A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.
Ground operations in Iran could put U.S. forces in the crosshairs of drone swarms without 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 past four years, U.S. ground forces have never confronted live enemy drones at scale on the battlefield.
Many of the Pentagon’s most promising counterdrone technologies, including microwaves, lasers and other directed energy weapons, haven’t been tested on real-world battlefields. That raises the prospect of significant U.S. casualties from Iranian drone attacks.
U.S. forces have surged into the Middle East even as President Trump pushes 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 or smaller islands in the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.
American ground forces also may be ordered to remove Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium at locations across the country.
Each of those missions would carry major risks. Iran is virtually guaranteed to 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,” said Mark Montgomery, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Since the war began Feb. 28, Iran has used drones to strike missile radars, airfields and command and control centers across the Persian Gulf region.
Mr. Montgomery, a retired Navy rear admiral and former policy director for the Senate Armed Services Committee, told The Washington Times’ “Threat Status” podcast episode that aired Friday that U.S. forces may not be entirely ready.
“We were not ready for long-range drones, Shaheds,” he said.
Iran’s highly effective Shahed drones come in several models, varying in size and range. The Shahed 136 boasts a range of well over 2,000 miles.
The biggest problems would likely be Iran’s “suicide” drones, which are often deployed in swarms and have proved 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 standard in modern conflict. The Russia-Ukraine war is highlighting their capability. Iran was an early adopter, switching to bombardments of much cheaper, directed glide-bomb-style drones that can be produced quickly and at scale.
Despite massive investments in promising counterdrone technology, the U.S. and its Persian Gulf allies have been relying heavily on traditional, expensive munitions to counter cheap drones.
It’s not entirely clear which specific counterdrone capabilities would be deployed alongside 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 Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, as a model for modern operations.
That mission, which the administration called an overwhelming success, lasted 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. The Iranian military would have time to scout positions, identify any weaknesses in American capabilities and plan waves of drone attacks.
“If they’ve got 100 Shaheds coming at them, how are they going to deal with that?” said Jim Townsend, a 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, although hypothetical, is a worst-case scenario that has played out on a battlefield some 1,400 miles northwest of Iran.
In Ukraine, drone swarms have become coordinated options to destroy a target.
Mr. Townsend pointed to videos that have circulated on social media showing North Korean troops, who fought alongside Russian forces, running from Ukrainian drone swarms.
Those North Korean units appeared not to have been trained to address the threat and lacked the necessary counterdrone capabilities.
“The nightmare is the photos of the North Koreans when they first had to deal with drone swarms,” 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 been aggressively targeting Iran’s drone stockpiles. How badly degraded Iran’s drone capabilities truly are is unclear. Before the conflict, the Islamic republic was the region’s leader in the field.
A 2024 analysis by the U.S. Institute of Peace said Iran had at least 10 models of suicide drones 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 more than 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 has another dozen combat and surveillance drone models, including its Shahed 149, which can reportedly carry up to 12 precision-guided bombs.
Weighing the risks
One government official, who spoke with The Times on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Trump has been briefed on casualty projections for various 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, noted the complexity and risk of a mission to take Kharg Island, the main port for 90% of Iran’s oil exports.
Both of the Marine Expeditionary Units in the region, as well as major elements of the Army’s 82nd Airborne, would be needed to take the island, he said in an interview.
The catch is that the Marine units are not designed for sustained operations in holding territory, and analysts do not believe the units have equipment enabling them to defend 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, in theory, would 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 force the U.S. to focus most of its assets on protecting ground troops.
Furthermore, the use of troops would push assets toward a single fixed point during a 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, and striking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leadership and nuclear facilities could immediately take a back seat 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 U.S. forces are 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 such a campaign as a potential standoff where direct engagement would favor U.S. troops. Iran would instead use drones and missiles to harass American forces and cause sudden mass casualty events, he said.
“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.”
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