PNN – On March 26, the US Secretary of War claimed that the war against Iran had destroyed the country’s defense equipment, while the truth says otherwise, according to existing reports; several billion dollars in Washington’s defense and military equipment have been destroyed in this war.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network; Al Jazeera reported: Iran fired missiles and drones that struck a US base in Saudi Arabia, injuring several US soldiers and destroying a $700 million radar reconnaissance plane. This was not a surprise attack. The Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies has calculated that Iranian missiles and drones, and a devastating example of so-called friendly fire, destroyed between $2.3 billion and $2.8 billion worth of US military equipment.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimate is the first detailed tabulation by a major international research group of US military losses in the war that began on February 28, and Al Jazeera is the first to report it.
The institute said the estimated cost does not include damage to U.S. bases in the region or any specialized equipment or naval assets.
Mark Kansian, a senior adviser to the Department of Defense and National Security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, did the calculations and said he also looked at damage to U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf. But that has been more challenging.
Planet Labs, a global provider of satellite imagery, has blocked all satellite imagery from public and media use since February 28 at the request of the US government. However, satellite imagery of Iran has been available.
Some of the damage has been caused by “friendly fire.” Three F-15 fighter jets were shot down in one such incident in Kuwait in early March.
But most of the American aircraft and radars destroyed in the war were targeted by Iran. First, on March 1, the United States lost at least one powerful missile defense radar that uses the THAAD system to detect missiles and some hypersonic threats and relay targeting data to other defense systems. Some reports put the number of radars destroyed at a total cost of between $485 million and $970 million. The United States is hosted by several Gulf States where THAAD systems are deployed.
The second, on March 27, was a strike on Prince Sultan Air Base in eastern Saudi Arabia, less than 24 hours after Hegsett’s boast that destroyed a $700 million E-3 AWACS/E7 radar-based reconnaissance aircraft. Essentially an airborne command center, the aircraft can detect aircraft and missiles from hundreds of kilometers away and coordinate battles in the sky. Omar Ashour, a professor of security and military studies and founder of the Security Studies Program at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, said that while the United States has released some figures, it cannot be completely transparent for political reasons.
Ashour told Al Jazeera: Right now, I don’t think the Trump administration wants to look like its losing equipment and personnel, because that could have consequences for it in the November midterm elections. The United States has a history of achieving operational victories in conflicts around the world but then failing strategically.
He emphasized that currently, the American forces deployed in the region are not even a tenth of the forces used to invade Iraq in 2003. Nor are the number of aircraft carriers used against Iraq equal to them.
The professor of security and military studies and founder of the security studies programs at the Doha Institute of Graduate Studies also said that Israel and the US claim that they have severely weakened Iran’s navy and air force, but that is not true. You can still fight at sea without a conventional navy or without a high-seas navy. They have been weakened. But they have not been defeated yet.