US may not have capacity to take down full barrage of Iranian drones, officials warn
Source: The Guardian
Top military officials told lawmakers in a closed door briefing on Tuesday that they may not be able to shoot down every Iranian drone being launched against US military installations and assets in retaliatory attacks, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The officials, led by the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, said Iran has been deploying thousands of one-way attack drones and while they have capacity to take down the vast majority but not all of the barrage.
As a result, the officials said in a classified briefing for lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the US was focused on destroying the launch sites for the drones and conventional missiles as quickly as possible. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.
In retaliation against US strikes, Iran has been launching its low-cost, one-way attack Shahed drones. By flying low and slow, the drones are seen to be better able to evade conventional air defenses than ballistic missiles.
A senior administration official said Iran’s apparent drone strategy – to get the US to sacrifice its most sophisticated Patriot and Thaad interceptors – was misguided and unsuccessful because the US has been downing the drones with several different measures.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/04/us-interceptors-iranian-drones
Trump said we have unlimited ammo. The Joint Chiefs say we are shooting down $20,000 drones with $4 million missiles, and will be running out soon.
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People have been asking "If tRump is a Putin stooge, and Iran is a Russian ally, why would tRump attack Iran? Don't these points conflict?" The obvious conclusion being "oh, well, I guess tRump must NOT be a Putin stooge after all!"
But I say no, actually, you cannot conclude that. Because this whole thing is also a BIG, world-wide distraction from Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And, I say, it provides a rather perfect pretext for tRump to NOT help Ukraine. With Iran in play, he'll get a wider swath of the American public agreeing on principle that we don't have the military resources to come to Ukraine's aid because we have "our own" battle to fight.
While us attacking Iran might not appear as yet to be a clean win for Putin, there are definitely ways it serves Russia's interests. Who knows, maybe in the end, Iran (or an oily part of it that's carved out in the eventual "peace plan" ) ends up fully in the hands of either Russia itself, or a close, neighboring Russian ally. In that instance, it'll be certain tRump was doing his handlers bidding.
If I think through all possibilities here, I'm not 100% that Iran ends up maintaining it's current geographic boundaries, or indeed even that a state called Iran continues to exist. Depends on how far IQ47 actually plans on taking the whole thing I suppose 
