Exclusive: Soldiers and Gold Star families press Army leadership after deadly Iranian drone strike

WASHINGTON (AP) — On a sunny, cloudless morning on March 1, the day after President Donald Trump started the war against Iran , Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan was coordinating critical Army supplies out of Port Shuaiba in Kuwait.

In an instant, a drone crashed through the ceiling and exploded, killing Marzan, who had served in the military for 36 years. The force flung soldiers into the air, fragments of sheet metal and glass shards impaling them. The tin roof was peeled back “like opening up a sardine can,” one soldier recalled.

Six soldiers were killed and dozens were injured in the deadliest known strike on U.S. troops since Operation Epic Fury commenced on Feb. 28.

For many, the attack at Port Shuaiba has receded into memory as the war nears its eighth month. But to those there that day and their families, it showed the cost of a hastily drawn conflict. The planning had apparent flaws, and commanders did not take intelligence reports of the Iranian threat seriously enough, leaving wounded soldiers questioning Army leadership and the military medical system.

In the aftermath, many of the wounded — some with decades of service and combat experience — told The Associated Press that commanders had been warned that the facility, a rectangular building with wooden sides at a working seaport and industrial area south of Kuwait City, was particularly vulnerable to a drone strike.

That warning went unheeded, the soldiers say. Some also said higher-ranking officers pushed for an all-clear to be called, but it's not certain from their accounts who ultimately made the decision to move soldiers out of a safer space in nearby bunkers. The wounded also would later say their serious injuries were not treated promptly or adequately in the weeks following the attack.

“We have the right to know what really happened,” Marzan’s widow, Tina Marzan, told the AP. “If somebody messed up, those people need to be held responsible.”

Battlefield conditions are inherently chaotic and assessments drawn by those involved are often in tension. The AP’s account of the attack is based on interviews with 13 soldiers, primarily officers, serving in key positions of responsibility there or familiar with high-level briefings leading up to the strike.

Along with several Gold Star families — the military’s designation for relatives of a soldier killed while on active duty — many are raising their concerns publicly for the first time and calling for the Army to reconcile what they say are failures of preparedness.

Several soldiers spoke on the record, which is rare for troops still in the Army. Others spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Some details of the attack have been reported by other news organizations, including The Washington Post and CBS News, but the AP is reporting other details for the first time.

In the early days of the war, Trump described it as a “little excursion” that would end quickly but now has no off-ramp in sight. The toll can be measured in 19 U.S. personnel killed, more than 800 wounded and at least $44 billion spent to wage the fight.

The Army declined to comment on the AP’s reporting on the Port Shuaiba strike, saying it had not yet briefed the families of those killed on the outcome of its investigation into the attack. The Pentagon also declined to comment.

“Out of respect for the primary next of kin who will be scheduled for briefs on the official findings of the completed investigation, we will not comment on specific details, individual accounts, or leaked portions of the report at this time,” the Army said in a statement.

The Army completed its investigation of the Port Shuaiba attack in June but has yet to release a report, citing the need to redact sensitive information, said an official familiar with the Army’s investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the report has not been released.

The story of the attack really begins in June 2025, when the U.S. bombed three nuclear sites in Iran . In anticipation of a counterstrike on U.S. troops in Kuwait, military planners relocated soldiers to Port Shuaiba, which the Army used for decades on the belief it was safer.

In the lead-up to the war in February, that was the same playbook followed by Major Gen. John Hinson, the two-star general overseeing logistics for U.S. Central Command in the Middle East, and Brig. Gen. Clint Barnes, who led the 103rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, an Iowa-based Army Reserve unit serving a nine-month deployment in Kuwait under Hinson's command. All six soldiers who died, and many of the dozens wounded, were from the 103rd.

Hinson and Barnes chose not to deviate from the plan despite knowing that the port lacked defenses against drones and was seen as increasingly likely to be attacked, according to five officers and an enlisted soldier familiar with the U.S. intelligence and threat assessments. The generals were following orders made at U.S. Army Central, which oversees Army units in the Middle East, and Central Command to leave the nearby Army base, Camp Arifjan.

Hinson declined to comment on the record for this story. Barnes did not respond to text messages and telephone calls.

Even before the attack, the threat of a drone strike was well known. But the command team rejected proposals to move the entire logistics headquarters to other sites identified as safer locations outside Kuwait, farther away from Iran, according to Major Billy Key, an operations planner working for Barnes who has served in the Army for more than 20 years. Another officer confirmed the alternate plans were scuttled. The port was about 65 miles (104 kilometers) from the Iranian border.

“Kuwait was just too close, that’s the bottom line," Key said. "Kuwait was in striking distance of low-flying drones.”

Senior leadership believed that a core group of the more than 200 soldiers who had been handling logistics at Camp Arifjan needed to remain in Kuwait. Two senior officers, including Lt. Col. Tim Halbur, told the AP that there were communications advantages to being there, so a small crew of about 75 soldiers was sent to the port to set up a temporary field headquarters for logistics in the region. Dozens of troops from other units were also present.

