Iran is targeting the radar systems that serve as the eyes of the air defenses in the Middle East, hitting several in recent days and degrading the ability of the U.S. and its allies to track incoming missiles.
Iranian strikes in retaliation for the U.S. and Israeli bombing campaign have hit radar, communications and air defense systems in Qatar, the U.A.E., Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, according to U.S. officials, military analysts and commercially available satellite images.
The strikes are often carried out by Iran’s one-way attack drones, such as its Shaheds, which are a fraction of the cost of the missiles that the sophisticated U.S. systems were designed to defend against. Iran has fired fewer missiles in recent days.
“Overall, our defenses are doing quite well. That said, it is clear that the Iranians have a sense of what type of targets they want to continue to press against, and that includes command and control and our ability to detect inbound missiles and drones,” said Ravi Chaudhary, a former assistant secretary of the Air Force in charge of installations.
A spokesman for U.S. Central Command said the military remained at full combat capability despite the hits. The U.S. has been bolstering its defenses in the region, sending in more equipment and interceptors, U.S. officials said.
The U.S. says it is degrading Iran’s ability to launch attacks by the day. Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, said Thursday that ballistic-missile attacks had decreased by 90% and drone attacks had dropped by 83% since the war began.
The U.S. and its partners in the region use a network of Thaads, Patriots and other air-defense systems to shoot down missiles, drones and rockets fired by Iran and its allied militias in the region.
Those air defense batteries depend on radar to detect incoming missiles and drones. Those systems are often rare and expensive. The conflict has also chewed through U.S. stocks of interceptors it uses to fend off missiles.
One of the most significant strikes hit a sophisticated early-warning radar system at Qatar’s Al-Udeid, which hosts the largest American military base in the region. The attack damaged the AN/FPS-132 radar, hindering its ability to function, according to satellite imagery and a U.S. official.
The AN/FPS-132 is a wide-aperture radar designed to track many targets at once. The U.S. has five of these fixed radar systems in its North American warning system that is set up to protect the U.S. homeland from potential incoming missiles, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a defense think tank. The system costs up to a billion dollars.
“These are scarce, strategic resources,” said Thomas Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Satellite images from Planet Labs show damage to the radar installation in Qatar. The images show debris on the northeastern face of the domed radar installation, the side facing Iran, along with water runoff, likely from efforts to put out a fire, according to Sam Lair, a researcher with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
“It demonstrates the fragility of some of these kind of higher tier radars,” said Lair, who published an analysis of the satellite image.
Iran also struck a TPY-2 radar attached to a Thaad battery in Jordan, according to satellite imagery and a U.S. official. The radar is a critical component of the ground-based missile-defense system, which intercepts ballistic missiles above the atmosphere.
Satellite images reviewed by The Wall Street Journal also show damage to three radar domes at Camp Arifjan, a base used by U.S. forces in Kuwait, and damage to a satellite communications system at the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
In Saudi Arabia, a satellite image taken on March 1 shows smoke billowing from a building at a radar site at the Kingdom’s Prince Sultan Air Base.
The U.S. has deployed its key radar systems in strategic locations around the world to protect against threats from Iran, North Korea, Russia and other adversaries. The Navy also has several guided-missile destroyers in the region, which can also shoot down ballistic missiles and other aerial threats.
Those systems have played an important role in the current conflict with Iran. When Iran fired a missile at a Turkish military base where the U.S. stores nuclear weapons, a U.S. radar system in southeastern Turkey detected the incoming fire and relayed the threat to an American warship in the eastern Mediterranean that shot the missile down. The radar station in the town of Kürecik had been placed there more than a decade earlier by the Obama administration to bolster NATO air defenses against Iran.
The U.S. Army has only seven operational Thaad batteries in total, including two that are based long-term in Guam and South Korea. Of the U.S.’s five rotating Thaads, two are currently in the Middle East—in Israel and Jordan—to counter Iranian threats. An eighth Thaad was delivered to the U.S. last year but is still undergoing testing, officials said.
Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. have also purchased their own Thaad systems from the U.S. and have said some of them are operational.
In many of the attacks, Iran has used one-way attack drones that explode on impact. Flying low and slow, the drones are difficult to defend against for some more traditional air defenses. The drones have played a central role in Iran’s retaliation, hitting oil facilities, military bases and high-rise buildings in the Gulf.
Iran is firing fewer missiles than it did in its initial wave of attacks in response to the U.S. and Israeli offensive, but its drone attacks have largely continued at a steady pace. After an initial wave of more than 500 drones in the first two days of the conflict, the U.A.E. has been targeted by more than 100 drones every day, according to its defense ministry.
Both sides have limitations on their stockpiles of munitions. Senior Pentagon officials before the war raised concerns that the U.S. and its allies have a limited supply of air defense interceptors. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the U.S. has sufficient munitions for the conflict.
Iran is believed to have the capacity to produce thousands of drones, which it has also exported to Russia. Moscow has used Iranian drones and similar models it has produced in Russia for its strikes on Ukraine. Russia is also sharing intelligence with Iran that it could use to help target military forces.
“The problem of complex and integrated air and missile attack is here, and we have to contend with the full spectrum of air missile threats, not just the ballistic stuff,” said Karako. “You have to, you have to have defense for your defenses.”
Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com