Senate Democrats have said the Pentagon is not ready for Iran to retaliate against US forces

A group of Senate Democrats is pressing the Pentagon for what they describe as a failure to protect US troops against retaliatory attacks from Iran. In a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Mark Kelly of Arizona and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York — all members of the Senate Armed Services Committee — the Pentagon did not take “fundamental precautions” in the face of expected Iranian retaliation after the U.S. and Israel went to war in late February.

All three cited the first U.S. casualty in the conflict, a group of six soldiers in Kuwait, which exposed Iran’s ability to target U.S. service members with attack drones. The U.S. approach suffered from a lack of “plans to prevent potential harm from foreseeable attacks,” the senators argued, “like retaliatory drone strikes.” ABC News reported that the facility targeted by the Iranian drone in Kuwait was largely unguarded, surrounded by a six-foot concrete wall, details that lawmakers seized on to point to a wider lapse in security from the attack.

“We are concerned that this is part of a larger pattern in which this administration has failed to protect Americans in the region from Iranian retaliation,” they wrote.

Warren said Hegseth “must be held accountable” in a statement to ABC News.

“There has been one betrayal after another under Hegseth’s leadership,” she said.

ABC News has reached out to the Defense Department for comment.

For decades, U.S. forces in the Middle East have operated from buildings that are structures like shipping containers or mobile trailers that sit above ground.

The structure in which the six soldiers were killed was effectively a large trailer. The concrete walls surrounding Army facilities in Kuwait, like those common during the global war on terror, are built to blunt bullets, rockets, mortars and ground-level explosions — but are not capable of defending against direct airstrikes from drones.

According to Hegseth, after the March 1 drone attack, the US prepared counter drone operations for the threat.

“We pushed every counter [drone] It’s possible to move the system forward without sacrificing any cost or capacity,” Hegseth told reporters at the time. “That doesn’t mean we can stop everything, but we’ve ensured the maximum possible defense.”

The senators are demanding Hegseth answer whether the six-foot walls were deemed adequate for force protection or whether officials at the installation requested an increase in capacity before the outbreak of war.

In recent years, Pentagon planners have sought to adopt base defenses against drone attacks, as they have become the defining weapon of the Ukraine war.

An internal Pentagon investigation in January found that a “large percentage of installations” do not have the capability to conduct counter-drone operations and that the military has significant gaps in training.

A separate internal investigation following the Iranian-backed attack on Jordan’s Tower 22 in January 2024 cited inadequate infrastructure that was not built to withstand air strikes, according to records reviewed by ABC News. Three American soldiers were killed in the attack.

The senators are asking the defense secretary if there were known problems with the installation’s early-warning systems, which could have allowed troops to avoid an incoming threat. “Accounts from survivors and other officials with knowledge of the situation make it clear that the risks to service members in the area were known,” the senators wrote, citing press reports. “[B]ut leadership at DoD failed to take steps to prevent the harm that could come from Iran’s retaliation,” they said.

Since the war began, the Pentagon has invested more than $300 billion in unilateral attack drones and equipment to defend against Iran.

In the conflict with Iran, 13 American soldiers have died and around 400 have been injured.