One enlisted soldier, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the command team is facing unfair criticism for hard decisions to balance its ability to carry out a crucial logistics mission with the inherent risks of war.

But six officers told the AP that the logistics headquarters' jobs could have been done from a safer site outside Kuwait, so long as they had access to a secure communications network.

“We did our work on a computer,” Key told the AP. "We could have been anywhere.”

During meetings, officers overseeing protection told Hinson and Barnes, among others, that Port Shuaiba would not be safe for troops due to the lack of air protection against drones, according to five soldiers who were present: Key, Maj. Stephen Ramsbottom and three others familiar with high-level briefings who insisted on anonymity due to fear of reprisal.

They said the generals were more focused on defending against missiles and were not prepared for drone warfare. “This type of fight has been going on for five years in Ukraine, and our excuse is we didn’t expect it to happen to us,” Ramsbottom said. “That’s preposterous in my mind.”

While the three major U.S. military bases in Kuwait had bolstered air protection heading into the war, the only U.S. air support for Port Shuaiba came from a Patriot anti-missile system in the vicinity of Camp Arifjan that was ill-equipped for shooting down Iranian drones.

While the system is capable of detecting the small aircraft, large numbers of drones are able to quickly deplete a battery, and the Patriot missiles cost vastly more than the drones. Using the system to down drones also then leaves the area vulnerable to far more deadly missile attacks.

Neither Hinson nor Barnes was empowered to change anti-air or drone defenses at the site.

“There was nothing that was going to intercept a threat coming at us other than ballistic missiles,” Ramsbottom said.

Just days before the relocation to the port in late February, a group of intelligence officers pressed Hinson and Barnes to not go there. Hinson asked whether Port Shuaiba was on a list of planned Iranian targets that had been obtained by U.S. intelligence before Operation Epic Fury and was told that it was not on the list but was considered a likely secondary target, according to two officers familiar with the meeting.

The officers said Hinson still made the call to go.

Lt. Gen. Patrick Frank, then leading Army Central, signed off on the plan to move to Port Shuaiba when Hinson briefed him, Halbur and another senior officer said.

“Obviously, somewhere at the two-star, three-star level, they knew the intelligence reports,” Halbur said. “We were just told, like, ‘Hey, yeah, we’ll be fine there.’”

One officer who was involved in logistics and was wounded in the attack said staying at the Kuwaiti port seemed appropriate. Lt. Col. Arturo Lincón of the Defense Logistics Agency said Port Shuaiba had existing infrastructure for secure communications that could accommodate their unit and Jordan, where U.S. military operations also are based and many soldiers were being relocated, was already getting crowded.

At the start of the war, missiles from all sides lit up the screen inside the command post at the port. Soldiers rushed in and out of bunkers. They could feel booms shake the ground.

That night, at least five quadcopter drones hovered over the port and appeared to be surveilling the U.S. military site, according to Key, who said one was only about 40 feet (12 meters) above him. He said he told senior officers what he saw, and it was passed up the chain. “That was the last I heard about it,” he added. Intelligence briefings had warned that quadcopter drones were a sign of impending strikes.

The next morning, March 1, Capt. Cody Khork, who oversaw safety for the unit and had strongly advised against going to the port, confided to Ramsbottom that he felt they should not leave their bunker because of the barrage of missiles and drones coming in, according to Ramsbottom. Both Khork and Ramsbottom were concerned that the radar being used to issue all-clears was not picking up low-flying drones.

“We knew we were not safe,” said Ramsbottom, who would end up with a piece of shrapnel sticking out of his head and a traumatic brain injury. “No one knew the drone situation.”

In the hours before the deadly strike, higher-ranking officers pushed Khork to get troops cleared to leave the bunkers, said Ramsbottom, who was with Khork in the bunker. The team was under tremendous pressure to carry out its mission, which included tracking munitions levels and fuel across the region, and that could not be done from inside the bunker.

It remains unclear who ultimately made the decision to leave the bunkers, which were within several hundred feet of the operations center. Around 10 a.m., about 20 minutes after the final all-clear was issued, an Iranian drone smashed through the operation center's roof.

Ramsbottom and Key recalled the drone struck seconds after Khork passed by them and said “good morning.” Key was blasted into a metal cabinet and knocked unconscious. When he awoke, his ears were ringing and he stumbled through the rubble, coming across Khork’s lifeless body. A group of soldiers helped take Khork's body from the wreckage to ensure he could be buried with dignity.

Key later recounted the scene to Khork’s parents at his funeral in Florida several weeks later, telling them their son appeared to die instantly.

“I would have wanted someone to tell my family that if it were me,” Key said. “I felt compelled to tell them exactly what happened.”

Lincón, a West Point graduate, remained conscious but was severely wounded by shrapnel and briefly lost his eyesight. Another wounded soldier bandaged him and got him out of the burning building.

“Had it not been for those brave souls, there would have been a lot more, including myself, who probably (would have) burned there in place,” Lincón said.

