U.S. military outposts<\/u> in Iraq and Syria are plagued by thefts of weapons and equipment, according to exclusive documents obtained by The Intercept that show militias and criminal gangs are systematically targeting U.S. forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Military investigations launched earlier this year found that \u201cmultiple sensitive weapons and equipment\u201d \u2014 including guided missile launch systems as well as drones \u2014 have been stolen in Iraq. This follows hundreds of thousands of dollars in military gear that were purloined from U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria between 2020 and 2022, as reported earlier this year by The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n America\u2019s bases in Iraq and Syria ostensibly exist to conduct \u201ccounter-ISIS missions<\/a>,\u201d but experts say they are used primarily as a check against Iran. Since the October outbreak of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, these bases have come under regular rocket and drone attacks<\/a> as part of an undeclared war between the U.S. and Iran and its surrogate militias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The U.S. has increasingly responded to those attacks. In Syria, the U.S. launched \u201cprecision strikes\u201d on a \u201ctraining facility and a safe house\u201d allegedly used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The U.S. has since employed an AC-130 gunship<\/a> against an \u201cIranian-backed militia vehicle and a number of Iranian-backed militia personnel\u201d at an undisclosed location, following a ballistic missile attack on Al Asad Air Base in Western Iraq. \u201cThe President has no higher priority than the safety of U.S. personnel,\u201d said <\/a>Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, justifying U.S. strikes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the criminal investigation documents obtained by The Intercept demonstrate that the U.S. cannot even secure its equipment, much less protect its troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe don\u2019t tend to think nearly critically enough about the ripple effects of such an expansive U.S. military footprint,\u201d Stephanie Savell, co-director of Brown University’s Costs of War Project, told The Intercept. \u201cThe so-called war on terror isn\u2019t over \u2014 it\u2019s just morphed. And we can understand these weapons thefts as just one of the many political costs of that ongoing campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Details about the thefts in Iraq, which were never made public by the military, are found in criminal investigations files obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In February, military investigators were notified that 13 commercial drones, valued at about $162,500, were stolen from a U.S. facility in Erbil, Iraq, sometime last year. The agents identified no suspects, and no leads are mentioned in the file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A separate investigation discovered that \u201cmultiple sensitive weapons and equipment\u201d including targeting sight and launcher units for Javelin missiles \u2014 a shoulder-fired guided missile that locks on its targets \u2014 were stolen at or en route to Forward Operating Base Union III in Baghdad, Iraq. The loss to the U.S. government was estimated at almost $480,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Investigators did not believe the thefts were an inside job. \u201cNo known U.S. personnel were involved,\u201d according to a criminal investigations file. The investigators instead refer to locals as the likely suspects. \u201cIraqi criminal organizations and militia groups target convoys and containers for weapons and equipment,\u201d the document stated. \u201cFurther there have been systemic issues with U.S. containers being pilfered by these groups and local nationals outside of Union III, due to the lack of security.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Earlier this year, The Intercept revealed at least four significant thefts and one loss of U.S. weapons and equipment<\/a> in Iraq and Syria from 2020 to 2022, including 40mm high-explosive grenades, armor-piercing rounds, specialized field artillery tools and equipment, and unspecified \u201cweapons systems.\u201d Two of the incidents took place at bases in Syria, and three were in Iraq. None of those thefts occurred at Forward Operating Base Union III.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just how many thefts have occurred is unknown \u2014 perhaps even to the Pentagon. After more than two months, both Combined Joint Task Force\u2013Operation Inherent Resolve, which oversees America\u2019s war in Iraq and Syria, and its parent organization, U.S. Central Command, failed to respond to any of The Intercept\u2019s questions about weapons thefts in Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier this year, the task force admitted that it does not know the extent of the problem: A spokesperson said the task force has no record of any thefts from U.S. forces. \u201c[W]e do not have the requested information,\u201d Capt. Kevin T. Livingston, then CJTF-OIR\u2019s director of public affairs, told The Intercept when asked if any weapons, ammunition, or equipment were stolen in the last five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The thefts and losses<\/u> uncovered by The Intercept are just the latest weapons accountability woes to afflict the U.S. military in Iraq and Syria. A 2017 investigation<\/a> by the Pentagon\u2019s inspector general found $20 million of weapons in Kuwait and Iraq were \u201cvulnerable to loss or theft.\u201d A 2020 audit<\/a> <\/a>discovered that Special Operations Joint Task Force\u2013Operation Inherent Resolve, the main unit that works with America\u2019s Syrian allies, did not properly account for $715.8 million of equipment purchased for those local surrogates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Groups like Amnesty International<\/a> and Conflict Armament Research<\/a> also found that a substantial portion of the Islamic State<\/a> group\u2019s arsenal<\/a> was composed of U.S.-made or U.S.-purchased weapons and ammunition <\/a>captured, stolen, or otherwise obtained from the Iraqi Army and Syrian fighters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Losses of weapons and ammunition are significant \u2014 and the military has taken pains to prevent them in the past. When the U.S. withdrew forces from an outpost near Kobani, Syria, in 2019, it conducted airstrikes on ammunition that was left behind<\/a>. The military also destroyed equipment<\/a> and ammunition during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan<\/a> in 2021. Still, within weeks of the U.S. defeat,<\/a> American-made pistols, rifles, grenades, binoculars, and night-vision goggles flooded weapons shops there. Others were exported to Pakistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Since the outbreak of Israel\u2019s war on Gaza, it\u2019s become ever more apparent that U.S. bases in the Middle East serve as magnets for attack, although far-flung outposts have been periodically targeted in other conflict zones. In 2019, for example, the terrorist group al-Shabab assaulted a U.S. base in Baledogle, Somalia<\/a>. The next year, the same group raided a longtime American outpost in Kenya<\/a>, killing three Americans and wounding two others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In recent weeks, America\u2019s bases in Iraq and Syria have sometimes come under persistent attack, including as many as four strikes by drones and rockets<\/a> in a 24-hour period. U.S. forces have been attacked more than 70 times \u2014 36 times in Iraq, 37 in Syria \u2014 since October 17. More than 60 U.S. personnel have been wounded, according to Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The investigation files obtained by The Intercept offer evidence that U.S. military bases also provide tempting targets for criminals. Earlier this year, The Intercept reported on a daring daylight armed robbery of military contractors<\/a> less than a mile from the entrance of Air Base 201, a large U.S. drone outpost in Niger. In 2013, a U.S. Special Operations compound in Libya was looted of hundreds of weapons<\/a> along with armored vehicles. And a 2021 Associated Press investigation found that at least 1,900 military weapons<\/a> were lost or stolen during the 2010s \u2014 from bases stretching from Afghanistan to North Carolina \u2014 and that some were then used in violent crimes.<\/p>\n The post Missiles and Drones Among Weapons Stolen From U.S. in Iraq and Syria<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on The Intercept<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Documents reveal \u201csensitive weapons and equipment\u201d were taken \u2013 and the Pentagon may be unaware of the scope of the thefts.<\/p>\n The post Missiles and Drones Among Weapons Stolen From U.S. in Iraq and Syria<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":535,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[383,340],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352681"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/535"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1352681"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1361157,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352681\/revisions\/1361157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1352681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1352681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1352681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}In February, military investigators were notified that 13 commercial drones were stolen from a U.S. facility in Erbil, Iraq.<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n