NPR News: 07-21-2026 8AM EDT

The Pentagon is asking Congress for tens of billions of dollars more in defense spending, even as a new kind of threat — cheap, long-range Iranian drones — is turning America’s forward-deployed military bases from an advantage into a vulnerability. Defense Secretary Pete Heggseth appears before the Senate Appropriations Committee today to request the additional funds. The request comes as President Trump heads to Dover, Delaware, to receive the bodies of two U.S. soldiers killed in an Iranian drone attack on a U.S. base in Jordan last week.

Drone warfare shifts the strategic balance

The attack in Jordan has forced military planners to reckon with a changed battlefield. NPR spoke with three former U.S. military officials about the new reality of drone warfare. One of them, General Joseph Votel, who formerly led U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), described a painful irony: the same forward-deployed bases that gave the U.S. power in the region for decades have now become fixed targets. "Our strength for the last several decades has been our forward deployment and our positioning across the Gulf," Votel said. "Now we are seeing that that same advantage has turned into a little bit of a disadvantage." In the age of drone warfare, Iran does not even need an air force to strike U.S. positions across the region — its drones can travel a thousand miles and hit bases throughout the Mi