The Iranian-flagged M/V Touska was transiting the north Arabian Sea toward Bandar Abbas, Iran, when it was intercepted by the guided-missile destroyer USS Spruance and issued warnings that it was in violation of the blockade, U.S. Central Command announced on Sunday.

“After Touska’s crew failed to comply with repeated warnings over a six-hour period, Spruance directed the vessel to evacuate its engine room,” the CENTCOM release stated. “Spruance disabled Touska’s propulsion by firing several rounds from the destroyer’s 5-inch MK 45 Gun into Touska’s engine room.”

U.S. Central Command published a brief video of the encounter.

U.S. Marines assigned to the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit subsequently boarded the vessel, the release stated. The Touska remains in U.S. custody.

Acknowledging the encounter in a post on Truth Social, U.S. President Donald Trump stated that “an Iranian-flagged cargo ship named TOUSKA, nearly 900 feet long and weighing almost as much as an aircraft carrier, tried to get past our Naval Blockade, and it did not go well for them.”

“The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engineroom,” Trump added. “The TOUSKA is under U.S. Treasury Sanctions because of their prior history of illegal activity. We have full custody of the ship, and are seeing what’s on board!”

The U.S. Navy blockade, which involves 10,000 troops, over a dozen warships and more than 100 fighter and surveillance aircraft, went into effect on April 13 following failed peace talks between the U.S. and Iran.

Any vessels transiting to and from Iranian ports are subject to the blockade, CENTCOM officials stated, while ships not visiting Iranian ports can still navigate the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran, meanwhile, said it would retaliate for Sunday’s incident, as tensions continued to escalate Sunday amid a fragile ceasefire.

“We warn that the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran will soon respond and retaliate against this armed piracy by the U.S. military,” an Iranian military spokesperson said, according to state media.

Iranian state media also reported that Tehran had rejected new peace talks, citing the ongoing blockade, threatening rhetoric and Washington’s shifting positions and “excessive demands.”

“One cannot restrict Iran’s oil exports while expecting free security for others. The choice is clear: either a free oil market for all, or the risk of significant costs for everyone,” Iran’s First Vice President Mohammadreza Aref wrote on social media.

U.S. forces have encountered and redirected 25 commercial vessels since launching the blockade, according to CENTCOM.

Military Times reporter Riley Ceder and Reuters reporters Daphne Psaledakis, Trevor Hunnicutt and Saad Sayeed contributed to this report.

Trump also said in a post on Truth Social that the U.S. would interdict every vessel in international waters that had paid a toll to Iran, and begin destroying mines that he said the Iranians had dropped in the strait, a choke point for about 20% of global energy supplies that Iran has blocked.

“Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” he said.

“I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” Trump added.

“Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!” he added.

Each side had earlier blamed the other for the failure of talks to end six weeks of fighting that has killed thousands, roiled the global economy and sent oil prices soaring.

“The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America,” Vice President JD Vance, the head of the U.S. delegation at the weekend talks, said earlier.

“We’ve made very clear what our red lines are,” Vance added.

IRAN CITES LACK OF TRUST

Iran’s Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who led his country’s delegation along with Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, blamed the U.S. for not winning Tehran’s trust despite his team offering “forward-looking initiatives.”

“The U.S. has understood Iran’s logic and principles and it’s time for them to decide whether they can earn our trust or not,” Qalibaf said on X.

The talks, after a ceasefire earlier in the week, were the first direct U.S.-Iranian meeting in more than a decade and the highest-level discussions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Vance said Iran had chosen not to accept American terms, including not to build nuclear weapons.

“I could go into great detail, and talk about much that has been gotten but, there is only one thing that matters — IRAN IS UNWILLING TO GIVE UP ITS NUCLEAR AMBITIONS!” Trump said later.

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said “excessive” U.S. demands had hindered reaching a deal. Other Iranian media said there was agreement on a number of issues, but the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program were the main points of difference.

‘IMPERATIVE’ TO MAINTAIN CEASEFIRE

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said it was “imperative” to preserve the ceasefire that was agreed last Tuesday as the sides attempt to wind down a war that began on February 28 with air strikes by the U.S. and Israel on Iran.

