ISLAMABAD -*American soldiers Reveal the horrifying ballistic and cruisemissile attack by Iran on US Military Base.*
Horror-struck with Iran’s attack on their military base in Iraq, Americansoldiers recount how they lost contact with their state-of-the-art unmannedaerial vehicles (UAVs) in the sky as the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps(IRGC) targeted the site in retaliation for the assassination of its topcommander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani.
The air base was struck with a barrage of Iranian cruise missiles early onJanuary 8, over the assassination of the commander of the IRGC’s Quds Forcein a US airstrike in Baghdad, Press TV has reported.
At the time the attack was launched, the US army was flying seven UAVs,including MQ-1C Gray Eagles, over Iraq to monitor bases where US-ledcoalition forces are deployed, AFP said in a reportlinkonWednesday.
Having received advance warning from superiors, most of the 1,500 USsoldiers at the base had been hidden in bunkers for two hours, but 14pilots had stayed in containers-turned-cockpits to remotely fly theAmerican drones and “monitor essential feeds from their high-poweredcameras,” according to the report.[image: IRGC targets US airbases in Iraq in response to assassination ofGeneral Soleimani]link-One of the pilots, 26-year-old Staff Sergeant Costin Herwig who was flyinga Gray Eagle, told AFP that he “accepted fate” after volleys of Iranianmissiles poured on the air base, with the first missile blasting dust intotheir shelter.link-
“We thought we were basically done,” he said.
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The American forces said the volleys of missiles lasted for three hours,slamming into sleeping quarters directly adjacent to the pilots’ operationsrooms and inflicting damage on fiber lines, thus disrupting communicationwith the drones.
The fiber lines link the virtual cockpits to antennas then satellites thatsend signals to the Gray Eagles and pull the cameras’ feeds back onto thescreens at Ain al-Assad, according to the soldiers.
“No more than a minute after the last round hit, I was heading over to thebunkers on the far back side and saw the fire was burning all through ourfiber lines,” said First Sergeant Wesley Kilpatrick, adding, “With thefiber lines burnt, there was no control.”
The Iranian ballistic missiles had also punched holes across Ain al-Assad’sairfield and the control tower was empty, the report said.
