Survivors of the Iranian drone strike that killed six American service members at a Kuwaiti port facility in March have publicly challenged the Defence Department’s version of events, describing their unit as dangerously exposed, inadequately defended, and stationed at a location they knew to be on a list of likely Iranian targets.
What the Survivors Are Saying — and Why It Matters
Speaking to CBS News on condition of anonymity because of strict military media restrictions, members of the Army’s 103rd Sustainment Command have provided the first eyewitness account of the events of 1 March 2026 at the Port of Shuaiba, a small military outpost on Kuwait’s southern coast. Their testimony, supported by photographs and video footage obtained exclusively by the network, paints a picture strikingly at odds with the description offered by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth characterised the incoming Iranian drone as a “squirter” — military shorthand for a weapon that slips through the defences of an otherwise fortified position. He described the targeted tactical operations centre as “fortified, but these are powerful weapons,” and Assistant Secretary of Defence Sean Parnell later posted on X that “every possible measure has been taken to safeguard our troops — at every level,” adding that the secure facility was “fortified with 6-foot walls.”
The soldiers who were inside that facility when the drone struck reject this framing in unequivocal terms. “Painting a picture that ‘one squeaked through’ is a falsehood,” one of the injured soldiers told CBS News. “I want people to know the unit was unprepared to provide any defence for itself. It was not a fortified position.”
Asked to describe the degree of fortification at the site, another soldier was blunter still. “I mean, I would put it in the none category. From a drone defence capability — none.” He described the protective barriers around the worksite as “a thin layer of vertical standing blast barricades that did not provide cover from above,” adding that “from a bunker standpoint, that’s about as weak as one gets.”
The Morning of 1 March
The attack came as the staff of around 60 troops went about managing the flow of equipment, munitions and personnel across the Middle East theatre. Earlier in the morning, incoming missile alarms had prompted the crew to take cover in a cement bunker while a ballistic missile flew overhead. At approximately 9:15am, an all-clear signal sounded. Officers removed their helmets and returned to their desks inside what one soldier described as a wood-and-tin workspace roughly the width of three trailers.
Around 30 minutes later, the drone struck. “Everything shook,” one soldier recalled. “And it’s something like what you see in the movies. Your ears are ringing. Everything’s fuzzy. Your vision is blurry. You’re dizzy. There’s dust and smoke everywhere.”
What confronted the survivors as the dust cleared was a scene of catastrophic injury. “Head wounds, heavy bleeding, lots of perforated eardrums, and then just shrapnel all over, so folks are bleeding from their abdomen, bleeding from arms, bleeding from legs,” the same soldier said. Video footage obtained by CBS News shows smoke pouring from the damaged building and fires still smouldering in the wreckage.
Six service members were killed. More than 20 were wounded. It was the deadliest single attack on American troops since 2021, and it was a direct hit.
Why the Unit Was Still in Kuwait
One of the most troubling strands of the survivors’ account concerns the decision to keep the 103rd Sustainment Command at the Port of Shuaiba in the first place. Roughly a week before Operation Epic Fury — the US and Israeli campaign against Iran — most American soldiers and airmen stationed in Kuwait had been moved to positions further from Iranian missile range, relocating to Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Some of those redeployed were told to pack for only 30 days and to leave behind most of their personal equipment, including military-issued computers. The instruction, one soldier recalled, had been to “get off the X” — military terminology for removing oneself from the danger zone.
The 103rd Sustainment Command received a different set of orders. Rather than being evacuated to safer ground, they were told to pack up and relocate from a major US base south of Kuwait City to the Port of Shuaiba — a smaller facility much closer to Iranian missile and drone capability.
Several of the soldiers who spoke to CBS News said they had questioned the logic of the move at the time. One said he had seen intelligence material indicating that the port was on a list of potential Iranian targets. “We moved closer to Iran, to a deeply unsafe area that was a known target,” the soldier said. “I don’t think there was a good reason ever articulated.”
