Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, the service’s top civilian leader, who clashed repeatedly with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the ouster of key combat-tested Army leaders, handed in his resignation to President Trump on Monday, administration officials said.
Mr. Driscoll’s resignation was expected but it comes at a tumultuous time, as the military’s largest service faces its busiest period since the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Army air defense soldiers are playing the leading role in defending U.S. troops in the Middle East from increasingly sophisticated Iranian missile attacks. The Army’s command in Europe is providing critical intelligence and other support to Ukraine as it fights to hold off a larger Russian force.
And Mr. Hegseth has in the meantime initiated a series of firings and feuds that has left the Army essentially rudderless as it struggles to deal with the threat posed by cheap, deadly drones and missiles that have pounded U.S. bases in the Middle East.
Substantial, and more than the Pentagon initially acknowledged. Key figures from independent analyses:
A Washington Post satellite-imagery analysis found Iranian strikes damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at US sites — hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft, and radar, communications and air-defense gear — since the war began. Roughly 15 US bases were hit, and seven US troops have been killed on those bases.
US officials told NBC in April that the damage across the Gulf was far worse than publicly acknowledged and would cost billions to repair; one attack came from an Iranian F-5 that got through American air defenses.
Early in the war, sustained attacks on bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan left some “all but uninhabitable,” per the NYT. At Camp Buehring in Kuwait, two Iranian F-5s dropped eight bombs in March, hitting the dining area, gym and garage.
A July NYT visual investigation found damage at nine US-linked sites over two weeks, including a destroyed hangar and at least 20 damaged structures at Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, where four US soldiers were killed. Fifth Fleet HQ in Bahrain has been a repeated target, with a warehouse there showing damage in July imagery.
Many bases, along with aircraft and surface vessels, had to be evacuated due to their vulnerability.
The most recent exchange was today: Iran claimed strikes on King Hussein and Al Azraq air bases in Jordan in retaliation for US action against IRGC forces in the Strait of Hormuz, but a US official said there were no impacts on US forces. The war is now in its seventh month, having started Feb. 28.
Caveat: the US has not released formal damage assessments, so these numbers come from journalists and think tanks working from satellite imagery and Iranian-released footage.