For the first time in more than four decades, American forces have come under aerial attack after a drone released an unspecified weapon near U.S. special operators and their Syrian partners at a garrison in the town of At Tanf. The strike has huge implications for the conflict in the country, as well as the future of warfare as a whole. U.S. Army Colonel Ryan Dillon, the spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR), the top American task force leading the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, announced the incident in talking to the press on June 8, 2017. The apparent attack had occurred earlier the same day and U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle fighters had responded by shooting down the pilotless plane.

“The pro-regime [unmanned aerial vehicle], similar in size to the U.S. MQ-1 predator, was shot down by U.S. aircraft after it dropped one of several weapons it was carrying near a position occupied by coalition personnel who are training and advising partner ground forces in the fight against ISIS,” CJTF-OIR’s public affairs office later said in a statement. “The shoot down follows an earlier engagement in the day in which Coalition forces destroyed two pro-regime armed technical vehicles that advanced inside the well established de-confliction zone threatening Coalition and partner forces.” The attack did not result in any casualties. When asked by reporters what the drone’s bomb actually hit, Dillon said “it hit dirt.” But it is a major turn of events. No foreign military or insurgent group has subjected American troops to a traditional airstrike since a bizarre incident in 1968 in which two North Vietnamese An-2 biplanes attacked a covert U.S. radar site in Laos. The planes did not cause any casualties on the ground in that case, either. The last time Americans actually died from an aerial attack was in 1953 near the end of the Korean War.

AP One of Iran's many purported armed drones, the Hamaseh, seen in 2013.