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Yahoo
19-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
10 New York soldiers receive Purple Heart for injuries in Tower 22 attack
Ten New York National Guard soldiers received Purple Hearts for injuries sustained in a 2024 Iranian-backed militia drone attack on a U.S. outpost known as Tower 22 in Jordan. On Jan. 28, 2024, a drone struck the housing unit at Tower 22 as soldiers slept. The attack killed three Army Reserve soldiers and injured dozens of other service members, including the 10 New York guardsmen. The Pentagon has released little details about the attack but the Purple Heart awards have given some insight into the soldiers assigned to the base and the size and scope of the attack. Some of the New York guardsmen suffered traumatic brain injuries and concussions, according to Eric Durr, a spokesperson for the New York National Guard. According to an Army press release on the award, 14 New York soldiers were stationed at Tower 22 to maintain communications equipment for the base. In all, the Jordan outpost was manned by 350 service members who were focused on reconnaissance and special forces operations as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S. campaign against ISIS. Company commander for the 101st Expeditionary Signal Battalion Capt. Paul Kramarz said his soldiers were part of a 'hand-selected team' who 'would operate at the far reaches of our area of responsibility.' After the drone hit, NY National Guard platoon leader 1st Lt. Ian Gallagher said the housing unit looked 'crinkled like a soda can.' Soldiers who came out of the attack unscathed lined up to donate blood for airmen and soldiers who were badly injured. Army Maj. Gen. Joel 'JB' Vowell, former commander of Operation Inherent Resolve, told Task & Purpose that one of the major lessons learned from the attack was the need for one-way drone defenses for smaller U.S. and partner nation military installations. An Army report of the attack first reported by Business Insider found that the soldiers tasked with monitoring for potential drone attacks faced insufficient staffing, inadequate battle drills and confusion over leadership roles. They had also been focused on the recovery of a Scan Eagle drone and did not see the drone coming from the south. The report found the soldiers failed to pick up the drone because it was too far away, moved too slow or seemed like a bird or debris. The Pentagon originally said the attack injured nearly 40 service members but the Army report indicated that more than 100 were injured. The ten guardsmen joined another reserve soldier and three airmen among service members assigned to Tower 22 who received Purple Hearts after the attack. In October 2024, three airmen who were assigned to the 129th Rescue Wing received the Purple Heart for their injuries. The airmen had all lost consciousness after the drone hit. When they awoke, they began banging on the bedroom doors of fellow troops in case another attack was on the way. They ran to the bunker, extinguished fires that broke out, searched for fellow service members trapped in the rubble and helped to evacuate casualties. They were treated for their injuries and continued with their deployment until May 2024. The Air Force did not explicitly say what injuries the three airmen suffered but Defense Department officials have described the majority of injuries from the attack as traumatic brain injuries and concussions. Sgt. Aneska S. Holness was awarded the Purple Heart in December 2024 prior to leaving the military due to injuries from the attack. Holness, a wheeled vehicle mechanic for the Arizona National Guard, woke up buried under the rubble of her containerized housing unit and began pulling other soldiers out. She was medically evacuated to Germany and continued TBI treatment at Fort Bliss until her separation. In October 2024, Army Reserve chaplain Maj. Chase Wilhelm was awarded four military honors 'highlighting his service in Jordan.' Wilhelm received the Bronze Star with Valor, the Purple Heart, the Army Commendation Medal, and the Four Chaplains' Medal. The New York National Guard soldiers received their awards May 10 at the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor in New Windsor, New York. The soldiers were originally scheduled to receive the awards in March, but were delayed by state mobilization orders, Durr said. In February, Gov. Kathy Kochul called in nearly 8,200 New York National Guard soldiers and airmen to fill in for correction officers at more than 40 prisons across the state who went on strike. The ceremony was also delayed, Durr said, by the logistics of getting all 10 guardsmen together in one place at one time. 'I am honored to have received the medal, but it's never an award we wanted to get,' Sgt. Ryan Kissoon told the Army in a release. 'It's a sad relief we made it home that day, and others didn't.' The soldiers who received the award were: Staff Sgt. David Barrientos, from Zebulon, North Carolina Sgt. Anthony Gist, from Floral Park Sgt. Ryan Kissoon, from Richmond Hill Sgt. Guillermo Renderos, from Yonkers Sgt. Jarvis Ho So, from Brooklyn Spc. Christian Tiburcio, from Manhattan Spc. Matthew Crespo, from Brooklyn Spc. Domingo Perez, from Brooklyn Spc. Junior Clarke, from Brooklyn Spc. Michael Branch, from Brooklyn The Purple Heart was originally created by George Washington in 1782 to honor military merit. In the 1930s, it was given to soldiers who served in World War I and then awarded to World War II troops who were wounded or killed during combat. These awards currently give retired or separated troops certain medical benefits at Veterans Administration hospitals, federal hiring preferences and access to the Forever GI Bill. 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Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Yahoo
Confusion gripped US base defenders just before a flying bomb struck a deadly blow at Tower 22, investigation reveals
