A senior Air Force general has confirmed earlier reports that the U.S. military was caught off guard by the Sept. 9 Israeli attack on the Hamas delegation in Qatar. “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],” Lt. Gen. Derek C. France, the commander of Air Forces Central Command (AFCENT) said at the Air Force Association conference in Maryland on Sept. 24. “It wasn’t something that we expected.”
“I can say that we did not get a warning about this happening,” Lt. Gen. France stressed, reported The War Zone. “Our systems were the first indication that we had. And then there was discussion at some point with my counterparts in Israel, but our systems noting the attack was underway was the first indication we got.”
