Are U.S. troops ready to face Iranian drone swarm attacks?

Ground operations in Iran could put U.S. forces directly in the crosshairs of Iranian drone swarms at a moment when American troops may not have the equipment needed to handle the threat, former defense officials and military analysts say.

Unlike Russian, Ukrainian and even North Korean troops, all of whom have faced down modern drone swarms in Eastern Europe over the last four years, U.S. ground forces have never confronted live enemy drones at scale on the battlefield.

Many of the Pentagon’s most promising counter-drone technologies — from microwaves to lasers and other directed energy weapons — also haven’t had much real-world battlefield experience, raising the prospect of significant U.S. casualties from Iranian drone attacks.

U.S. forces have surged into the Middle East in recent days, even as President Trump has pushed a message that Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. campaign against Iran, is nearing completion.

Significant detachments of U.S. ground troops may be tasked with seizing key Iranian energy infrastructure sites such as Kharg Island, smaller islands in the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.

American ground forces may also be ordered to remove Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium at locations across the country.

Each of those possible U.S. missions carries major risks, as it’s virtually guaranteed that Iran would respond to any ground incursions by launching waves of drone assaults. 

“If you go ashore, there’s clearly risk to force in the new warfare,” says Mark Montgomery, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Since the war began more than a month ago, Iran has used its drones to target missile radars, planes on airfields and command and control centers across the Persian Gulf that weren’t yet prepared to handle the threat.

Mr. Montgomery, a retired Navy rear admiral and former policy director for the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the April 3 episode of The Washington Times’ Threat Status podcast that U.S. forces may not be entirely ready either. 

“We were not ready for long-range drones, Shaheds,” he said, referring to Iran’s highly effective Shahed drones, which come in several models ranging dramatically in size and range, with the Shahed 136 boasting a range of well over 2,000 miles. 

The biggest problems would likely be Iran’s slate of “suicide” drones that are often deployed in swarms and have proven difficult to counter.

Mr. Montgomery said he fears the U.S. is not fully ready to counter suicide drone attacks in large numbers on the battlefield.

The one-way attack drones have become the norm in modern conflict, with the Russia-Ukraine war highlighting their capability. Iran was an early adopter of the new method of war, switching to bombardments of much cheaper, directed glide-bomb style drones that can be produced quickly and at scale. 

Despite massive investments in promising counter-drone technology, the U.S. and its Gulf allies have, over the past five weeks, relied heavily on traditional, expensive munitions to counter cheap drones.

It’s not entirely clear what specific counter-drone capabilities would be deployed directly with individual ground units operating deep inside Iranian territory. 

‘A disaster waiting to happen’

The Trump administration has cast its recent military action in Venezuela, during which U.S. special forces captured then-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, as a model for modern operations.

But that mission, which the administration called an overwhelming success, was over in less than three hours. 

Any operation in Iran would be more difficult, analysts say, because troops would have to take and hold terrain for days, perhaps even weeks. That would give the Iranian military time to scout positions, identify any weaknesses in American capabilities and plan waves of drone attacks against U.S. troops.

“If they’ve got 100 Shaheds coming at them, how are they going to deal with that?” said Jim Townsend, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy.

“If they let 10 of them through, it will cause mass casualties. It’s a disaster waiting to happen,” Mr. Townsend, now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told The Times in an interview. “The percentage of this going really well is about 10%.”

That description, while a hypothetical, is already a worst-case scenario that’s played out on a battlefield some 1,400 miles northwest of Iran.

In Ukraine, drone swarms have become a coordinated option to destroy a target.

Mr. Townsend pointed to videos that have circulated on social media in recent years showing North Korean troops, who fought alongside Russian forces, running from Ukrainian drone swarm attacks.

Those North Korean units appeared to have not been trained to deal with the threat and lacked the necessary counter-drone capabilities to combat it. 