Three US soldiers were killed in a drone attack at a military outpost in Jordan last year. BI obtained the investigation into the attack, outlining the failures that preceded the carnage. It points to extensive problems among the command and control soldiers who handled base security. Intelligence had come in before the fatal strike on the US military base that an imminent attack was possible. The base soldiers responsible for tracking threats were monitoring the situation. But they say they never saw the hostile drone coming. Business Insider obtained the US Army command investigation into the January 28, 2024, attack on Tower 22, a small logistics outpost in northeastern Jordan. An explosive-packed drone launched by an Iranian-aligned militia group killed three American troops and wounded over 100 more. After the deadly blast, a soldier whose name and position were both redacted in the investigation jumped out of bed and rushed into the Base Defense Operations Center responsible for overseeing the defenses, asking why they didn't catch it. Another soldier interviewed for the investigation characterized the inquiries at that moment differently, reporting that they were screaming, asking, "How did you guys not see it?" Everyone in the BDOC said nothing was on any of their systems, aside from a couple of tracks they dismissed as balloons or trash. "I could've sworn I was looking at the radar 30 seconds before the attack and didn't see anything on it," one soldier recalled, adding that they "don't remember seeing anything that was even close." Just before the attack, though, the BDOC's focus was on a Scan Eagle recon drone that was landing at the base. That soldier acknowledged that it might have been a distraction. The Army investigation uncovered extensive problems among the command and control soldiers handling base security. Threat assessments were conducted regularly at Tower 22, and all of them determined there was a high risk of attack. The investigation indicated that base defenders at the time of the attack, however, were unprepared to meet the threat. The report identified several failures, including a lack of key leadership presence, "cumulative exhaustion from an insufficient number" of base defense crew shifts, and "inadequate, poorly rehearsed, and overly centralized battle drills." It also pointed to a failure to recognize the threat of attacks from certain directions. For example, it says personnel at the base erroneously assumed the southern approach to the base was safe. There was some confusion on where the drone came from. The investigation said all the soldiers working the night shift at the BDOC when the drone attack happened said they saw two tracks south of Tower 22 on radar but didn't look into them. The soldiers shared that the tracks observed to the south of Tower 22 before the attack were "too far away," were "moving too slowly," or were "possibly birds or trash," the investigation said, noting that this indicated "their negligent departure from their own" standard operating procedure. The investigation said that "at the time of the attack, the BDOC crew also admitted they were very focused on watching the Scan Eagle recovery and did not interrogate or assess the unknown air tracks to the south of Tower 22 with the Night Hawk camera." A Scan Eagle drone is a low-altitude surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft that is made by US aerospace company Boeing. Soldiers said that the Scan Eagle drone returned to Tower 22 just moments before an explosion rocked the base at around 5:30 a.m. The reported missteps moments before the attack indicate a command failure for the BDOC crew that was supposed to monitor threats. Soldiers were confused about the leadership roles at the time and felt they couldn't make big decisions, "even when faced with imminent danger to the base," the investigation said. "We do assess that the BDOC night shift crew was not properly manned with the appropriate rank and experience level required of those positions given the current threat environment at Tower 22 and the important decisions required to protect the personnel on the base," even though senior leaders were available, the report explained. US Central Command did not respond to Business Insider about any accountability actions taken prior to publication. One document included in the investigation said there was no advanced warning from any radar or other system at either Tower 22 or the nearby Al-Tanf Garrison, a US military base several miles away in Syria. The bomb-laden enemy drone destroyed a six-person housing unit and damaged surrounding ones, killing three Army National Guard soldiers and wounding 104 others. The deadly Tower 22 incident came amid a larger campaign of Iran-backed militia attacks on American forces across the Middle East over the US stance in the Israel-Hamas war. The Biden administration responded days later with widespread airstrikes on Tehran-linked targets in Iraq and Syria. Crucially, the Tower 22 incident underscores the challenges of detecting small drones packed with explosives and the related readiness requirements. These munitions, increasingly being used in combat, are very different from traditional threats like missiles. They are more easily acquired by threat actors, have small radar signatures that can be mistaken for other things, and demand vigilance to engage. And even then, they can be missed. The US recognizes that drones are a significant problem, representing a major threat to the force. In December, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that adversary drones "have evolved rapidly" in recent years, adding that "cheap systems are increasingly changing the battlefield, threatening US installations, and wounding or killing our troops." Toward the end of the Biden administration, the Department of Defense outlined its approach to the drone threat. The US is looking to build up its inventory of counter-drone capabilities. Such systems were in place at Tower 22, but something else went wrong. In the recommendations in the Tower 22 investigation, it was suggested that US Army Central, tasked with Middle East operations, establish a "comprehensive and standardized" BDOC/counter-drone crew training scheme for all units before deploying to a region where counter-drone capabilities or missions may be needed. The report recommended that the program "include recent experiences, TTPs [tactics, techniques, and procedures], and lessons learned from across" the Centcom area of responsibility. Read the original article on Business Insider
