Patriot missile involved in Bahrain blast likely US-operated, analysis finds

Written by: Jonathan Landay, MB Pell and Travis Hartman

March 22 (Reuters) – A U.S.-operated Patriot air defense battery likely fired the interceptor missile involved in a pre-dawn explosion that injured dozens of civilians and destroyed homes in U.S.-allied Bahrain 10 days after the war against Iran, according to an analysis by academic researchers reviewed by Reuters.

Both Bahrain and Washington blamed an Iranian drone attack for the March 9 explosion. The Gulf kingdom said 32 people, including children, were seriously injured. Commenting on the day of the attack, the US Central Command said on the X channel that an Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle hit a residential area in Bahrain.

In response to questions from Reuters on Saturday, Bahrain acknowledged for the first time that a Patriot missile was involved in the explosion in the Mahazza neighborhood on the island of Sitra, off the coast of the capital Manama and also home to an oil refinery.

In a statement, the Bahraini government spokesman said that the missile successfully intercepted an Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle in the air and saved lives.

“The damage and injuries sustained were not the result of a direct impact on the ground by the Patriot interceptor or the Iranian drone,” the spokesman said.

Neither Bahrain nor Washington has provided evidence that an Iranian drone was involved in the Mahazza incident.

The use of costly, advanced weapons to defend against attacks by much cheaper drones has been a defining feature of the war. The incident highlights the risks and limitations of this strategy: The explosion from the powerful Patriot caused widespread damage and loss of life whether it intercepted a drone or not; Bahrain’s air defenses, however, were unable to prevent the attacks on the nearby oil refinery that night, which was declared force majeure hours later.

When asked for comment, the Pentagon referred Reuters to Central Command, but the commander did not immediately respond to questions.

The United States has “crushed” Iran’s ability to launch or produce drones and missiles, a senior US official said in response to questions sent to the White House. “We will continue to combat these threats to our country and our allies,” the official said, adding that the U.S. military “never targets civilians.” The official did not respond to specific questions about the Patriot attack.

On February 28, the first day of US attacks on Iran, an Iranian girls’ school was directly hit. Two U.S. sources previously told the news agency that investigators at the U.S. Department of Defense were likely responsible because of outdated targeting data, Reuters first reported.

Video confirmed by Reuters following the Mahazza explosion in Bahrain shows rubble around houses, a thick layer of dust on the streets, an injured man and screaming citizens.

Both Bahrain and the United States operate U.S. Patriot air defense batteries in the kingdom, a close U.S. ally located in the Persian Gulf and home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet along with a regional U.S. naval command.

According to Bahraini national oil company Bapco, the refinery in Sitra was attacked by Iran on the night of the explosion in Mahazza. Videos show smoke rising from the facility on the morning of March 9.

Reuters could not determine whether the cause of the explosion, which occurred during a night when Iran launched an attack on Sitra, would be immediately apparent to U.S. and Bahraini forces. Bahrain did not say in its statement why it did not mention a Patriot’s intervention at the time. Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the incident.

It is manufactured by Raytheon, part of RTX Corp. [RTX]Patriot is the U.S. Army’s primary high- to medium-range aircraft and missile interceptor system and forms the backbone of U.S. and allied air defenses. Raytheon did not respond to a request for comment on the incident.

The Bahraini government has refused to say whether the missile that exploded on March 9 was fired by its own forces or by the United States.

But research assistants Sam Lair, Michael Duitsman and Professor Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey concluded that the suspected missile was likely launched from a U.S. Patriot battery located about 4 miles (7 km) southwest of the Mahazza neighborhood.

The results of three American munitions and open source intelligence researchers, reported here for the first time, were based on their review of open source images and commercial satellite imagery.

Reuters showed the Middlebury analysis to two target analysts and a Patriot system missile researcher; they too found no reason to dispute this conclusion.

One of them, Wes Bryant, a former senior targeting advisor and policy analyst at the Pentagon, said Lair, Duitsman and Lewis’ conclusions were “pretty undeniable.”

Bahrain, a small Gulf nation, plays a critical role in securing the Strait of Hormuz, which carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas, and has been almost completely blocked by Iran, causing an unprecedented disruption to world oil supplies.

The key to the Middlebury analysis was a video taken from an apartment building and shared on social media. In the video, the suspected Patriot can be seen roaring northeastward at low altitude in the night sky. Then it opened downwards and disappeared. After 1.3 seconds, a flash of light appeared in the distance, heralding an explosion.

Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who specializes in digital forensics, reviewed the video for Reuters to determine whether it was created by him. artificial intelligence. He found “no clear evidence that the video was fake.”

Lair, Duitsman and Lewis geolocated the video to a neighborhood in Riffa, Bahrain’s second largest city. Reuters confirmed the geographical location. The earliest posting of the video that Reuters could find online was around 2 a.m. local time on March 9.

