Maitreyee Thakkar
The US military was caught off guard by Israel’s unprecedented ballistic missile strike on a Hamas compound in Doha, Qatar, earlier this month, a senior US Air Force commander has confirmed.
Speaking at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference in Maryland, Lt. Gen. Derek C. France — commander of Air Forces Central and Combined Forces Air Component Commander for US Central Command — acknowledged that American forces received no advance warning of the September 9 raid.
“This strike that Israel did against the Hamas target in Doha was something that we had no indications and warnings of, because our surveillance and all our attention was not put on [it],” France said. “It wasn’t something that we expected.”
A surprise raid in QatarThe Israeli strike targeted a Hamas meeting in Doha that was linked to ongoing ceasefire discussions backed by the United States. According to Qatari and regional officials, six people were killed, including several Hamas members and a Qatari internal security officer. Senior Hamas leaders reportedly survived the attack.
Israel’s military employed air-launched ballistic missiles fired from fighter jets over the Red Sea, using high-arcing trajectories that bypassed the sovereign airspace of neighboring Middle Eastern states. Some outlets described the missiles as being fired into space.
US detection came only after launchDespite having advanced global missile detection networks, US officials admitted their first indication of the strike came only after the missiles were already airborne. Lt. Gen. France confirmed that US sensors detected the launch in real time but provided no prior warning.
American surveillance systems in the region are generally concentrated on monitoring threats from Iran and other established threat directions, making the Israeli strike especially difficult to anticipate.
The incident highlighted ongoing Pentagon efforts to improve midcourse tracking of missiles — particularly through new space-based sensors being developed by the Space Development Agency and the Missile Defense Agency.
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