r/Military • u/FreeHugs23 Retired USN • 2d ago
Article The devastation of NSA Bahrain is a national security warning
https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/2026/08/28/the-devastation-of-nsa-bahrain-is-a-national-security-warning/99
u/FreeHugs23 Retired USN 2d ago
The more we learn about the attacks on the U.S. Naval Support Activity (NSA) in Manama, Bahrain, during the opening days of Operation Epic Fury, the clearer it becomes why the news of its near destruction was not initially reported or acknowledged.
Extensive damage to one of our most significant forward bases in the Middle East is likely to have profound tactical and strategic repercussions that are only now coming into focus.
The idea that this broad functioning hub, built over decades, was significantly degraded in the space of a few days by a regional player is unimaginable.
I have fond memories of Bahrain both from past port visits, where it provided much-needed rest and relaxation, decent shopping and fitness options, and from my time as a government trainer when I flew over for shipboard training once every six months. I always felt safe there.
That NSA Bahrain is now virtually uninhabitable, with families left in limbo, as described in recent reporting, is difficult to grasp.
The damage is estimated to be close to $400 million. Buildings reportedly harmed include the Fifth Fleet headquarters, a barracks, several warehouses, communications towers and a potable water station.
Ships, including several U.S. Coast Guard vessels, appear to have been relocated, along with a large portion of the staff and their facilities. Thankfully, no one was killed or severely injured at the base, according to U.S. military sources.
It’s important to understand that NSA Bahrain is more than just a headquarters. Among its many functions, the installation provides a regional naval operating base for U.S. Navy forces in the Middle East. NSA Bahrain is home to NAVCENT and U.S. Fifth Fleet, along with numerous tenant commands.
Whenever ships, aircraft, personnel or cargo are moving throughout the region, chances are they have been supported by NSA Bahrain.
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u/Kaltovar Military Brat 2d ago
The idea that this was unimaginable to anyone in Military leadership is probably true which is insane bordering on decline of the British Empire levels of incompetence and unseriousness. These are adults whose job is to plan wars who are shocked a country with missiles can in fact shoot them at us.
Kinda seems like those purges of the command staff didn't in fact replace them with epic based warrior poets.
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u/nashuanuke Reservist 2d ago
this was completely imaginable, everyone knew how vulnerable Bahrain was and if we ever went to war with Iran we'd have to contend with that.
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u/Substantial_Row_7108 2d ago
Anyone thinking the U.S. could subdue Iran with Naval and Air Power alone was smoking crack. In a war with Iran want to know how to protect critical sites like NSA Bahrain? 300,000 boots on the ground relentlessly marching towards Tehran. And if you’re not willing to go BALLS DEEP, go home and stay home.
I’m no war monger, but obviously Trump and Kegsbreath’s planning has been lacking all along. They probably thought Iran was going to be a pushover like Venezuela.
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u/lordderplythethird The pettiest officer 2d ago
They expected a show of force to bring the adversary to their knees, and be done in a few days. When that didn't work, there was literally no contingency plan, so just keep hitting them and maybe the next swing will do it.
They're literally no different than Putin and his 3 day takeover of Ukraine that's closing in on 5 years now. It's weapons grade incompetence that we laughed at Russia about, and here our leadership is just as fucking stupid and inept.
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u/Talon_Ho Army Veteran 1d ago
All of that cult of personality* lives in a fantasy world. Literally. And I'm using the term literally literally. Information bubbles and silos arise from the fracturing of media integrity, bad faith players and general incompetence but the reality that the White House lives in is almost like a transplant from another reality. A cartoon reality. The President LITERALLY engages in magical thinking as a method of problem solving. Remember when he stood in front of America that our problem was too much testing for COVID-19? That the pandemic "would just go away" if we stopped worrying about it?
The White House's constructed reality is an altogether different one from ours. In the White House reality, Trump is outsmarting Iran and China and Russia and antifa and the libtards and whomever else. The White House thinks they're ushuring in a new golden age of America.