Israeli security cabinet minister Zeev Elkin told Army Radio that more talks were still an option, but added: “The Iranians are playing with fire.”

In a brief press conference, Vance did not mention reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Even as the talks took place, U.S. ally Israel continued bombing Tehran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, insisting that that conflict was not part of the Iran-U.S. ceasefire. Iran says the fighting in Lebanon must stop.

The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah rocket launchers overnight into Sunday and black smoke could be seen rising in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sunday. In Israeli villages near the border, air raid sirens sounded, warning of incoming rocket fire from Lebanon.

IRANIAN DEMANDS

Tehran is demanding control of the Strait of Hormuz, payment of war reparations and a ceasefire across the region, including in Lebanon, according to Iranian state TV and officials, as well as the release of its frozen assets abroad.

Tehran also wants to collect transit fees in the Strait of Hormuz.

Despite the differences in Islamabad, three supertankers fully laden with oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, shipping data showed, in what appeared to be the first vessels to exit the Gulf since the ceasefire deal.

Hundreds of tankers are still stuck in the Gulf, waiting to exit during the two-week ceasefire period.

Trump’s stated goals have shifted, but as a minimum he wants free passage for global shipping through the strait and the crippling of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program to ensure it cannot produce an atomic bomb.

Tehran has long denied seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

“We’re now starting the process of clearing out the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, adding that “all 28” of Iran’s “mine dropper boats are also lying at the bottom of the sea.”

Minutes before Trump’s post, reports started to emerge about the presence of U.S. Navy ships in the strait.

An Axios journalist, citing an unnamed U.S. official, posted that “several” U.S. ships had crossed the strait on Saturday, though Iranian state TV soon after reported a denial from an official with Iran’s military.

Trump has repeatedly said that American forces have destroyed Iran’s navy and air force while crippling its ballistic missile and nuclear programs.

But fear of Iranian attacks on shipping over the past several weeks has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a critical conduit for global oil supplies. Throttling the strait has disrupted global energy markets.

U.S. gasoline prices have spiked even though most of the oil that flows through the waterway does not go to the United States.

Representatives from the U.S. and Iran began talks hosted by Pakistan in Islamabad on Saturday amid a fragile ceasefire in the conflict.

In the 40 days since the start of Operation Epic Fury against Iran, 13 U.S. service members have been killed and 381 have been wounded, according to data provided Wednesday by U.S. Central Command.

The Defense Department has added the war on Iran to its Defense Casualty Analysis System, a database that catalogues combat casualties dating to World War I.

As of Tuesday, the department listed seven service members as having been killed by enemy fire during the operation, presumably the Army soldiers who died March 1 in Saudi Arabia during an Iranian airstrike.

It also classified six Air Force deaths as “non-hostile,” the crew of a KC-135 refueling aircraft who died while supporting air operations.

And it said that 346 were wounded in action: 231 soldiers, 63 sailors, 33 airmen and 19 Marines.

But U.S. Central Command told Military Times Wednesday that the number of wounded now stands at 381. They did not provide any details on the extent or types of injuries.

In mid-March, CBS News reported that roughly 25 troops were being treated at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, a dozen were evacuated to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and one had been transported to Brooke Army Medical Center, DOD’s only Level I trauma center and home to the department’s top burn unit.

The United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire late Tuesday. Under the terms, the U.S. agreed to stop military strikes while Iran said it would immediately open the Strait of Hormuz, the key body of water through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas ships.

Iran has offered a 10-point proposal for ending the conflict, which President Donald Trump described as a “workable basis on which to negotiate.”

Attacks continued in the early hours of the temporary truce in Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. During a press conference Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Iran would be wise to “find a way to get the carrier pigeon” to their troops to stop shooting.

“We’ll be hanging around. We’re not going anywhere. We will make sure that Iran complies with the ceasefire and ultimately comes to the table and makes a deal. … Our troops are prepared to restart at a moment’s notice,” Hegseth said.

As of midday Wednesday, just a handful of cargo vessels had traversed the strait and several oil tankers were heading to the passage, according to apps that track the maritime shipping industry.

“We have seen an uptick in the traffic in the strait today and I will reiterate the president’s expectation and demand that the Strait of Hormuz is reopened immediately and quickly and safely,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press conference Wednesday.

