{"id":222824,"date":"2026-09-02T09:56:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T09:56:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/meet-castle-breaker-irans-missile-wreaking-havoc-in-us-war-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T09:56:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T09:56:45","slug":"meet-castle-breaker-irans-missile-wreaking-havoc-in-us-war-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/meet-castle-breaker-irans-missile-wreaking-havoc-in-us-war-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet 'Castle Breaker,' Iran's missile wreaking havoc in US war – USA Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2013 Iran has fielded a new generation of ballistic missiles that can evade American air defenses and strike with far greater precision \u2013 a technological leap that military experts say has damaged the ring of U.S. bases across the Persian Gulf and left them more vulnerable than they’ve been in decades.
The centerpiece of that shift is a highly mobile ballistic missile Iran calls the Kheibar Shekan, or “Castle Breaker,” which has a range of 900 miles and a satellite-guided, maneuverable warhead.
Iran’s military has used the missile extensively in strikes on the U.S. naval hub in Bahrain and other American bases during the six-month war with the U.S. and Israel, according to the Iranian government and confirmed in USA TODAY interviews with former U.S. military and intelligence officials and weapons analysts.
Some of those analysts believe Iran used Castle Breaker missiles in the July 17 strikes on the U.S. Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Al-Azraq, Jordan that killed three American service members<\/a> \u2212 an assertion Iran itself has also made<\/a>, according to official government statements obtained by USA TODAY<\/a>.
And on Aug. 31, an Iranian state-run outlet confirmed it used Kheibar Shekan missiles to hit Muwaffaq Salti \u2212 and the King Hussein air base in Jordan \u2212 in response to U.S. military attack on Iran’s Larak Island the previous night.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “targeted the technical and maintenance infrastructure as well as fighter-jet bases at the two facilities, causing significant damage” at the bases, said Iran’s IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency<\/a>.
Unlike a conventional ballistic missile that travels a fixed path defenders can track and try to intercept, the Kheibar Shekan can quickly change course in the final phase of its descent, potentially slipping past air defenses and hitting targets with devastating precision, those sources said.
Mounted on mobile launchers, the solid-fuel missile is extremely difficult to detect and destroy before launch, allowing it to survive American bombardment campaigns. It can easily reach U.S. and allied targets across the Middle East, including in Israel \u2013 and major American bases like Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia and the Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates.
“We designed entire air defense systems based on this understanding of what we thought they would do,” Jonathan Hackett<\/a>, a former Marine and U.S. intelligence officer, said of Iran\u2019s military capabilities.
And now, he said, “they’re doing something different.”
“So now you have to change your defensive posture for missile defense in a way that we hadn’t been doing previously. Ever,” said Hackett, a fluent Farsi speaker who spent two decades working on Iran-related military and intelligence issues out of six U.S. embassies. He held positions at the U.S.\u00a0Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Marine Forces Special Operations Command before retiring in October 2024.
In interviews with USA TODAY, Hackett and other experts described how the Kheibar Shekan and other Iranian missiles have on occasion penetrated the layered defenses American forces have relied on for generations during the war against Tehran that President Donald Trump<\/a> launched jointly with Israel six months ago.
Hackett believes Kheibar missiles were central to the July 17 strike. Like other analysts, though, he said U.S. officials have made that hard to corroborate by asking major commercial satellite providers to black out imagery of sensitive U.S. military sites<\/a> in the region.
Iranian missiles have also caused extensive damage to the U.S. Naval Support Activity base in Bahrain<\/a> \u2212 the regional hub of the Navy’s 5th Fleet \u2212 and other key U.S. military installations<\/a>, according to U.S. and allied statements, news reports, satellite imagery and USA TODAY interviews.
An independent analysis of satellite imagery conducted by The Washington Post<\/a> revealed that Iranian missile and drone strikes damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures and pieces of equipment across at least 15 U.S. military sites in the Middle East during the conflict.
Top administration officials, including Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth<\/a> and Trump himself, have insisted that the U.S. campaign has destroyed Iran\u2019s military capabilities and that U.S. air defenses have been successful the majority of the time \u2212 an assertion Iran vehemently denies.