“The location and orientation of the Riffa area are consistent with the trajectory of the suspected Patriot,” the analysis said.

Multiple videos posted on social media on the morning of March 9 show damage to residences in Block 602 of the Mahazza neighborhood. The researchers first geolocated the images using commercial satellite images of the area and landmarks that appeared to match visible street addresses. ‌Reuters independently confirmed the geographic location.

Investigators then tracked the suspected missile’s trajectory in Block 602 to the point where they assessed it based on commercial satellite images; this was the U.S. Patriot battery located less than half a mile from where video of the missile in flight was recorded at Riffa.

A battery consists of a radar unit, a command center, and up to eight launchers integrated to detect, track, and intercept aircraft and missiles.

Using commercial satellite imagery, researchers determined that five launchers were visible at the Riffa field two days before the March 9 incident.

The battery has been there since at least 2009, according to satellite images. According to Lockheed Martin’s press release, the Bahrain Defense Force does not begin operating its own Patriot systems until 2024.

Researchers said the Riffa field has characteristics that are both different from U.S. Patriot batteries in the region and different from known batteries operated by Bahrain; these include protective walls, unpaved roads and a lack of permanent buildings. Based on these elements, investigators concluded that the battery was likely operated by the United States, which used Patriots to defend its maritime domain in Bahrain.

Investigators couldn’t say for sure what caused the Patriot to explode. But they added that based on available evidence, including the pattern and extent of damage on the ground, the plane appeared to have exploded in flight.

The analysis concluded that the Patriot may have targeted a low-flying unmanned aerial vehicle and that the joint explosion of the missile and the unmanned aerial vehicle ignited the explosion.

“If this was the case, this was an irresponsible intervention attempt because it endangered the lives and homes of allied civilians in the enclave,” the analysis said.

This scenario matches what the Bahraini government spokesman said: Patriot intercepted an Iranian drone and both exploded in mid-air.

But the analysis noted that the direction of the damage and the lack of available evidence of a drone over the neighborhood suggested “another scenario,” in which “the explosion was the result of warhead detonation and unused propellant from a Patriot interceptor.”

Despite Bahrain’s claim, researchers said the missile was less likely to contact a drone. Reuters could not independently verify the presence of an Iranian drone at the time of the incident.

The analysis stated that videos taken after the attack and photographs published by Bahraini authorities showed that the explosion damage was concentrated in four streets of Mahazza.

The analysis showed a heavily damaged house about 400 feet (120 meters) from the center of the main explosion site, and interior photos showed holes in a wall created by shrapnel, a report on Bahraini television and a government press release on March 9 said.

Sound expert Robert Maher, who reviewed the video at the request of Reuters, said his analysis supported the approximate location of the explosion above the damaged homes.

A flash is seen in the video about eight seconds in, but no explosion is heard until the clip ends 19 seconds later. This is because light travels faster than sound. Considering how long it would take for sound to reach the person shooting the video, the explosion had to be more than four miles away. The damaged homes were about 4.6 miles (7.4 km) away, which fits the timing.

The Middlebury analysis noted that all of the damage, taken together, matched what would be expected if a Patriot missile exploded in mid-air at a neighborhood road intersection. The analysis said fragments of the missile flew about 120 meters farther and hit another house.

Maher said he didn’t hear any drones or other missiles in the audio in the video, but that their sounds would have been faint or inaudible if they had been more than four miles away from where the video was shot.

After reviewing the Middlebury analysis, Maher said, “I see nothing in the audio that is inconsistent with my observations.”

Defense and industry officials say Patriots misfires are rare, but they do occur, including an errant missile that hit a farm in Qatar in 2007.

In a March 9 It was stated that an Iranian drone hit a residential area.

Reuters and Middlebury investigators were unable to obtain or examine any visual evidence of the missile or drone parts. Reuters attempted to contact witnesses in Bahrain, but many refused to speak out of fear of retaliation. Human Rights Watch documented the arrests of people who shared videos of attacks on social media during the war in Bahrain.

Video of the suspected missile in flight shows the Patriot passing through a much steeper smoke trail that investigators said likely belonged to the first interceptor that had been fired just minutes earlier.

Patriots are usually fired in pairs to increase the chance of hitting the target. Neither investigators nor Reuters could determine what happened to the first missile.

The second missile’s low trajectory and deviation from the previous launch path could be a sign of possible trouble, researchers said. However, they could not rule out the possibility that he had been shot in that direction on purpose.

A Bahraini spokesman said any claims that Patriots in Bahrain malfunctioned or misfired were “factually incorrect.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay, MB Pell and Travis Hartman in Beijing; Arthur Wei in Beijing, Aaron McNicholas in London, Maha El Dahan and Samia Nakhoul in Dubai, Andrew Mills in Doha, Idrees Ali in Washington; Editing by Sarah Cahlan and Frank Jack Daniel)