“The nightmare is the photos of the North Koreans when they first had to deal with drone swarms [in Ukraine],” Mr. Townsend said. “Running and turning to shoot at them while they’re being hunted down by the drones. That’s what we’d be facing: U.S. Marines being chased by drones.”

The U.S. and Israel have aggressively targeted Iran’s drone stockpiles over the past five weeks. It’s unclear how badly degraded Iran’s drone capabilities truly are, but before the conflict, the Islamic republic was the region’s leader in the field.

A 2024 U.S. Institute of Peace analysis said that Iran had at least 10 different models of suicide drone in its arsenal.

Relatively small models, such as the long-range Shahed 136, can carry about 100 pounds of explosives. One of the smallest, the Meraj-521, carries only 6 pounds of explosives but is tough to shoot down because of its small size and quiet motor. Some of the largest models, such as Iran’s Arash series, can carry nearly 600 pounds of explosives and travel over 1,200 miles.

Tehran produced those drones by the thousands. Its models were so effective that Russia relied on them heavily for its war in Ukraine and now produces its own versions of the Shahed inside Russia. 

Iran also has another dozen combat and surveillance drones models, including its Shahed 149, which can reportedly carry up to 12 precision-guided bombs. 

Weighing the risks


One government official who spoke on condition of anonymity with The Times said
Mr. Trump has been briefed on casualty projections for different ground operations in the region.

Analysts outside the government say the potential for U.S. casualties is a major concern for the administration.

Jonathan Hackett, a former special operations capabilities specialist and Marine, now a military special operations analyst, notes the complexity of a possible mission to take Kharg Island, the main island port for 90% of Iran’s oil export business.

In an interview, Mr. Hackett pointed to how much manpower would be at risk.

Both of the Marine Expeditionary Units currently in the region, as well as major elements of the Army’s 82nd Airborne, would be needed to take the island, he said. 

The catch is that the Marine units are not designed for sustained operations holding territory. And analysts do not believe the units currently have equipment that would enable them to protect themselves against drone swarms.



“Once you touch the beachhead, you’re a fixed point, for artillery, for any kind of close and direct fire or these modern weapons,” said Mr. Hackett. “Completely exposed.”

Controlling any operations in the air would, in theory, decrease that risk. 

But that could be difficult.

On the Threat Status podcast, Mr. Montgomery said a ground operation would effectively end the broader air campaign against Iran and would instead force the U.S. to focus most of its assets on protecting the ground troops.

Furthermore, the use of troops would push assets toward a single fixed point amid an already dangerous fight in the sky, as evidenced by Iran’s recent downing of a U.S. F-15E fighter jet.

“If you put troops ashore, I don’t think people understand that with the current buildup size we’re at, that would pull the airpower and maritime power to wherever those forces were,” said Mr. Montgomery. “It would become the only line of effort. And we’re supposedly working five or six lines of effort right now.”

Countering Iranian missiles, destroying drone manufacturing facilities, destroying air defense capabilities, strikes on Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps leadership and nuclear facilities — all of those could immediately take a backseat to protecting U.S. personnel.

Such calculations are under deliberation at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

“Is the U.S. domestically willing to accept that level of sacrifice to open up an oil strait that they force-closed themselves?” asked Mr. Hackett, referring to the Strait of Hormuz. “That’s a very important question that the president is trying to go through right now.”

Michael Knights, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who has spent decades studying the region, said any option that would tie U.S. troops to the landscape could become disastrous.

Even if the U.S. were able to spread across much of the Iranian coastline, they would be fighting with their backs to the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

Mr. Knights described it as a potential standoff campaign, where direct engagement would favor U.S. troops, so Iran would instead use drones and missiles to harass American forces and cause sudden mass casualty events.


“The Iranians are probably smart enough to let us go sit on the southern coastline or at a nuclear facility and then bombard the s—- out of us,” Mr. Knights said. “They’re not stupid. They’re patient, cold-blooded.”