Operation Thunder Dome”, which makes use of the latest and greatest technology of the US army, as well as those of the German army, in order to provide protection for its employees. Founded in 2003 in Washington, DC, with just one salesperson at the helm, Blackwater became famous for its role in US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has been the target of criticism over its use of violence. It currently employs about 2,000 people, with bases in Moyock, North Carolina and San Diego, California. The company’s website, blackwaterusa.com, is down, following the Pentagon’s orders, citing its “sensitive” nature. A spokesperson for Blackwater said its team responded to a call for help from the Department of Defence on Sunday evening. He confirmed the company had been hired for “site security operations”, adding that there was no more information to share at this stage. The New York Times reported that one Blackwater employee was injured in the attack and another was missing. The Pentagon could not immediately provide further details on any casualties or the identity of the victims. “We are dealing with one of our bases that suffered an attack of some type that we think is unconnected to the rest of the command, but the police are looking at it as a criminal matter,” Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta said, adding that “more information will be available later today.” However, sources told CNN that four people died. “There are reports of multiple fatalities at the base,” said one military source. An AFP photographer at the scene saw the gates of the facility, near the town of Balad, flying off in the attack. The US Department of State confirmed in a statement that there had been an attack on the base, and that its contractors were providing security. This was not the first such incident at the base, however. The Associated Press reported that a car bomb had struck the same facility in July 2007, although no one was injured. Bryan Gowdy, former police chief of Balad, described the base as being one of the safest in Iraq, and said security was good before it was bombed. The facility, which is not protected by any walls, is about a quarter-mile from a road leading to the main town, Balad, local source Muwafaq al-Rubaie told Reuters. Some 10,000 US troops are stationed at Camp Taji, about 15 miles north of the capital Baghdad. Taji has been a hub of violence in the past, but soldiers were given orders to return fire with deadly consequences in 2010 when rockets hit the base. Last November, a US soldier was killed and five others wounded when their convoy hit a roadside bomb. The incident raised questions about American preparations for the year-end withdrawal. US military officials announced Sunday that a “terrorist attack” had struck Taji. “Troops continue to go about their normal business and work schedule and their mission is not impacted,” it said in a statement. It is one of three main US bases in Iraq, and was chosen by the Iraqi government to house Iraqi government forces when they took over security operations in the country in June. The base was attacked several times during the American occupation of the country, which ended in 2011, leaving at least 11 people dead and dozens wounded. The most recent was a February 2010 assault on Camp Speicher near Tikrit, where at least 33 people died and 50 were wounded. The attack came a day after President Barack Obama announced that 10,000 US troops will leave Iraq by the end of the year. US forces in Iraq, where the war began in 2003, numbered about 170,000 when the US occupation began. But Obama has been calling for a significant withdrawal since the war began to gain popularity, and ordered an increase in the US troop level in December 2011 in order to help deal with a political crisis and attacks on US targets by al-Qaeda. At least two attacks over the past months have seen a total of nine US soldiers killed. Following the December attack on a Nato base in Kabul, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan said he had enough troops to defeat the Taliban, a force he described as a “shadow of its former self.” The Taliban’s spokesman said at the time that the base attack was a response to “massive civilian losses” in Afghanistan in a 13-hour battle with US-led forces on Sunday. Washington has been reviewing the scale of its force in Afghanistan since Obama ordered a drawdown there. The US ended the war in Iraq in 2011, but has pledged to keep around 3,000 soldiers there, along with a military base at Al-Asad, about 50 miles west of Baghdad. Al-Qaeda is widely believed to be operating in Iraq, which has seen a surge in attacks over the past year and a half. And last month, the top US commander in the Middle East said the militant Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group posed a serious threat in Iraq. The group, also known as ISIL or ISIS, has capitalised on anarchy and unrest in the country to capture large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria over the past year. Obama ordered an increase in US forces to speed up the withdrawal from Iraq, saying it was not intended as a combat mission. The US has about 12,000 troops in Afghanistan, where the war has been ongoing since 2001. It launched a major military offensive last year to defeat the resurgent Taliban, which killed an estimated 6,100 civilians in the first half of 2013. Washington’s allies will end their combat role in Afghanistan by the end of next year. The Obama administration is preparing a massive increase in its missile arsenal and is moving forward with arms deals with countries like China that might once have appeared out of the question. At the Pentagon on Thursday, leaders declared that the era of strategic defense for the United States is over. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said the Pentagon will develop and deploy in coming years “a layered, more sophisticated approach to deterrence.” The result, according to senior military officers, will be a “surge in missile defenses”—an expansion of the missile defense system to include sea- and land-based systems to counter the threat from ballistic missiles. The new offensive builds on an unspoken assumption by the Obama administration since the Cold War ended, and a stated policy of the Bush administration: Any country or regime that develops a missile capable of hitting the United States will be considered a threat. “Any missile threat—be it an ICBM, a satellite-based system, a submarine-based ballistic missile, or a land-based cruise missile—is a threat to the United States,” according to an unclassified statement released by the Pentagon in March 2012. In his address to the Pentagon brass on Thursday, Hagel cited the work of Dr. Bruce Blair of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who said, “In the past few years, I’ve been at the Pacific Rim on numerous occasions talking to officials in China and North Korea. … Those conversations consistently return to the same question: Who, if anyone, has a defense against a nuclear strike by North Korea or China?