common setup for US military bases abroad.
The only fortifications at the site were so-called ‘T-walls’ – prefab steel-reinforced concrete barriers up to 3.6 meters (12 feet) tall –according to the sources. The US military has widely used such barriers to build the perimeter walls of its installations. While they provide protection from shrapnel, small arms fire, and rockets, the barriers do not provide protection against aerial attacks.
The facility is believed to have been struck by a kamikaze drone, which apparently scored a direct hit on the operations center, sparking a major fire at the site, the sources suggested. Some also claimed that the installation at the port did not have the means to intercept drones or other munitions.
“We basically had no drone defeat capability,” one of the sources said.
Two sources also told the broadcaster that they did not recall hearing warning sirens from systems designed to detect incoming projectiles. The alarms went off repeatedly in the days before the deadly strike, and in some cases the drones were already inside the base when the siren sounded, the sources claimed.