The U.S. military has more than 50,000 personnel in the region. According to U.S. Central Command, they have supported more than 13,000 strikes on targets and destroyed at least 155 Iranian vessels.

Iran’s health ministry has reported that more than 2,000 people have been killed and 20,000 wounded since the operation began.

A CENTCOM official declined to discuss the number of troops evacuated from theater, saying that the unit will not discuss locations or movements “to protect privacy and security of our service members.”

According to the official, 344 of the injured personnel have returned to duty. The official declined to describe the nature of the injuries, including wounds or head injuries.

“We have no additional information to provide,” the official said.

Walter Reed issued a press release Wednesday detailing how its medical evacuation team supports the transport of injured personnel from the battlefield to the facility, but it included no details on the number of personnel that have been evacuated from Operation Epic Fury.

According to the release, Walter Reed supports a 14-member team of Army, Navy and Air Force personnel who coordinate transport across U.S. Transportation Command, U.S. European Command, the Deployed Warrior Medical Management Center at Landstuhl and Air Force aeromedical staging facilities.

During the press conference Wednesday, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine acknowledged the sacrifices U.S. military personnel have made during the operation.

“I’m humbled by the service and sacrifice each and every day that I am lucky enough to see,” Caine said. “I ask that we never forget our fallen and their families — especially the 13 fallen from Operation Epic Fury. May we always be worthy of their sacrifice and honor their legacy,” Caine said.

The following is a chronological account of how events unfolded, based on U.S. Central Command statements, the White House press conference and reporting citing U.S. military and defense officials.

April 3: F-15E Strike Eagle shot down

The F-15E was conducting a combat strike mission over southwestern Iran as part of Operation Epic Fury when it was engaged by Iranian air defenses, according to U.S. Central Command. The shootdown occurred on the 34th day of the joint U.S.-Israeli air campaign against Iran, which began Feb. 28. At the time, U.S. forces had conducted more than 10,000 combat sorties over Iran and struck more than 13,000 targets, according to Trump.

The F-15E was the first manned U.S. aircraft confirmed lost to Iranian fire in the conflict, though several other aircraft had been damaged or destroyed in the preceding weeks by a combination of Iranian strikes and a friendly-fire incident involving Kuwaiti air defenses. The F-15E was brought down by a shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missile, according to Trump.

Both the pilot, call sign Dude 44 Alpha, and the weapons systems officer, or WSO, call sign Dude 44 Bravo, ejected safely, landing miles apart in hostile Iranian territory. The pilot came down in the Khuzestan Province area. The WSO evaded Iranian forces in the Zagros Mountains region of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province near Dehdasht.

Iranian state media released images of claimed wreckage, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched a manhunt, offering a reward of approximately $60,000 for information leading to the capture of the American crew, while appealing to locals for information.

One of the images appeared to show an aircraft’s vertical stabilizer, which displayed markings consistent with F-15Es assigned to the 494th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron of the 48th Fighter Wing at RAF Lakenheath in England, though CENTCOM declined to confirm.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said at Monday’s press conference that a U.S. Air Force combat search-and-rescue task force was immediately assembled, comprising 10 A-10C Thunderbolt IIs in the Sandy role, HC-130J Combat King II aircraft, HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopters, and Air Force Special Warfare airmen, including combat rescue officers and pararescuemen. The package penetrated Iranian airspace protected by a fighter strike package, Caine said.

The pilot was located and recovered by U.S. forces within hours in a daylight operation that drew heavy ground fire. U.S. aircraft flew seven hours over Iranian territory to reach him. One of the two HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopters involved in the recovery took multiple hits from small-arms fire, wounding crew members aboard, Caine confirmed Monday. No U.S. personnel were killed.

Once the pilot was out of Iranian airspace, attention immediately turned to locating the WSO.

Meanwhile, one of the 10 A-10C Thunderbolt IIs providing Sandy escort for the pilot recovery mission took significant fire from Iranian forces. The pilot was able to fly the heavily damaged aircraft into Kuwaiti airspace before ejecting, as the aircraft crashed. The A-10 pilot was safely recovered, Caine said.

