The sound came before the explosion. An aerial vehicle dove out of a cloudless sky toward its destination at Camp Buehring, the US military base in Kuwait. It hit near the runway with a burning plume of black smoke.
“Oh s—t,” the man recording at the base said. “Oh my God. Oh, that was right here. They–they started…They started driving into our building.”
The video ends as smoke billows out of the desert.
The footage of the attack, which was posted online on March 1 but may have been recorded earlier, is among more than 30 videos and satellite images confirmed by NBC News showing Iranian drone strikes and interference by the US and its allies in seven countries. Obvious targets include military bases, transportation facilities, energy infrastructure and diplomatic facilities. In 21 of the 26 videos, the drones seem to achieve their goals.
The videos, posted on various Internet platforms, reveal a pattern of inadequate protection of strategic areas targeted by drones since the beginning of the war. As the US and Israel attack Iran with the stated goal of disabling its nuclear, ballistic and drone capabilities, Iran retaliates by using its missiles and cheap explosive drones.
Drones are a new challenge for the US, its allies and countries caught in the crossfire. Enemies will be watching America’s response closely.
The flexibility of the weapon could allow Iran to prolong the war by suppressing the enemy’s resources, a tactic that appeals to cash-strapped states, experts say. Iran is a technology pioneer, which it sold to Russia following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It challenged the military economy. While the US remains steadfast in its air dominance, Iran’s drone campaign has forced target countries to use expensive weapons to intercept them.
“It’s like the ultimate symbol of asymmetric warfare,” said Joe Dyke, director of programs for Airwars, a nonprofit that tracks civilian casualties in conflict zones.
Although drones can be shot down with a range of weapons including heavy artillery, fighter jets and advanced bombers, they can defeat air defenses and even a single such drone can cause lethal damage.
A drone strike killed six US servicemen at the Port of Shuaiba in Kuwait. Video verified by NBC News shows some attacking oil infrastructure and shipping hubs. Some drones hit US embassies and embassies in the Gulf states as passers-by gasped and snapped nosedives. Oman’s oil storage facility has been hit twice: Once last week and this week, underscoring the continued vulnerability of key targets.
The US does not release data on the weapons it invades or opposes. Data from the United Arab Emirates, which has been hit hard by Iran’s strikes, says 1,475 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been fired from the country since March 10 and 1,385 have been intercepted.
The UAE, one of the worst-hit countries in the Gulf, reported six deaths and 122 injured in the conflict since March 11. Israel reported 13 deaths. In Iran, more than 1,200 people have been killed by US-Israeli strikes, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society.
Iran’s most commonly used stealth aircraft is the Shahed-136, according to the Open Source Munitions Portal (OSMP). With a wingspan of 11.5 meters, it can fly up to 1,200 kilometers and carry up to 110 warheads guided by a satellite navigation system, OSMP said. Drones are pre-programmed to fly in a certain area and operate without a pilot.
In the first days of the war, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “The threat of a unilateral UAV attack remains persistent.”
Since then, the US has released video of drone interceptions and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a briefing on Friday that the number of drone attacks has decreased.
“CENTCOM continues to attack ballistic missile and drone weapons so that they do not pose a threat to us, our forces, our bases or our partners,” said Caine in the same forum.
The US is one of more than 10 countries that have officially requested help from Ukraine, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said in a social media post that Ukraine has sent three teams to the Middle East.
The official inquiry of the Trump administration came six days after the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran, according to a letter from Zelenskyy on social media at the time, despite the fact that Ukraine had offered months ago. Ukraine has almost four years of experience dealing with this weapon, gained from the amount of infrastructure destroyed and civilian lives lost as it invokes air defense.
“Ukraine can contribute to stabilization,” Zelenskyy said Friday at a news conference in France.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has apologized for some of the attacks. In an interview with Al Jazeera, he stated that some of the strikes did not come from the country’s top officials.
“Our military units are now somewhat independent and isolated, and they operate according to the general orders given to them in advance,” he said.
In other interviews, Araghchi said that Iran was preparing for this war and a possible ground attack by US forces.
The first sighting of Shahed was in 2019, according to OSMP. It gained popularity when Russia bought technology from Iran in November 2022 and has developed it into the Shahed-136 model.
An NBC News analysis of online video of Shahed-type attacks shows that most of them took place along the Persian Gulf coast. Depending on the detection of radar placement in the Gulf, drones may become more difficult to detect as they approach the coast, said Kelly Grieco, an executive at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank. It may also reflect on Iran’s larger agenda.
“For the second week now, the targets are very similar, and they attack things again,” said Grieco. “There is real relevance to their strategy.”
In one video, a drone follows its pre-planned route to an oil storage tank in Oman, the second such attack in the region.
A Dubai beachgoer captured another video showing the jet making landfall as a fighter jet roared behind it, releasing a missile moments later.
Drones have reached Azerbaijan, showing verified videos, bombing Nakhchivan airport. Azerbaijan does not participate in the conflict and has demanded an apology from Iran, which has denied responsibility.
Attacks by primitive drones and more advanced missiles have crippled both air and sea traffic in the key oil-rich region. The all-important Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed to traffic. Air travel in the Persian Gulf region has been severely affected, according to data from Flight Radar 24, a global tracking service. Airports in Kuwait and Bahrain are completely closed to commercial flights and other regions face severe restrictions.
The size of Iran’s drone arsenal and production capacity are unclear. Interdiction numbers released by the UAE suggest that attacks have decreased, but that could be an indication of regrouping and stockpiling before the next attack rather than a reduction in supply, said the Stimson Center’s Grieco. Russia, the only other country that regularly uses these types of weapons, often breaks out between heavy bombers to accumulate more drones to release in a single attack.
