In Episode 1817 of Cut The Clutter, ThePrint Editor-In-Chief Shekhar Gupta moves past the sentimental subcontinental habit of “counting goals” in air warfare to examine the cold, hard reality of military attrition. From the $1.1 billion AN-FPS-132 in Qatar to the high-tech MQ-9 Reapers, these losses represent a strategic “blinding” of defence systems like THAAD. By drawing parallels to the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Storm, he explains why modern electronic superiority does not grant invincibility and why the replacement of these “fragile” high-tech assets is a multi-billion dollar challenge that defines the true cost of the war.
Here’s the full transcript, edited for clarity:
The war in the Gulf has now completed a full month, beginning on 28 February. We are seeing pictures of damage in Iran, various parts of the Arab Gulf, all GCC member countries, Jordan, and quite a few in Israel as well.
However, one thing that remains hazy is the losses the Americans have suffered. That said, the Americans have increasingly been upfront about their losses. Remember what Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit (the current Deputy Chief of Air Staff) said in one of his briefings: when you go into combat, there will be losses. He said this when asked if the Indian Air Force had lost any aircraft during Operation Sindoor. Before that, Chief of Defence Staff of the Indian armed forces General Anil Chauhan told Bloomberg in Singapore that while the numbers might not match public speculation, there are always losses in combat.
Most democracies are unable to hide such losses for long; while they might for tactical reasons, the truth eventually emerges. We now have data from multiple publications—none denied by US authorities—showing that the US has lost at least 20 aircraft of various kinds. In the modern era, an aircraft does not have to be manned. We are not necessarily talking about Shahed drones, but large-scale platforms like MQ-9 Reapers. These include the more modern versions India is currently procuring: the MQ-9B SkyGuardian for the Air Force and SeaGuardian for the Navy. These large drones are as capable as manned aircraft but carry no human pilot. They are expensive; this MQ-9 models are worth $16 million (approximately ₹150 crore), unlike a Shahed drone which costs only $20,000.
Of the 20 aircraft the Americans have lost, about a dozen are MQ-9 drones. At least ten were shot down by the Iranians, and two perished in accidents. Others were destroyed on the ground or during high-intensity operations. Air equipment is high-tech, expensive, hard to protect because it must be exposed, and very fragile; even a pebble sucked into a jet’s air intake can destroy it.
This fragility applies even more to radar systems. For a radar to work, it must be switched on and emit radiation, which an adversary can detect. In modern warfare, the moment a radar is activated, its location can be pinpointed, allowing the adversary to fire a weapon that “rides” the radar wave. Radars are vulnerable because they cannot function from inside a hardened bunker.
You might remember from ‘Op Swift Retort’, Pakistan sent two JF-17s to search for an S-400 radar in the Adampur area. They were able to pick up the radiation, but the radar survived because it would switch on, fire, and then immediately move, as the S-400 is a mobile system. Currently, the fourth battery Russia owes India is expected this June, and the fifth toward the end of the year. The Defense Acquisition Council (DAC) has also cleared the purchase of five more S-400 systems.
Besides the MQ-9 losses, the Americans lost three F-15s to friendly fire from a Kuwaiti F/A-18 Hornet fighter. All six crew members survived and are back to flying. Replacing those F-15s today would cost about $100 million each. There was also an F-35 Lightning stealth aircraft that was hit. While CENTCOM stated it suffered damage and landed safely at a friendly airbase, reports suggest the pilot suffered shrapnel injuries, likely from a missile’s proximity fuse.
Another significant loss was a KC-135 Stratotanker, a large four-engine refueler. While Iran claimed a shoot-down, it appears to have been an operational accident between two KC-135s during mid-air refueling. One crashed, killing all six crew members, while the other landed with damage. Five more tankers were damaged on the ground at an airbase in Saudi Arabia by a missile or drone strike.
Beyond aviation, the most significant damage that America suffered is to ground-based radars, which are currently irreplaceable. While there are over 1,300 F-35s in existence, radars take a long time to build and require critical minerals primarily controlled by China.