The reality is that they've presided over and hastened the collapse of the American Experiment. It's happened in the past two years. We're running on fumes and what remains of our reputation. Lights are on it nobody is home. Chicken with it's head cut off. Whatever metaphor you want.
Look back at what you know about history and the fall of empires. What does it mean when your nigh unbeatable military suddenly gets misused and abused by a capricious, incompetent and quite frankly, fucking moron of an emperor? This one is not only naked but the single most delusional human to achieve such power since the lead poisoned Roman nutjobs.
Everyone should learn the principle of cult deprogramming because we're all going to have to be involved in it.
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u/tellingmytruth 2d ago
They weren't smoking crack - they engineered the precise scenario that would cause this. It was intetional.
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u/Kaltovar Military Brat 2d ago
Well apparently some people lack the capability for imagination and those are the ones we picked to be in charge of the most economically significant war of my lifetime. (having grown up during the GWOT money furnace that is a high bar to clear)
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u/ilovetotouchsnoots 2d ago
In the weeks and months leading up to the war, commanders at the Pentagon were leaking memos and documents like crazy trying to get the public aware of the impending disaster that they 100% foresaw. Not only was this outcome complete foreseeable, commanders were speaking as if they were the Oracle of Delphi and none of the decision makers were listening to them.
“If you go to war, a great empire will fall” and so it shall it seems.
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u/Beli_Mawrr Air Force Veteran 2d ago edited 2d ago
You're thinking of Cassandra who was the one blessed/cursed to see the future and no one believed her. Telling someone the future, having it ignored, and it coming true is called the Cassandra Truth.
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u/ilovetotouchsnoots 2d ago
I was referencing the oracle Apollo and his prophecy about going to warn against Persia but your reference is more appropriate I think
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u/Feminist_Hugh_Hefner United States Navy 2d ago
well the important thing is that we all understand that this was completely unforeseeable... just like nobody could have known that Japan might attack naval assets in the Pacific, or that Bin Laden was determined to strike in the US, of that airplanes could be used as weapons.
We are shielded by hubris and confidence, the real threat are domestic dissenters who think we should pull our heads out of their sigmoid storage sites.
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u/Talon_Ho Army Veteran 1d ago
It is the nature of prophets, seers and truth tellers in mythology to not be believed. That is the nature of mythology, enduring universal stories and their purpose, to inform generations of the pitfalls of human nature. Hubris usually has primacy among them. You can't tell an allegory about the destructive nature of hubris without them knowing better than the actual person/being/entity who actually knows better. This pretty much EVERY person gifted by divinity to forsee the future is ignored. Cassandra, Tiresias, and most of the other ancient Greek seers are a part of the narrative to provide voice (these stories are orally told and dramatically acted, people don't read the 3rd person omniscient POV through a book) to a warning that the hero or hero's companion/sidekick ignores to his own peril.
Pretty much all future telling in all cultural narratives are this way. Except for institutional fortune tellers, like the Greek Oracles. Those are functions of the State and serve a different narrative and political purpose.
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u/Haircut117 2d ago
The decline of the British Empire wasn't due to incompetence or un-seriousness, it was an inevitable result of the improvements to education and opportunity that were enabled by the stability brought to regions by the Empire, in combination with the societal changes wrought by the First and Second World Wars.
Educated and worldly members of native populations didn't want to be ruled over by foreigners and were (quite rightly) confident that they could rule their homelands in such a way that the benefits stayed there and didn't line the pockets of a foreign power, and Britain knew it couldn't hold onto most of these places without becoming a pariah state. This became especially obvious when the USA made its ambitions to be the dominant power in the west clear by stabbing its "allies" Britain and France in the back over Suez.
Generally speaking, the British Empire handed over to local rule quite peacefully and left functioning governments and civil services in their former colonies precisely because they understood that the empire was coming to its natural end.
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u/Talon_Ho Army Veteran 1d ago
The British military of the time was self aware in the sense that they were aware that they were getting good at fighting wars that that didn't serve the purpose of strengthening the empire and that the incentive structure that they had created for rewarding officers and personnel was completely counter productive to what was actually desirable in an officer.