Hinson and Barnes also suffered traumatic brain injuries from the blast, and Hinson’s hand was hit with shrapnel.

The soldiers based at Port Shuaiba headed into war without having implemented a broad-based plan for a mass casualty event, seven soldiers, including senior officers stationed there, told the AP. Soldiers who still had their phones intact used Google to locate the nearest medical facilities. Some among the wounded would later say their serious injuries were not treated promptly or adequately in the weeks after the strike.

A medical service officer had prepared an evacuation plan that would have included setting up collection points for transporting wounded soldiers, but she was among the group sent to Jordan, and her plan was never briefed and put into place. She declined to comment.

“I’ve been in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve been in combat operations before. I know what right looks like, and this was not right by any means,” said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Jonathan Tenbrink, who has spent 35 years in the U.S. military and was wounded by shrapnel in his forehead, face, neck, shoulders and right arm.

Relocating to Port Shuaiba, some soldiers acknowledged there was also a false sense of security.

“It was the farthest thing from my mind that we would get hit there,” said Lincón, who had deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan multiple times in his 27-year Army career.

Even for survivors, there was peril ahead.

Halbur had been among a group of about nine soldiers medically evacuated, and he was having surgery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland within a week, describing his care there as “excellent.” He said he was told by visiting top Army leadership that the Port Shuaiba soldiers were “the guinea pigs” for the medical system as Operation Epic Fury commenced.

But other wounded soldiers, including those with serious head injuries and shrapnel wounds, had vastly different experiences of delayed care after the attack.

One group, some of whom were treated at a Kuwaiti hospital for about 48 hours, holed up in residential homes in Kuwait for another week as Iran unleashed missiles and drones that made it risky for evacuation flights. Soldiers finally boarded a cargo plane flown to Germany.

There, they say, they were not admitted to inpatient care at the military's main medical hub, the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, but were sent to Army barracks because they had not been documented as combat-injured troops. About a week later they were placed into demobilization at Fort Hood in Texas, a process not focused on providing medical care.

A Pentagon official told the AP that Landstuhl's mission is to stabilize patients to transfer them for specialized care at a military hospital in the U.S., rather than admit them. In a statement, the Pentagon said that all wounded troops who arrive at its medical facilities are evaluated and may be admitted based on the severity of the injury.

In early July, Gold Star families received a briefing from Frank, who had just ended his rotation as head of Army Central Command, providing a broad overview of the investigation’s findings. Tina Marzan said there was no admission of error.

Frank did not say anything about Port Shuaiba’s vulnerabilities, only that soldiers were moved around because attacks on other bases were expected, according to Marzan. Frank also told her that there was proper medical treatment available to those at Port Shuaiba, she said.

“Whatever happened unfortunately does not bring my husband back,” Marzan said.

One senior officer filed a complaint against Barnes and Hinson to the Army's inspector general. But in a July 20 letter reviewed by the AP, the watchdog concluded that Barnes had not engaged in misconduct or “ignored reliable intelligence” in this complaint based on “the limited evidence” provided by the officer.

The agency also noted this complaint against Hinson was withdrawn, which the officer disputed to the AP. The officer told the AP he relayed his conversations with Barnes discussing intelligence briefings but told investigators he had not directly interacted with Hinson.

Halbur, a father of two from Ankeny, Iowa, had been deployed as an Army reservist seven months earlier, hardly expecting to be on the front lines of a full-blown conflict.

He had served for nearly 30 years, but today he can no longer salute. His dominant right arm will likely never be able to bend past 90 degrees again after the blast shattered his forearm in four places, including his elbow.

“I can’t squeeze both arms around my kids because my one arm won’t allow me to do that anymore,” Halbur said. “I want to coach my son’s football team, but at the same time, I can’t show them how to throw a football.”

He says that his children, age 7 and 8, are coming to learn that “dad’s never going to be the same.”

He wears the names of the six soldiers who died at Port Shuaiba engraved in a metal wristband: Khork, 35, an easygoing history buff; Master Sgt. Noah L. Tietjens, 42, a passionate martial arts instructor; Maj. Jeffrey R. O’Brien, 45, a father of three who loved playing the saxophone; Master Sgt. Nicole M. Amor, a 39-year-old mother of two with a knack for sarcasm; 20-year-old Sgt. Declan J. Coady, an avid outdoorsman and Eagle Scout; and Marzan, 54, a mentor to many younger soldiers. Khork, Tietjens, Amor and Coady received posthumous promotions.

Halbur said that he looks at the wristband whenever he feels depressed by his arm’s limitations.

“I know that there are six families who would give that up in a heartbeat,” he said. “So that always kind of gives me a little more motivation to not be so glum about the things that I can’t do in my future. I’m still here.” ___ Brook reported from New Orleans, Watson from San Diego and Bynum from Savannah, Ga. Associated Press journalists Nicholas Ingram in Ankeny, Iowa, and Thomas Peipert in Colorado Springs, Colo., contributed to this report.