The Pentagon on Monday identified the dead soldiers as Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Ga.; Spec. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Ga.; and Spec. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Ga. The three were assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade, an Army Reserve unit based at Fort Moore, Ga.
The drone attack on the outpost in northeastern Jordan near its borders with Syria and Iraq, called Tower 22, escalated hostilities in the region that have been intensifying since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.
A military investigation is underway to determine exactly what went wrong. Pentagon officials said the base’s air defenses were functioning properly early Sunday. Weather was not a factor.
One theory military officials are considering is that the fighters studied the flight patterns of US drones and deliberately placed their attack drone close to the returning US drone to make it harder to detect. Militia planners could have used Google Earth images of the base to guide the explosives-laden drone to the center of a mass target such as living quarters.
Mr. Biden vowed to fight back and met for a second straight day on Monday with his top national security aides to discuss possible targets in Syria, Iraq and Iran. Senior US officials said a direct attack on Iran was less likely, although the US military has drawn up plans to strike Iranian military advisers and trainers in Iraq and Syria if US troops are killed by Iranian-backed militias in Middle East.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, on his first day back on the job at the Pentagon after undergoing surgery last month for prostate cancer, condemned the attacks and vowed retaliation.
“Let me start with my anger and sadness at the death of three brave US soldiers in Jordan and the other soldiers who were injured,” Mr Austin said before meeting NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. “The president and I will not tolerate attacks against US forces and will take all necessary steps to defend the US and our troops.”
The drone strike in Jordan underscored that Iranian-backed militias—whether in Iran, Syria, or the Houthis in Yemen—remained capable of inflicting serious damage on US troops despite the US military’s efforts to weaken them and avoid falling into a wider conflict. possibly with Iran itself.
US troops in Iraq and Syria, and now Jordan, have been attacked at least 165 times since October — 66 times in Iraq, 98 times in Syria and Sunday’s attack in Jordan — the Pentagon said Monday. More than 80 military personnel had suffered injuries, including brain trauma, before the final salvo.
“We know that Iran supports these groups,” John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Monday. “We know they supply them, we know they train them. We know that they certainly do not deter these attacks.”
But Mr Kirby added: “The extent to which they command and direct is something intelligence analysts will look at.”
Pressed repeatedly in briefings with reporters on Monday about when and how the United States would respond, Mr. Kirby and Ms. Singh declined to comment on specific options. They stressed that the administration was seeking to prevent a wider war in the region, even as they blamed the attack for escalating tensions.
“We are not looking for war with Iran,” Mr Kirby said. “But the attacks must stop.”
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Monday that he would not “telegraph” any potential U.S. response, but that such action “could be multi-layered, come in stages — and be sustained over time.”
Mr Blinken added: “This is an incredibly volatile time in the Middle East. I would argue that we have not seen a situation as dangerous as the one we now face across the region at least since 1973, and arguably even before that.”
For its part, Iran on Monday denied any connection to the attack and blamed Washington for stoking tensions in the region.
About 350 Army and Air Force personnel are deployed to the Tower 22 border outpost. It serves as a logistics and supply hub for the Al Tanf outpost near southeastern Syria, where U.S. troops are working with local Syrian partners to fight remnants of Islamic State. States.
The one-way attack drone crashed near the outpost’s residences, causing injuries ranging from minor injuries to brain trauma, a US military official said. Eight US service members were flown to Iraq for medical treatment and three of them were expected to be flown to Germany for even more advanced treatment, Ms Singh said.
Soldiers and airmen lived in container housing units, Ms. Singh said, essentially aluminum boxes slightly larger than a commercial shipping container. They have linoleum floors and cots or beds inside and can be easily transported in trucks.
“What was different about this attack is where it landed,” Ms Singh said. “It was very early in the morning, so people were actually in their beds when the drone hit.”
Michael Crowley contributed to the report.
