Critical US radar plane destroyed by Iran strike on US base in Saudi Arabia, photos show

NBC News has reached out to US Central Command for comment.

“Iran is slowly eroding the network of early warning systems that the US has built for decades in the region,” said Andreas Krieg, senior lecturer at King’s College London’s School of Security Studies, commenting on NBC News on Monday.

“Together each radar platform or (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) has further destroyed the overall US surveillance capability,” he said.

Six IE-3 Sentry, airborne warning and control system, or AWACS, aircraft were stationed at Prince Sultan Air Base before Friday’s attack, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine, one of the world’s leading aerospace publications. Before this strike, the US had 16 in total, the magazine reported.

NBC News has reached out to US Central Command for comment on the number of E-3 Sentry aircraft.

Krieg said the US should have foreseen this attack and “should have been better prepared for a long war,” especially “to fight from a permanent installation, especially in a theater where the other side has a lot of missiles, cruise missiles and drones for one-way attacks.”

Still, he said he believes the US is doing “a very effective job of protecting its assets in the most difficult theater,” reporting that “many incoming threats” are being intercepted.

Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a Bronze Star Award winner who served for 21 years, disagreed.

“We’re not doing very well,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday. Dennis, a senior strategist and military expert at Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank, added that the US was “militarily unprepared for this to be an ongoing war.”

“Too many in the administration thought this was going to be a quick and easy thing,” he said, adding that “the Iranian side still has a lot of missiles to go on.”

“If we had such a big problem with what was considered a militarily inferior Iran, what does one think will happen if we have to fight on the ground, at sea and in the air against Russia or China?”

But Burcu Ozcelik, a senior researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank, said in a separate interview that “there is a risk of underestimating or underestimating the nature of the damage inside Iran,” especially given the Islamic Republic’s communications blackout.

People should be “cautious at this stage of the war about exaggerating the level of damage that American troops have had,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian intelligence shared with NBC News by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an interview over the weekend suggested that Russia may also be involved in assisting Iran in its attacks on American assets in the region.

In an interview in Qatar on Saturday, Zelenskyy said he is “100%” sure that Moscow is sharing such intelligence with Tehran to help target US forces across the Middle East in the war, which began after the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran in Feb. 28.

“Moscow has every incentive to tie up US military resources in the Middle East, increase Washington’s spending, and reward Tehran with the military support Iran has given Russia elsewhere,” Krieg said.

Still, he said he would not even suggest that Russian aid could be “the reason Iran is successful.”

Ultimately, he said, “US defense was strong” in its war with Iran, “but not well.”

“It was good enough to maintain performance, but not good enough to prevent embarrassing and costly losses.”