As the United States and Iran continue to trade barbs and blows amid a tenuous ceasefire and cagey back-channel diplomacy over a possible end to the war, recent investigative reports by American outlets The Washington Post, CNN and NBC News have revealed that Iranian strikes inflicted far more extensive damage on American military bases and equipment in the Persian Gulf than was publicly acknowledged or previously reported.
According to an analysis of satellite imagery by The Washington Post, Iranian airstrikes damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures and pieces of equipment at US military installations across the Middle East after the war began, including hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft, and key radar, communications, and air-defense systems.
The threat posed by sustained Iranian air attacks reportedly rendered some American bases too dangerous to operate at normal staffing levels. Commanders moved large numbers of personnel out of range of Iranian strikes at the outset of the war, according to American officials quoted by the Post.
The news outlet’s investigation reviewed more than 100 high-resolution satellite images released by Iranian sources and verified 109 of them by cross-referencing lower-resolution imagery from the European Union’s Copernicus Programme satellite system, along with high-resolution imagery from Planet Labs where available. The Post reported that it found no evidence any of the Iranian-released imagery had been manipulated. In a separate review of Planet imagery, reporters identified 10 additional damaged or destroyed structures that had not appeared in the Iranian releases. Altogether, the investigation documented damage to 217 structures and 11 pieces of equipment across 15 US military sites in the region.
Experts who reviewed the findings told the Post the scale and precision of the damage suggested the US military had underestimated Iran’s targeting capabilities, failed to adapt sufficiently to the realities of modern drone warfare, and left several bases inadequately protected. “The Iranian attacks were precise. There are no random craters indicating misses,” the report quoted Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired Marine Corps colonel, as saying.
As several Gulf states reportedly refused to allow the US military to launch offensive operations from their territory, an American official quoted by the Post said bases in Bahrain and Kuwait were among the hardest hit, likely because they had permitted American operations, including the deployment of M142 HIMARS launchers capable of firing missiles at ranges exceeding 310 miles.
The Post acknowledged that its findings represent only a partial accounting of the damage, constrained by the limited availability of satellite imagery. Obtaining satellite imagery of the region has been unusually difficult, as two of the largest commercial providers, Vantor and Planet Labs, complied with requests from the US government to limit, delay, or indefinitely withhold imagery of the region while the conflict remains ongoing. Iranian state-affiliated news agencies, however, have throughout the war regularly published high-resolution satellite imagery on social media that they claimed showed damage to American facilities, the report noted.
Old jet, new war
Perhaps the most surprising revelation to emerge from the investigative report published by NBC News was that an Iranian fighter jet had successfully carried out a bombing run on an American base in Kuwait, despite the widespread impression that Iran’s air force had been almost entirely ineffective during the war.
Citing two US officials, the report said an Iranian Northrop F-5 fighter jet bombed Camp Buehring during the opening days of the conflict, even though the base was protected by air defenses. The strike marked the first time in years that a hostile fixed-wing aircraft had successfully hit an American military installation.
Both the original A/B variants and later E/F versions of the Northrop F-5 were supplied in large numbers to the Imperial Iranian Air Force during the 1960s and 1970s, before the Islamic Revolution. Iran once operated a fleet of more than 300 of the aircraft, though recent estimates suggested that only around 50 remained operational with the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force as of 2024.
Iranian state broadcaster Press TV, however, attributed the strike not to an aging American-built F-5, but to an advanced indigenous derivative of the platform.
“The aircraft that bombed Camp Buehring was not an American-made F-5 from the 1970s. It was most likely the HESA Kowsar, a domestically produced fighter that represents the culmination of nearly four decades of Iranian aerospace engineering and reverse-engineering efforts,” Press TV reported.
Unveiled in 2018 on the eve of Defense Industry Day, according to the report, the Kowsar represents the most advanced member of a fighter family developed under a program to reverse-engineer the relatively simple F-5 fighter jet.
Flying below the radar
According to Press TV, the strike on Camp Buehring was carried out in early March by a HESA Kowsar jet that likely took off from Iran’s southern Khuzestan province before flying at extremely low altitude across the Persian Gulf toward Kuwait.
