Cheap Iranian drone downed $25 million US Army helicopter—maybe by chance

Whatever the case, the result is that an Iranian drone that usually costs about $35,000 managed to take down a US Army helicopter with a price tag of $25 million. The only silver lining for the US military was its successful rescue of both helicopter crew members from the water due to the unprecedented use of a drone boat. This represents the first US Army Apache helicopter to go down during the conflict—and apparently the first such helicopter to be taken out by a drone. The United Arab Emirates and Israel had been using their own US-supplied Apache helicopters to hunt and shoot down Iranian Shahed drones. But Iran had previously succeeded in shooting down an F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet and an A-10 Thunderbolt ground-attack aircraft on April 5 and April 6, respectively, using ground-launched missiles. All crew members were rescued, though the US military had to mount a risky combat search-and-rescue operation to retrieve the F-15 fighter jet’s weapon systems officer from the Zagros Mountains in Iran. US Central Command, the US military combat command responsible for Middle East operations, followed up by launching what its press release described as “self-defense strikes against Iran, June 9, at the Commander in Chief’s direction in response to yesterday’s downing of a US Army Apache helicopter.” Trump was initially inclined to shrug off the Apache helicopter’s downing after the pilots were rescued, according to The Wall Street Journal. But the president apparently changed his mind during a White House briefing when both Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine “recommended military action” and shared more details about the Iranian Shahed drone striking the US helicopter. The strikes from US fighter jets targeted Iranian air defense, ground control stations, and surveillance radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz, according to the US Central Command press release. But Iran’s state broadcaster claimed the US military strikes also damaged water tanks and cut off the water supply for at least 20,000 people in Hormozgan province. Iran also retaliated by launching yet another round of Iranian missile and drone attacks against Gulf countries such as Bahrain and Kuwait, along with Jordan, according to The New York Times. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an Iranian paramilitary force, said it had targeted US bases in the region, including the US Fifth Fleet base in Bahrain, while claiming to shoot down yet another US MQ-9 Reaper drone. The latest tit-for-tat strikes threaten to completely shatter any lingering illusion of a ceasefire between the United States and Iran that supposedly began on April 8. The ceasefire period has been punctuated by intermittent fighting and dueling blockades in and around the Strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping lane choked off by the conflict.