When Iranian ballistic missiles and one-way attack drones slammed into Al Udeid, Al Dhafra, and Ali Al Salem during the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury, the Air Force discovered a truth it had known but never fully addressed: its air bases were largely undefended against the threats that mattered most. Now the bill has arrived. The fiscal 2027 budget requests $1.4 billion for Airbase Air Defense Systems — a tenfold increase from last year’s funding. The number is not subtle. It represents the most dramatic single-year investment in base defence in Air Force history, and it signals that the Pentagon has learned — painfully — that aircraft on the ground are just as vulnerable as aircraft in the air.

What ABADS Actually Is

ABADS is not a single weapon. It is a layered defence architecture built around two complementary systems. The first is SUADS — the Small Unmanned Aircraft Defense System — which combines electronic warfare jammers and a command-and-control network to detect, track, and neutralise small enemy drones. These are the cheap, expendable weapons that Iran has produced in the thousands: Shahed-series one-way attack drones, commercial quadcopters rigged with explosives, and loitering munitions designed to overwhelm point defences through sheer volume.

The second component is a counter-missile system that pairs the Army’s Long-Range Persistent Surveillance System with a separate engagement system capable of defeating incoming ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and larger attack drones. This is the layer designed to stop the kind of medium-range ballistic missiles that Iran fired at USAF bases in Iraq and the Gulf — the weapons that caused the most damage and the most casualties. The Air Force began buying the counter-drone SUADS variant in fiscal 2024 and has gradually ramped procurement from six to eight systems per year. The counter-missile version entered procurement in fiscal 2025 with 11 systems and will jump to 18 in fiscal 2027.

Why the Air Force Had Nothing

For three decades after the Cold War, the Air Force operated on the assumption that air superiority would be achieved quickly and that bases in allied countries would be safe from direct attack. It invested heavily in the aircraft themselves — fighters, bombers, tankers — and almost nothing in the infrastructure that kept those aircraft alive on the ground.

The logic made sense in an era of American dominance. No adversary from 1991 to 2025 possessed the capability to strike USAF bases with precision weapons in a sustained campaign. Iraq in 1991 and 2003 tried and failed. The Taliban and ISIS never had the means. Even Russia, despite its arsenal, was deterred from direct strikes on NATO bases. Iran changed the equation. Tehran’s missile and drone forces proved capable of reaching every major American air base in the Gulf region, and its arsenal was deep enough to sustain multi-day barrages. Several aircraft were destroyed on the ground, hangars were damaged, and runway repair became a constant battle. The Air Force suddenly needed a capability it had neglected for a generation.

The Race to Deploy

The $1.4 billion is intended to accelerate procurement and deployment across the Air Force’s most exposed installations. Priority sites include bases in the Middle East, Europe (where Parsons has already begun air base defence transformation at Ramstein), and the Pacific — where Chinese missile capabilities dwarf anything Iran has fielded. The challenge is time. Building, testing, and deploying layered air defence systems across dozens of bases on three continents is a multi-year project. The Air Force is not starting from zero — Patriot batteries, THAAD systems, and short-range air defences have been deployed at some locations — but the gaps remain enormous. Many forward-operating locations still lack any dedicated counter-drone capability. The $1.4 billion buys urgency. Whether it buys enough capability before the next crisis is the question that keeps Air Force planners awake. Sources: Air & Space Forces Magazine, Defense Daily, The Aviationist, HigherGov