A rustle was heard before the explosion. From a cloudless sky, the plane swooped toward its target at Camp Buehring, a U.S. military base in Kuwait. It crashed near the running course with heavy black smoke.
“Oh, no,” said the man who was recording from the base. “Oh my god. Oh, it was here. They’re… starting to dial into our building.”
The video ends with smoke filling the desert outpost.
Footage of the attack, posted online on March 1 but may have been taken before then, is one of more than 30 open source videos and satellite images reviewed by NBC News showing Iranian drone attacks and interceptions by the United States and its allies across seven countries. Obvious targets include military bases, transportation hubs, energy infrastructure, and diplomatic centers. In 21 of the 26 videos, the drone appears to reach its target.
These videos, posted on various online platforms, reveal a pattern of inadequate defense of strategic locations targeted by drones since the early days of the war. While the United States and Israel are bombarding Iran with the goal of crippling its nuclear, ballistic, and drone capabilities, Iran is retaliating with its missile arsenal and cheap explosive drones.
Drones pose a new challenge for the United States, its allies, and countries caught in the crossfire. Adversaries will be closely monitoring the U.S. response.
Experts say the weapon’s versatility could allow Iran to prolong the war by straining an enemy’s resources, making it an attractive tactic for cash-strapped countries. Iran pioneered this technology and sold it to Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Iran has challenged the economics of war. While the United States continues to maintain air superiority, Iran’s drone operations are forcing targeted countries to use expensive weapons to intercept them.
“This is kind of the ultimate symbol of asymmetric warfare,” said Joe Dyke, program director at Air Wars, a nonprofit that tracks harm to civilians in conflict zones.
Although drones can be shot down with a variety of weapons, including heavy machine guns, fighter jets, and advanced interceptors, they can overwhelm air defenses, and even a single such aircraft can cause fatal damage.
Six U.S. military personnel were killed in a drone attack on Kuwait’s Shuaiba civilian port. Video reviewed by NBC News shows others shelling oil infrastructure and logistics sites. Some drones attacked U.S. consulates and embassies in the Gulf nation, capturing footage of passersby gasping as they swooped down. Oman’s oil storage facilities were attacked twice last week and this week, highlighting the continued vulnerability of key targets.
The United States does not release data on the weapons it intercepts or confronts. Data from the United Arab Emirates, a country heavily affected by Iranian attacks, shows that as of March 10, 1,475 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) had been launched toward the country, and 1,385 had been intercepted.
As of March 11, the UAE, one of the hardest-hit Gulf states, had reported six deaths and 122 injuries as a result of the conflict. Israel has reported 13 deaths. According to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, more than 1,200 people have been killed in Iranian attacks by the United States and Israel.
According to the weapons tracking project Open Source Munitions Portal (OSMP), Iran’s most frequently deployed drone is the Shahed-136. It has an 11.5-foot wingspan, is guided by a satellite navigation system, can fly approximately 1,200 miles, and can carry up to 110 pounds of warhead, according to OSMP. Drones are pre-programmed to fly towards specific targets and operate without a pilot.
Early in the war, Gen. Dan Cain, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “The threat from one-way attack drones remains persistent.”
Since then, the United States has released videos of drone interceptions, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed in a Friday briefing that the number of drone attacks has decreased.
“CentCom continues to attack our ballistic missile and drone capabilities so that they no longer pose a threat to us, our military, our bases, or our partners,” Kaine said at the same briefing.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a social media post that Ukraine has sent three teams to the Middle East, and that the United States is one of more than a dozen countries that have formally requested assistance from Ukraine.
The Trump administration’s official request came six days after the U.S. and Israel began their war against Iran, despite Ukraine’s offer months earlier, according to Zelenskyy’s social media posts at the time. Ukraine has nearly four years of experience with this weapon, gained at the cost of destroyed infrastructure and loss of civilian life in the pursuit of air defense.
“Ukraine can contribute to stabilization,” President Zelensky said at a press conference in France on Friday.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi apologized for some of the attacks. In an interview with Al Jazeera, he hinted that some of the attacks did not come directly from the country’s high command.
“In fact, our forces are now independent and to some extent isolated, acting on general instructions given in advance,” he said.
Araghchi said in other interviews that Iran is preparing for this war and a possible ground invasion by U.S. forces.
According to OSMP, Shahed was first seen in 2019. It gained popularity after Russia purchased the technology from Iran in November 2022, and has since improved the Shahed 136 model.
An analysis by NBC News of online videos of Shahed-type attacks shows that the majority of them occurred along the coastline of the Persian Gulf. Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, said that depending on the deployment of detection radar in the Gulf, drones could become harder to detect as they get closer to the coastline. It could also hint at Iran’s larger plans.
“Going into week two, the goals that were set are very similar and they’re attacking again,” Grieco said. “Their strategy is really consistent.”
One video shows a drone following a pre-programmed route to an oil storage tank in Oman, marking the second time it has attacked the facility.
Beachgoers in Dubai captured another video showing fighter jets flying inland, making loud noises, followed soon after by a drone firing an interceptor missile.
A confirmed video shows a drone arriving in Azerbaijan and shelling the airport in Nakhchivan. Azerbaijan has demanded an apology from Iran, which is not party to the conflict and denies responsibility.
Attacks by primitive drones and more sophisticated ballistic missiles paralyzed both air and sea traffic in the vital oil-rich region. The strategically important Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed to traffic. Air travel in the Persian Gulf region has been significantly affected, according to data from global tracking service Flightradar24. Airports in Kuwait and Bahrain have been completely closed to commercial flights, while other regions have imposed severe restrictions.
The size and production capacity of Iran’s drone arsenal is unknown. The number of interceptions announced by the UAE suggests that attacks are decreasing, but this may indicate regrouping and stockpiling for the next attack rather than a decline in supplies, Grieco of the Stimson Center said. Russia, the only country that regularly uses this type of weapon, frequently takes breaks between major bombing raids to gather more drones and launch them in a single attack.
