As Iran missiles battered base, US drone pilots battled to keep eyes in sky

Fearing a ground attack would follow the salvo, American pilots stayed in their cockpits until the rockets knocked out the surveillance feed

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  A US soldier walks past a drone in the Ain Al Asad airbase in the western Iraqi province of Anbar. AFP

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  Iran last week launched a wave of missiles at the sprawling Ain Al Asad airbase in western Iraq and a base in Erbil, capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, both hosting US and other foreign troops. AFP

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  It came after an operation to killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, in a January 3 US drone strike near Baghdad's airport. AFP

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  Blast walls of a sleeping quarters for US soldiers at Ain Al Asad air base in Anbar province, Iraq Reuters

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  Damage at Ain Al Asad military airbase housing US and other foreign troops in the western Iraqi province of Anbar. AFP

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  US soldiers clear rubble from a site of Iranian bombing at Ain Al Asad air base in Anbar. AP

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  A bulldozer clears rubble and debris at Ain Al Asad air base in Anbar. AP

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  US soldiers clearing rubble at Ain Al Asad military airbase in the western Iraqi province of Anbar. AFP

Moments after volleys of Iranian missiles began to batter Iraq's Ain al-Asad airbase, US soldiers at the desert facility lost contact with their ultra-powerful – and expensive – eyes in the sky.

At the time the attack was launched at 1:35 am on January 8, the US army was flying seven unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over Iraq to monitor bases where US-led coalition forces are deployed.

They included MQ-1C Gray Eagles, advanced surveillance drones that can fly for as long as 27 hours and carry a payload of up to four Hellfire missiles.

"We thought it may lead to a ground assault, so we kept the aircraft up," said one of the pilots, 26-year-old Staff Sergeant Costin Herwig.

Staff Sgt Herwig was flying a Gray Eagle when the first Iranian missile struck the base, retaliation for the January 3 killing of top Iranian general Qassem Suleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad.

Most of the other 1,500 US soldiers had been tucked away in bunkers for two hours, after advance warning from superiors.

But 14 pilots had stayed in dark containers-turned-cockpits to remotely fly the "birds" and monitor essential feeds from their high-powered cameras.

The first missile blasted dust into their shelter but the pilots stayed put, Staff Sgt Herwig said during a press tour of the base organised by the coalition.

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  U.S. soldiers are seen at the site where an Iranian missile hit at Ain al-Asad air base in Anbar province, Iraq. Reuters

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  Debris and rubble are seen at the site where an Iranian missile hit at Ain al-Asad air base in Anbar province, Iraq. Reuters

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  U.S. soldiers inspect the site where an Iranian missile hit at Ain al-Asad air base in Anbar province, Iraq. Reuters

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  U.S. soldiers are seen at the site where an Iranian missile hit at Ain al-Asad air base in Anbar province, Iraq. Reuters

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  Blast walls of a sleeping quarters for U.S. soldiers are seen at Ain al-Asad air base in Anbar province, Iraq. Reuters

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  Military vehicles of U.S. soldiers are seen at Ain al-Asad air base in Anbar province, Iraq. Reuters

The next rounds came closer and closer, and the light-haired soldier recalled that he had "accepted fate".

"We thought we were basically done," he said.

But the real crisis was yet to come.

The volleys of missiles, which soldiers said lasted about three hours, slammed into sleeping quarters directly adjacent to the pilots' operations rooms.

"No more than a minute after the last round hit, I was heading over to the bunkers on the far back side and saw the fire was burning all through our fibre lines," said First Sergeant Wesley Kilpatrick.

Those lines link the virtual cockpits to antennas then satellites that send signals to the Gray Eagles and pull the cameras' feeds back onto the screens at Ain Al Asad.

"With the fibre lines burnt, there was no control," said First Sgt Kilpatrick.

The soldiers could no longer locate the drones and were left blind to events in the air – and on the ground.

If a drone had been shot down, for example, the besieged teams at Ain Al Asad could not have known.

"It's a pretty big deal, because it's so expensive and there's a lot of stuff on them that we don't want other people to have or the enemy to get," said Staff Sgt Herwig.

A single Gray Eagle costs around $7 million (Dh 25.7 million), according to 2019 army budget estimates.

They have been used in Iraq since at least 2017 by the coalition to help fight the ISIS.

The coalition is required to get a green light from the Iraqi government to fly drones and planes, but those permissions had expired several days before the Iran attacks.

The US army had kept the drones in the air anyway, a senior American defence official told reporters, after months of rocket attacks on Iraqi bases where their forces are based.

As the bombs crashed closer on January 8 and with the drones unaccounted for, the pilots finally clambered into bunkers.

But as soon as the blasts stopped, they rushed back out, now facing a race against time to get their signals up and running so they could find – and land – the Gray Eagles.

As dawn started to break, soldiers scrambled to replace 500 metres of melted fibre cables and reprogramme satellites so they could reconnect to the UAVs.

Last step? Land the "birds."

The Iranian ballistic missiles had punched holes across Ain Al Asad's airfield and the control tower was empty.

"The airfield was shut down so we had to land without talking to anybody. We didn't know where any [other] aircraft was. That part was pretty stressful," said Staff Sgt Herwig.

The priority was one Grey Eagle that had been scheduled to land just as the missile attack began, and which stayed flying throughout until it was worryingly low on fuel.

The pilots worked for hours to land each drone one by one, their adrenaline pumping even as other soldiers were recovering, showering and assessing the damage.

At around 9 am, the final drone was brought down to earth.

"We landed all our own birds back on site," said First Sgt Kilpatrick, smiling in relief and pride.

"It was quite a feat."