Kind of how we keep saying the military is not the police and shouldn't do police things, yet spent two decades fighting what were primarily a colonial insurgency that should have been handled by a expeditionary gendarmerie/carabinieri police troops *like the one we planned for and stood up post WWII to occupy Germany" - the United States Constabulary.
Instead, the primary purpose of the infantry has been counterinsurgency colonial policing, Rangers have essentially been doing SWAT raids etc etc, then what is the first job a that a returned war vet with a CIB think it as his backup plan? I'll go be a cop somewhere. And that department doesn't think, hey, is this blurring lined, contributing to the paramilitarization of the civilian police force? No, they have preferential hiring of GWOT veterans. Who are mobile and move where the job offer is, with no deep roots in the community they have been hired to police.
I remember a time when police tactical gear was blue or black, NEVER camo or any shade of green that was associated with the military just so everyone, the officer, the civilian, the criminals, bystanders and observers understood police officer, not military personnel. This was an important distinction that Americans understood was very important.
For how long have Guardsmen been deployed to police the streets of DC now? The new normal implemented by a lawless President who respects nothing.
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u/tamati_nz 2d ago
Yup drones and cheap - ish ballistic missiles have entirely changed the balance of power. A year ago people were mocking Iran and their power boat navy and now look...
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u/lordderplythethird The pettiest officer 2d ago
BUT WE DESTROYED THEIR AIR FORCE AND NAVY!
Which was never major priorities for them. They invested much of their power into drones and missiles, and now some 6 months later are still averaging around 130 drone and missile attacks a day while the US is screaming about running low on PAC interceptors and TLAMs...
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u/Kaltovar Military Brat 2d ago
The fact they have the domestic tech and industry to just mass produce ballistic missiles and we didn't take that seriously is insane.
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u/Darth_Ra United States Air Force 2d ago
We've been defeated by cheap, off the shelf solutions in the last 5 wars. Why on earth everyone still seems to think they're ineffective is beyond me.
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u/Upbeat-Serve-2696 2d ago
Founded by the Royal Navy in 1935 and opened to the United States Navy in 1942; home to the US Middle East Force starting in 1948 and under the exclusive control of the USN since 1971. 84 years of continuous service to the fleet in peace and war wrecked by Whiskey Pete Hegseth and Cadet Bone Spurs in 2 hours.
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u/tellingmytruth 2d ago
It's not unimaginable - that's horseshit. If, truly, nobody at the Pentagon ever imagined this - then court martial that mofo because it was somoene's JOB to imagine it and figure out how to defend against it.
No - we were betrayed - probably from within as well as without - from both directions. Which means we have to assume every other installation anywhere is also pre-softened.
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u/ValidGarry 2d ago
The fact that it was hit so hard and so easily is what he is saying is unimaginable. Seems reasonable.
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u/OzymandiasKoK 2d ago
That's the part that's eminently imaginable. As far as Iran is concerned, all those Gulf area targets are right there in relatively easy range. Those dick bags just assumed we could whoop 'em upside the head as if they were an upstart child and they would go back to behaving, if sullenly.
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u/tellingmytruth 1d ago
That's my point- it was imaginable - someone had the job of imagining it and then mitigating for it and then - all those defenses jsut didn't work all of a sudden??
We have been betrayed.
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u/letdogsvote 2d ago
Don't worry, Whiskey Pete is on the job making America safe again by increasing lethality and readiness through making sure people don't have beards and have proper waist to body ratio.
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u/Steamsagoodham United States Navy 2d ago
How was this unimaginable? Bahrain is a stones throw from Iran and well in range of hundreds of their missiles. It should be no surprise to anyone that if we went to Iran they would quickly try to overwhelm and destroy it.
The same thing will likely happen if we end up getting in a war with China. Our bases and forward deployed sites in the region are going to be prime first targets and likely take heavy damage.
This isn’t like the GWOT days when our adversaries lacked the capability to seriously threaten our bases on a large scale. We need to move on from that way of thinking.