Reports from ABC News identify ten radar sites that have been hit. The most significant is the AN/FPS-132 site at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. This powerful radar tracks hundreds of targets across a 360-degree range. It was purchased in 2013 for $1.1 billion; replacing it today would take six months to a year. Other sites hit include the US Embassy in Baghdad, the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, Kuwait Airport, and the 5th Fleet Headquarters in Bahrain.
In Saudi Arabia, an AN/TPY-2 radar was hit at Prince Sultan Air Base on 1st March. This radar is an essential component of the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) battery, America’s cutting-edge ballistic missile defense system. The US has only eight of these batteries globally. Without the radar, the THAAD interceptors are “blind” and cannot calculate a trajectory to catch incoming missiles as they re-enter the atmosphere. Similar AN/TPY-2 batteries were hit at Al Ruwais and Al Dhafra airbases in the UAE, and at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait.
Assessing the real extent of the damage is challenging because commercial satellite companies have implemented a 14-day delay in releasing pictures, allowing time for debris to be cleared or equipment to be covered. However, combat is never one-sided. Up until 10 March, the UAE claimed a 95 percent interception rate, but that dropped to 25 percent after their radars were targeted. This has sparked a debate in the defence community: are fixed, fragile radars obsolete compared to more mobile, cheaper systems?
Elaine McCusker, a former top Pentagon official, estimates the attrition damage to be between $1.4 billion and $2.9 billion. This divergence exists because of the depreciated value of older equipment versus its much higher replacement cost. For example, while an MQ-9 Reaper cost $16 million, General Atomics no longer produces that model. Replacing it with the modern MQ-9B SkyGuardian costs roughly $30 million. Similarly, the KC-135 hasn’t been made since the 1960s; it must be replaced by the KC-46 Pegasus, which costs $165 million. The Indian Air Force has recently taken a wet lease of one KC-135 to address its shortage of mid-air refuelers.
History shows that offensive air campaigns always suffer losses. In the Vietnam War, the US lost 2,251 aircraft despite the Vietnamese having limited air defenses. In the 1991 Operation Desert Storm, a 37-day campaign involving 100,000 sorties and 88,500 tons of explosives resulted in the loss of 52 fixed-wing aircraft and 23 helicopters, mostly to ground-based missiles. Of these, 1,737 were lost to hostile action and 514 to accidents.
Crucially, the Vietnamese had very little to counter US air power, occasionally utilising early-generation Russian missiles like the SA-2 Guideline. This was the same missile system the Indian Air Force first acquired around 1964. While the Vietnamese eventually operated MiGs—specifically the MiG-15, MiG-17, and MiG-21—they posed no credible challenge to American air superiority. Nevertheless, the US lost 2,251 total aircraft at a loss rate of 0.4 per 1,000 sorties, meaning one aircraft was lost for every 2,500 sorties.
The most important of these is something that should be relatively fresher in our memory: the 1991 Operation Desert Storm. I covered that war for 37 days. During that time, Americans and their allies carried out a relentless air campaign before launching the ground offensive. In that 37-day campaign, they launched about one lakh sorties and dropped 88,500 tons of explosives. This was a massive campaign.
What were their losses? They lost 52 fixed-wing aircraft and 23 helicopters. They had 46 aircrew members—pilots and others—dead or missing, and eight captured. Most of these losses were due to ground-based missiles.
However, there was one famous dogfight on the first day of the air war, 17 January, 1991. That’s when an American F/A-18 Hornet was shot down by an Iraqi Air Force MiG-25. Soon afterward, the Iraqis knew the dice were too heavily loaded against them. So, the Iraqi Air Force saved whatever aircraft they could and flew them into Iran to keep them in safe custody. This is a side story to that campaign.
I used this to illustrate that in any of these campaigns, air forces launching strikes will suffer losses regardless of their electronic superiority. I’m using this detail to ground our perspective, as we in the Subcontinent often get too sentimental about how many aircraft were shot down. Air warfare is not a football or hockey match where you count goals.
This is a brutal business where you have targets and objectives to meet, and if there is attrition on the way, so be it. In the case of this Gulf War, we can see that the Americans have lost about 20 aircraft. More importantly, they’ve lost ten radar sites, one of which is irreplaceable at the moment. It will cost roughly half a billion dollars—that is the AN/FPS-132 in Qatar.