The tactical operations centre at the port was described as a structure typical of the Iraq and Afghanistan era — a time that predated the widespread use of drone warfare. Steel-reinforced concrete T-walls, designed to deflect shrapnel from mortars and rockets, surrounded the building. Such barriers offer no protection from above. “It’s just kind of a classic, older military base,” one soldier said. “Some small barriers. There’s a bunch of little tin buildings where we can set up makeshift offices.”
The Changing Character of Iranian Warfare
The soldiers’ account intersects with a broader strategic shift that has defined the current conflict. As the war has progressed, Iran has moved away from reliance on conventional defence and has leaned increasingly on cheap, plentiful drones — the same category of weapon that has reshaped combat in Ukraine. The Shahed drones used by Tehran are unsophisticated by the standards of Western air forces, but they are available in large numbers, difficult to intercept reliably, and capable of devastating effect when they reach their target.
The protective infrastructure at the Port of Shuaiba had been designed for a different era of threats. It assumed that the principal danger to the facility came from mortar or rocket attack, not from a weapon approaching at altitude from miles away. The soldiers’ testimony suggests that the gap between the threat environment and the defensive posture was not an inadvertent oversight but a known vulnerability — one that had been flagged by those on the ground before the attack occurred.
The Aftermath and the Self-Triage
What followed the detonation was a desperate and improvised response. With no single triage line possible because of fires burning across the worksite, survivors treated themselves and each other using whatever materials came to hand — bandages, braces and tourniquets fashioned from available supplies. “It was chaos,” one injured soldier said. “There was no single line of patients to triage. You’re on one side of the fire or you’re on the other side of the fire.”
Unable to wait for formal medical evacuation, the soldiers commandeered civilian vehicles to transport the wounded to two local Kuwaiti hospitals in the Fahaheel suburb of Kuwait City. One survivor described what haunted him most about the drive: “One of the hardest things for me is that I know we didn’t get everybody out, so I know that at this point there are still soldiers inside there that still haven’t been identified and evacuated.” Other teams later extracted the remaining fallen.
Despite everything, the survivors who spoke to CBS News were unanimous in praising the conduct of their fellow soldiers. “I don’t think that the security environment or any leadership decision diminishes in any way their sacrifice or their service,” one said. “Those soldiers put themselves in harm’s way and I’m immensely proud of them, and their family should be proud of them.”
Why These Soldiers Chose to Speak
The decision to come forward publicly carries risk for the service members involved. Military media restrictions are strict, and those who speak to journalists without authorisation can face consequences. But several of those who were present said the gap between the Pentagon’s narrative and what they had experienced on the ground was too significant to leave unchallenged.
“It’s not my intent to diminish morale or to disparage the Army or the Department of War more holistically,” one soldier told CBS News, “but I do think that telling the truth is important and we’re not going to learn from these mistakes if we pretend these mistakes didn’t happen.”
Asked whether the attack represented an inherent risk of combat, the soldier agreed that such incidents were part of war. But asked whether this particular attack had been preventable, his answer was unambiguous. “In my opinion, absolutely, yes.”
He added: “I am very sad for their loss and it’s something I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life. But I’m also immensely proud of them and their sacrifice, and their family should be too.”
The Pentagon’s Response and the Unanswered Questions
A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment on the soldiers’ specific claims, citing an active investigation into the Port of Shuaiba attack. That investigation will presumably examine the decision-making chain that left the 103rd Sustainment Command at a facility its own personnel believed to be inadequately protected against the weapon type that ultimately struck them. It will need to reconcile Hegseth’s public characterisation of a fortified position with the survivors’ description of one that, in their words, offered essentially no drone defence at all.
It will also have to engage with the more politically uncomfortable question of why some American units in Kuwait were relocated out of Iranian range in the days before Operation Epic Fury, while others were moved closer. The soldiers who spoke to CBS News said they never received a satisfactory explanation. Whether the coming investigation produces one remains to be seen.
For the families of the six service members killed at Port of Shuaiba, and for the more than 20 wounded, the gap between Washington’s narrative and the testimony of those who were there matters for reasons that extend beyond the politics of the moment. It matters because the accuracy of what happened shapes whether the lessons of this attack are actually learned — or whether, as one survivor put it, the mistakes are allowed to pass as though they never occurred.