\u201cU.S. forces absolutely remain fully operational. We have everything required to strike at the time and place of the President\u2019s choosing,\u201d chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said in an Aug. 28 statement to USA TODAY. \u201cAcross multiple combatant commands, we have already executed successful operations while maintaining a deep, ready arsenal to defend our people and our interests.\u201d
Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez said he had \u201cnothing further to add\u201d on the matter.
The Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment on Aug. 31 about whether the Castle Breaker broke through U.S. defenses during the overnight exchange of military strikes<\/a> and caused damage.
The threat from the relatively new Iranian technology helped prompt a public reckoning earlier this month, when retired four-star Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey<\/a> stated on X that the United States had “probably permanently lost access to 15 Persian Gulf bases” because of Iranian missile and drone strikes.
McCaffrey\u2019s Aug. 22 post has drawn more than 3.8 million views, sparking a debate in U.S. military and intelligence circles over whether the Trump administration had sufficiently accounted for Iran’s missile counterpunch before launching the war.
McCaffrey, who served in the U.S. Army for 32 years and retired as a four-star General, is highly decorated for being wounded three times in combat. He led 26,000 troops into battle in Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 Gulf War to liberate Kuwait from an Iraqi invasion. More recently, he has been a prominent military analyst and critic of the Iran war.
McCaffrey was responding to a statement on X that Iranian counterattacks had all but destroyed<\/a> the Bahrain base, which is the primary anchor for U.S. naval power in the Persian Gulf region. It also provides logistical, supply and operational support to U.S. and coalition ships, aircraft and personnel throughout the Middle East.
As a result of that counterattack and others like it, McCaffrey wrote, \u201cIran [is] now poised to control access [to] the Gulf States. [The] US will have to negotiate new access in western Saudi Arabia, Israel, southern Europe.\u201d
In interviews with USA TODAY, McCaffrey said the Iranian missile capability, especially the Kheibar Shekan, is central to his conclusion that U.S. bases in the Gulf are too vulnerable to stay where they are.
The missile, he said, is particularly agile, well-hidden by Iran, and something that U.S. military installations in the region can’t completely defend against. Its capabilities, he said,<\/strong> amount to “a significant change in technology.”
“As it starts reentry, it can change the impact point,” which, McCaffrey said, “clearly complicates [U.S. military] calculations on how to hit it” using advanced U.S. missile defense systems.
All it takes, he said, “is one, two or three of them” getting through, “and suddenly there’s a potentially catastrophic impact.”
Both McCaffrey and Hackett said the Kheibar Shekan and other Iranian missiles, combined with Iran’s aggressive use of sophisticated drones, have caused considerable damage to U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force bases and smaller encampments throughout the Middle East.
A USA TODAY review of congressional research, defense assessments and the public record, along with numerous interviews, supports that assessment.
USA TODAY\u2019s reporting also shows the United States’ vulnerability to Iranian missiles was not a surprise to U.S. officials before the war, nor was it a fluke.
McCaffrey said Iran’s Kheibar strikes on Israel in 2024 were largely ineffective, but newer versions of it have caused extensive damage in the current war that the Pentagon has not acknowledged. That includes U.S. radar and tactical communications systems, missile-defense nodes and air-to-air refuelers, Airborne Warning and Control System planes \u201cand other expensive aircraft that were destroyed while parked on an airfield,\u201d he said.
\u201cThe Iranians fired 6,000 drones and ballistic missiles and we intercepted 1,500,\u201d McCaffrey said. \u201cSo a bunch of them got through, and they did immense damage.\u201d
The U.S. vulnerability to Iranian missiles isn\u2019t a secret; the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies have known about it for decades and quietly judged it to be manageable.
But then Trump provoked Iran into counterattacking after launching the war on Feb. 28. Within minutes, Tehran began unleashing its arsenal against military and government targets throughout the region.
“It’s been obvious for decades that you can go in and conduct operations in the Gulf only if the Iranians don’t try and stop you,” McCaffrey told USA TODAY. He said Iran’s response in this war has been devastating not only to U.S. military bases in the region but also to the U.S. allies who host them, prompting a wholesale reassessment of whether the bases are more sitting ducks than geostrategic military hubs going forward.
A Wall Street Journal investigation<\/a> concurred, saying in a June 25 report that the extensive damage from Iranian missiles and drones has the United States reevaluating its entire footprint in the region, according to U.S. officials familiar with the deliberations.