“The aircraft, carrying a payload of conventional bombs, penetrated the sophisticated air defense network protecting Camp Buehring, a major American military installation located just a short distance from the Iraqi border. The pilot released the ordnance successfully. The bombs struck the base. And then, the aircraft returned home. The whole operation was a stunning success,”the report claimed.
According to the Iranian broadcaster, the strike was “not a matter of luck or coincidence but the result of meticulous planning, technical skill, and an intimate understanding of American air defense vulnerabilities.”
“By flying at an altitude of only a few dozen meters above the terrain or water surface, the aircraft remained below the radar horizon of Patriot missile batteries and other ground-based interception systems. These systems, designed to detect and track targets at higher altitudes, could not lock onto an aircraft flying so low, as the curvature of the earth and ground clutter masked its approach.”
The relatively short distance between southwestern Iran and Kuwait made the mission feasible without the need for external fuel tanks, according to the report. It added that the aircraft likely carried conventional unguided bombs weighing between 250 and 500 kilogrammes each, with a total ordnance load of roughly 3,000 kilogrammes.
Shadows over Kuwait
The revelation that an Iranian fighter jet may have successfully struck an American base in Kuwait also invites renewed scrutiny of the still-murky March 1 “triple friendly fire” incident over the country, in which three American F-15E Strike Eagle jets were reportedly shot down.
Although the losses were officially attributed to a Kuwaiti Boeing F/A-18 Hornet, the circumstances surrounding the incident have remained unclear. One experienced former F/A-18 pilot quoted by The War Zone described the episode as “very strange,” adding that such a catastrophic misidentification would be “bordering on implausible” without a far deeper procedural or command-and-control failure.
Notably, the reported timeframe of the strike on Camp Buehring appears to overlap with the timeline of the March 1 friendly fire incident. The base itself lies roughly 63 kilometres from Al Jahra, near where the F-15Es were reportedly brought down.
That coincidence raises two more possibilities.
As the former F/A-18 pilot cited by The War Zone suggested, the losses may point to a broader breakdown in command-and-control systems, particularly the IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) architecture that links US and allied aircraft and air-defense networks. Iran’s apparent success in downing or damaging multiple American aircraft during the war, along with reports of a near-hit on an F-35 Lightning II, suggest a degree of operational ingenuity and resourcefulness that many analysts had not anticipated.
It is not entirely inconceivable that Iran, whose military still operates a substantial amount of legacy American hardware acquired before the 1979 revolution, may possess at least some familiarity with the vulnerabilities, assumptions, and operational logic underpinning Western IFF systems. Whether that familiarity translated into any active exploitation remains entirely speculative, but not implausible.
There is also a more remote, though still intriguing, possibility that Iranian fighters themselves may have played a direct role in the destruction of the F-15Es over Kuwait. Iran continues to operate the aging but still formidable Grumman F-14 Tomcat interceptor, long associated with the powerful AIM-54 Phoenix missile. Over the years, shortages of American-supplied missiles reportedly pushed Iran to experiment with adapting MIM-23 Hawk surface-to-air missiles into air-to-air weapons for the F-14 under a project known as Sky Hawk. Some Iranian Tomcats were reportedly modified to carry the large missiles on their wing glove hardpoints, positions more commonly used for AIM-7 Sparrow missiles.
Iran has also developed the Fakour-90, an indigenous long-range air-to-air missile believed to be derived from both the AIM-54 Phoenix and MIM-23 Hawk. The missile is reportedly deployed on Iranian F-14s and has allegedly been tested on other aircraft, including the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II and Sukhoi Su-24.
At present, there is no public evidence conclusively linking Iranian fighters to the March 1 losses over Kuwait. But the disclosure that an Iranian combat aircraft may have penetrated Kuwaiti airspace and successfully struck Camp Buehring has inevitably cast the entire episode in a more uncertain and unsettling light.
Indigenous wings
As Press TV reported, Iran’s military claims it has gradually supplanted its aging Northrop F-5 fighter fleet with increasingly sophisticated indigenous derivatives developed through decades of reverse-engineering and domestic aerospace development.
