Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, in Bossier Parish not far from Shreveport, was attacked by swarms of drones during the week of March 9. The attack disrupted the launch of B-52H aircraft in support of Operation Epic Fury against Iran. It is the first time an American airbase has been temporarily shut down in wartime, something that never happened even in World War II.
Each wave forced the Air Force to halt operations and send its personnel to shelters. Barksdale is the command center of the US Air Force Global Strike Command. Not only are the B-52s based there, but the base is part of America’s nuclear triad. It houses long-range nuclear cruise missiles (such as the AGM-86B) and will soon house a new Standoff long-range cruise missile. Shelters and storage sites for the new missiles are under construction.
The only other significant US airbase for the B-52 is at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. Both bases are supporting Epic Fury. The plane could either fly to the UK and then on to Iran, or (as they did during the UK embargo) fly directly from Barksdale to Iran, a very long mission requiring eight mid-air refuels.
Drone waves last about four hours each day, an unusually long time for a drone. It is not known whether the drones were fixed wing or quadcopter, or how they were powered (liquid fuel or electric). Each wave consisted of 12 to 15 drones, and the drones flew with their lights on, deliberately making them visible.
Barksdale AFB has no air defenses, nor fighter jets that can shoot down drones.
The air base has several electronic countermeasures that are designed to disable GPS and data links between the drones and their remote operators. The electronic countermeasures did not work.
The drones themselves may have been autonomous or semi-autonomous and operated in ways that suggest the drones were equipped with multiple sensors that guided each drone’s behavior on the ground and in response to jamming attempts.
In short, the drones operating over Barksdale were far more sophisticated than anything seen in Ukraine, where drones are used extensively and beyond Iranian capabilities.
The drones could have come from a potential adversary, as China was best equipped to produce a drone of the type that flew over Barksdale. From what has been observed, the design of the drone surpasses almost anything in the US arsenal.
What we do know is that the drones had an incredible range, could withstand broad spectrum jamming, and exhibited non-commercial signal characteristics. Even more provocatively, the drones used different entry and exit routes and operated in scattered patterns, making tracking (by trying to triangulate on signals) virtually impossible.
We don’t know if the drones transmitted information while over the base or stored the information they transmitted later, or if the drones could have satellite links.
One way to think about the drone waves is that these drones are China’s answer to shooting down its spy balloons. A critical one was dropped from the sky by an F-22 in early 2023, but not before flying over Malmstrom AFB (Montana), which houses the Minuteman III ICBM silos, and Whiteman AFB (Missouri), home of the B-2 stealth bomber.
While there have been many serious concerns about Russia supplying Iran with intelligence while Epic Fury was underway, the swarms of drones over Barksdale strongly suggest that China is feeding Iran critical intelligence as well as weapons, assuming these drones came from China and were operated by the Chinese or Chinese proxies.
There is no doubt that the operators were well trained and smuggled the equipment into the United States. The operation was continuous and disciplined and very sophisticated.
The impact of these flights was significant. Drone waves delayed critical operations in support of Epic Fury. The B-52s launched by Barksdale carried AGM-158 JASSM-ER guns and GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator “Bunker Buster” bombs. The JASSM is a sustained air-to-surface missile that carries a 1,000 lb (450 kg) WDU-42/B penetration warhead.
The JASSM is classified as a low-observable (meaning stealthy) weapon and the ER version has a range of 1,000 km. The GBU-57 is a 30,000-pound (13,600 kg), GPS-guided bomb. There are reports that GBUs were used against the Taleghan-2 facility at the Parchin military complex. Taleghan-2 was developing nuclear triggers for Iran’s nuclear bomb program.
Satellite images released on March 11 by Vantor Institute showed three massive, precise impact points in a neat row directly on top of the concrete shell. The size and accuracy of the craters are “broadly consistent” with 5,000 lb (GBU-72/B) or even 30,000 lb (GBU-57/B) penetrators. Unlike the B-2 strikes at Fordow, which used the vent shafts as “entry points”, these strikes appear to have struck directly through the newly hardened concrete to collapse the inner test chambers:
By postponing the B-52 launches, Iran has more time to remove critical assets. While we don’t know, it is very possible that drones have not only flown over, or photographed, but have intercepted war plans and command and control operations.
Barksdale is in a congressional district represented by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (Republican).
In addition to Barksdale, other drone incidents focused on US strategic and leadership assets. Between December 2023 and June 2025, “someone” launched seventeen nights of drone atrocity at Langley AFB in Hampton, Virginia. One result of the swarms is that US F-22 stealth jets had to be moved as they were under threat. There are reports that some of the drones used in the attack were over 20 feet long and flying at over 100 mph.
In late 2024 and into 2026, there were continuous sightings of Edwards AFB Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. This is home to the famous Skunk Works. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing operate in this country on highly classified projects.
Between March 10 and March 20, 2026, several unidentified drones flew over Fort Leslie J. McNair in Washington, DC. Both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth live on the base, suggesting an “unknown” adversary was targeting them.
The US has some anti-drone capabilities, including high-powered microwave systems, but these are just becoming available. These are “large” units that take a 20-foot shipping container for transit. They will need trained operators and some integration with base radars and command centers.
There are still other products coming out of the Air Force and other labs that may offer some protection, but realistically the US is years away from a real domestic drone capability.
Asia Times Senior Correspondent Stephen Bryen is a former US Deputy Under Secretary of Defense. This article was originally published in his Substack newsletter Weapons and Strategy.
