{"id":205951,"date":"2026-03-31T06:37:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/vital-u-s-radar-aircraft-was-destroyed-by-iranian-strike-on-u-s-base-in-saudi-arabia-photos-show-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T06:37:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:37:23","slug":"vital-u-s-radar-aircraft-was-destroyed-by-iranian-strike-on-u-s-base-in-saudi-arabia-photos-show-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/vital-u-s-radar-aircraft-was-destroyed-by-iranian-strike-on-u-s-base-in-saudi-arabia-photos-show-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Vital U.S. radar aircraft was destroyed by Iranian strike on U.S. base in Saudi Arabia, photos show – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The destruction by Iran of a warning and control system aircraft on an American base in Saudi Arabia<\/a> on Friday could affect the U.S. military\u2019s ability to monitor threats \u2014 and raises questions around its preparedness for a \u201clonger war,\u201d experts say.
Images verified by NBC News after they surfaced online appear to show much of the back end of the E-3 Sentry jet was destroyed at the Prince Sultan Air Base, the tail lying at an angle on the ground surrounded by debris.
Several American service members were injured in Friday’s strike on the facility, which sits around <\/strong>80 miles southeast of the kingdom’s capital, Riyadh. At least one aircraft was also damaged in the strike, two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity confirmed to NBC News.
NBC News has reached out to U.S. Central Command for comment.
\u201cIran is gradually eating away at the network of early warning systems that the US has built over decades in the region,\u201d Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at King\u2019s College London\u2019s School of Security Studies, said in written comments to NBC News on Monday.
\u201cCollectively each radar or (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) platform destroyed further degrades the overall monitoring capability of the U.S.,\u201d he said.
The E-3 Sentry, an airborne warning and control system, or AWACS, was one of six stationed at Prince Sultan Air Base prior to Friday’s attack, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine, <\/a>one of the world’s foremost publications on the aerospace industry. Prior to the strike, the U.S. had 16 in total, the magazine reported.
NBC News has reached out to U.S. Central Command for comment on the number of E-3 Sentry planes.
Krieg said the U.S. should have foreseen such an attack and \u201cshould have been prepared better for a longer war,\u201d particularly \u201cfighting from permanent installations, especially in a theatre where the other side has large numbers of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and one-way attack drones.\u201d
Still, he said he believed the U.S. was still doing a \u201creasonably effective job overall of protecting its assets in a very difficult theatre,\u201d with \u201cmost incoming threats\u201d reportedly being intercepted.
Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a Bronze Star recipient who served for 21 years, disagreed.
\u201cWe\u2019re not doing OK at all,\u201d he said in a telephone interview Monday. Davis, a senior fellow and military expert at Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank, added that the U.S. was \u201cnot militarily prepared for this to be a sustained war.\u201d
\u201cThere were too many in the administration that thought this was going to be a quick and easy thing,\u201d he said, adding that the \u201cIranian side still has plenty of missiles to keep going at a sustained rate.\u201d
\u201cIf we\u2019ve had this much trouble with what was considered a militarily inferior Iran, what does anybody think would happen if we had to fight on the ground, in the sea and in the air against a Russia or a China?\u201d
But Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank, said in a separate interview that there was \u201ca risk of underestimating or understating the nature of the damage inside Iran,\u201d particularly given the communications blackouts in the Islamic Republic.
People should be \u201ccautious at this stage of the war about overstating the extent of damage that the U.S. forces have a sustained,\u201d she said.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian intelligence shared with NBC News<\/a> by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an interview over the weekend suggested that Russia could also be playing a role in aiding Iran in its attacks on U.S. assets in the region.
In an interview in Qatar on Saturday, Zelenskyy said he was \u201c100%\u201d confident Moscow was sharing such intelligence with Tehran to aid in targeting U.S. forces across the Middle East in the war, which began after the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28.
\u201cMoscow has every incentive to tie down U.S. military resources in the Middle East, raise costs for Washington, and reward Tehran for the military support Iran has given Russia elsewhere,\u201d Krieg said.
Still, he said he would not go so far as to suggest that Russian assistance might be \u201cthe reason Iran is succeeding.\u201d
Ultimately, he said, \u201cU.S. protection has been competent\u201d in its war with Iran, \u201cbut not optimal.\u201d
\u201cIt has been good enough to preserve operations, but not good enough to prevent embarrassing and costly losses.\u201d
Chantal Da Silva reports on world news for NBC News Digital and is based in London.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeThe destruction by Iran of a warning and control system aircraft on an American base in Saudi Arabia on Friday could affect the U.S. military\u2019s ability to monitor threats \u2014 and raises questions around its preparedness for a \u201clonger war,\u201d experts say.Images verified by NBC News after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":205952,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-205951","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}