In addition to the HESA Kowsar, which the report described as having achieved “an impressive 88 per cent localisation rate,” Iran has also claimed to have produced two earlier derivatives: the HESA Azarakhsh and the HESA Saeqeh.
“The first fruit of this effort was the Azarakhsh, which demonstrated that Iranian industry could replicate the basic F-5 airframe. This was followed by the Saeqeh, a more ambitious derivative distinguished by its twin outward-canted vertical tails. It made its first flight in 2003 and entered service in 2004. The Saeqeh achieved a localization rate of 56 percent in 2009, with a subsequent version reaching 65 per cent,” the report stated.
According to Press TV, the HESA Kowsar features a modern digital cockpit with head-up displays replacing the analog instrumentation of the original Northrop F-5, reducing pilot workload while improving combat effectiveness. The aircraft is reportedly equipped with a multi-purpose fire-control radar developed specifically for the platform, alongside radar-warning receivers, identification friend-or-foe systems, weapons processors, chaff and flare launchers, and updated navigation systems integrating inertial navigation with laser-guided GPS.
Its propulsion system reportedly consists of two turbojet engines derived from the General Electric J85, with Iranian sources claiming that roughly 90 percent of the components are now produced domestically. These engines allegedly allow the aircraft to reach a flight ceiling of 13,700 meters and speeds approaching Mach 1.5.
Still, because of the limited amount of independently verifiable information surrounding Iranian military programs, analysts continue to debate the true nature of these indigenous F-5 derivatives. Some view them as genuinely new-build aircraft incorporating substantial domestic engineering, while others see them more as technology demonstrators or extensive modernization programs, comparable to the upgrade paths pursued by countries such as Pakistan for aging fleets like the Dassault Mirage III and Dassault Mirage 5.
The reality may well lie somewhere in between: neither entirely indigenous next-generation fighters nor mere cosmetic refurbishments of Cold War-era airframes. What the strike on Camp Buehring appears to demonstrate, however, is that in the evolving landscape of air power, old does not necessarily mean obsolete.
Many of the assumptions that shaped modern fighter design emerged from an era when missile technology, particularly beyond-visual-range weaponry, was still relatively unreliable. Those limitations pushed aircraft designers toward ever greater aerodynamic performance, maneuverability, and onboard sophistication, producing increasingly expensive high-performance platforms capable of carrying advanced sensors and precision munitions.
But the rapid evolution of long-range missiles, networked targeting systems, drones, electronic warfare, and standoff strike capabilities has altered that equation. In an increasingly interconnected “system of systems” environment, even older aircraft designs — if strategically modernized, intelligently employed and integrated into broader operational concepts — can still provide significant utility and pose credible threats to technologically superior adversaries.
The erosion of dominance
If there is a single thread connecting the satellite imagery analysis by The Washington Post, the disclosures by NBC News and CNN, and the increasingly confident claims emerging from Iranian media, it is this: many of the assumptions underpinning America’s military posture in the Middle East no longer appear as unshakable as they once did.
For decades, the architecture of American power in the Persian Gulf rested on several core beliefs — that US bases were effectively untouchable, that regional air superiority could be assumed almost by default, and that older or sanctioned militaries could not meaningfully challenge a technologically superior Western force except through asymmetric harassment. This war appears to have complicated all three assumptions.
The significance of the Iranian defence lies not necessarily in the scale of physical destruction alone, although the reported damage is substantial, but in what it revealed about the changing character of modern warfare. Cheap drones, low-flying aircraft, ballistic missiles, electronic warfare, decentralised targeting networks, and improvised modernisation programmes have collectively begun to erode advantages that once seemed overwhelming. The gap between first-rate and second-rate militaries has not disappeared, but it has narrowed in ways many Western planners appear not to have fully anticipated.
The possible success of an Iranian combat aircraft over Kuwait carries a symbolism that extends far beyond the strike itself. Whether the aircraft was an aging Northrop F-5 or an extensively modernized HESA Kowsar matters less than the broader reality it represents: that relatively simple, inexpensive, and heavily sanctioned systems can still penetrate sophisticated defenses when combined with careful planning, tactical ingenuity, and saturation warfare.
The writer is a freelance journalist and media scholar who writes about politics, security, technology and media narratives
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