Iran first introduced the Kheibar Shekan, “Breaker of the Kheibar” or castle, in reference to a historical fortified oasis in the Arabian Peninsula, in 2022.
Jim Lamson, a CIA analyst from 1998 to 2021, said the Kheibar Shekan\u2019s guidance system allows it to adjust its trajectory and maneuver rapidly to strike within 10 meters of a target, a significant achievement given how far it travels.
And its ability to \u201cmaneuver in the terminal phase” means it can “completely avoid” two or three interceptors fired at it by opposing military forces, Lamson, who now tracks Iran’s missile program as a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told USA TODAY.
Since 2024, Iran has stacked on incremental improvements \u2013 likely with the help of Chinese and Russian technology \u2013 to make the missile a particularly lethal threat to the 30,000 to 40,000 U.S. troops<\/a> in the region, Lamson said.
The updates include improved satellite guidance, altered launch trajectories that are harder for missile-defense radar to predict, better resistance to electronic jamming and coordinated barrages that mix ballistic missiles with swarms of drones, he said.
At the same time, U.S. defenses have been degraded, both by Iranian attacks on the United States and allied radar and air defense sites across the region and as Washington depleted its own interceptor stockpiles, according to Lamson, McCaffrey and Hackett.
Most of Iran\u2019s missiles are still getting intercepted, Hegseth said in a July hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
At that hearing, Democrats demanded to know why Iran was able to inflict so much damage on U.S. bases. Hegseth had stated months earlier that the administration had succeeded in its military campaign to \u201cobliterate Iran\u2019s missile threat.\u201d
\u201cWe never expected they would stop having capabilities to shoot,\u201d Hegseth testified. \u201cThe question is at scale against an opponent like the United States of America.\u201d
But Lamson, McCaffrey and Hackett said enough missiles are getting through to significantly damage U.S. bases and the infrastructure of U.S. allies in the region like Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
\u201cThey have been able to adapt both technologically \u2013 and operationally and tactically \u2013 to improve their effectiveness against the U.S. and to effectively exploit U.S. vulnerabilities in order to be able to sustain the conflict against the U.S. and not surrender,\u201d Lamson said.
On July 17, Iranian ballistic missiles and drones hit the massive Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, in the desert 60 miles northeast of Amman.
Two soldiers were\u00a0killed in the attack<\/a>, according to U.S. Central Command: Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas; and 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii.
The Pentagon said on July 21 it had identified the remains of a third soldier\u00a0who was believed to have died<\/a>\u00a0in the attack, Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, a signal operations support specialist.
Gonzales and Feehan were active-duty soldiers supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, which\u00a0assists partner forces<\/a>\u00a0in securing a lasting defeat of ISIS.
Commercial satellite imagery captured days later showed the scale of the attack<\/a>. There were multiple impact sites \u2013 two aircraft hangars were struck and likely destroyed and drone facilities were hit \u2013 and the images showed heavy damage to housing units where service members slept. Follow-up Iranian missile strikes were reported later that month.
Hackett, who once worked out of the U.S. Embassy in Jordan, described the July 17 strike as a “live combat test” of the Kheibar Shekan against U.S. bases in Jordan. He said the Kheibar is especially dangerous because its maneuverability allows it to strike \u201cdynamic\u201d targets, including people and military assets that moved at the last minute to dodge them.
That includes valuable aircraft, he said, \u201cand these huge fuel bladders sitting around with tons of jet fuel in them. These can be struck now by this weapon and cause mass explosions and casualties.\u201d
The three analysts agreed that it cannot be ascertained with specificity how much damage Iranian missiles like the Kheibar Shekan have done to U.S. and allied interests in the region, given the Pentagon\u2019s lack of transparency about the strikes.
\u201cThe more important fact is that there has been this implication that Israel, Jordan [and] Saudi Arabia are safe,\u201d along with other U.S. allies that host American bases like Qatar and Bahrain, McCaffrey said. \u201cAnd obviously they’re not.\u201d
(This story has been updated to add new information.)<\/em><\/p>\n

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WASHINGTON \u2013 Iran has fielded a new generation of ballistic missiles that can evade American air defenses and strike with far greater precision \u2013 a technological leap that military experts say has damaged the ring of U.S. bases across the Persian Gulf and left them more vulnerable than they’ve been in decades.The centerpiece of that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":222825,"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":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222824","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=222824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}