“A Sandy has one mission,” he said. “Get to the survivor, bring the rescue force forward and put themselves between that survivor on the ground and the enemy.”

Retired Air Force Col. Kim “KC” Campbell flew A-10s in combat over Iraq and is credited with successfully landing a severely battle-damaged Warthog under fire in 2003, earning her the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism.

“Events this week have definitely brought back some memories from my experience in Iraq,” Campbell told Military Times. “I’m proud to be an A-10 pilot and I’m proud to be a Sandy pilot. What they have been able to do has truly been incredible.”

Campbell described the decision-making process a pilot faces after sustaining battle damage.

“The A-10 was designed to take hits while performing its mission,” she said. “The A-10 is durable, reliable and has multiple redundant systems. We train for battle damage so that when it happens we fall back on our training. Our redundant systems allow us to get back to friendly territory and eject or in some cases, safely land the airplane.”

The decision to land or eject is based on the aircraft’s condition, according to Campbell. “It’s a single-seat airplane so each pilot will make their own decision after assessing the damage, talking to their wingman and conducting a controllability check.”

The A-10 is uniquely suited for the Sandy role, Campbell said. In addition to going through a qualification program to become Sandy pilots, A-10 pilots routinely train for the mission, she said.

“A-10s possess unique hardware that assists in locating the survivor. Its slower airspeed also allows for more effective escort of rescue helicopters. Sandy 1, the rescue mission commander, typically makes a final assessment of the situation and makes the final decision to execute the pickup.”

For the aircrew who fly these missions, the U.S. military’s “leave no one behind” philosophy is more than a slogan.

“It’s absolutely critical,” Campbell said. “When we know that the cavalry is coming to get us to bring us home, it allows us to do our job and do it well. We understand the promise and the obligation that no one will be left behind.”

April 3–5: Locating and extracting the weapons systems officer

The WSO, described by Trump as “a highly respected colonel,” sustained significant injuries during ejection but remained mobile. While the F-15E pilot was being evacuated, the WSO was on the move.

Despite “bleeding profusely,” the WSO employed Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE, tactics, traversing several kilometers across rugged mountain terrain, treating his own wounds and taking cover in a mountain crevice, according to Trump. Both crew members had activated their rescue beacons after ejecting, Caine said, aiding in determining their location.

The Wall Street Journal reported that MQ-9 Reaper drones flew overhead during the evasion period, firing on Iranian forces that closed in on the WSO’s position. Israeli officials confirmed that Israel provided intelligence support and postponed planned strikes on Iran to avoid interfering with the search-and-rescue effort.

As the WSO evaded, U.S. forces continued their search — a task CIA Director John Ratcliffe later described at Monday’s press conference as comparable to hunting for “a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert.”

Ratcliffe confirmed the agency executed a deception campaign and used “unique, exquisite capabilities” to locate the WSO concealed in a mountain crevice.

Trump described the scale of the aerial deception, saying U.S. forces deployed aircraft to seven different locations simultaneously to confuse Iranian search teams.

With the WSO’s location confirmed, Trump ordered an immediate rescue mission. The second rescue force launched overnight April 4–5 with 155 aircraft, including four bombers, 64 fighters, 48 refueling tankers and 13 rescue aircraft, supported by hundreds of special operations personnel across the operation, Trump said. U.S. forces flew seven hours over Iran in darkness to reach the WSO, he added, mirroring the seven-hour daylight operation that recovered the pilot two days earlier.

The ground extraction force included members of Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known as SEAL Team 6, according to The New York Times.

Among the assets deployed were three MH-6 Little Bird helicopters, transported inside MC-130J Commando II aircraft and reassembled by operators after offloading. “They rebuilt these helicopters in less than 10 minutes,” Trump said. “And that was one of the more amazing things.” Additional fixed-wing support included A-10s and MQ-9 Reapers for suppression and overwatch.

U.S. aircraft conducted sustained strikes on approaching IRGC elements, cratering roads and hitting Iranian convoys to keep them away from the recovery site. Caine described the force as fighting through “multiple simultaneous contingencies, something no other nation, no other military can do.”

Trump noted that not all of his military advisers supported the decision to launch the rescue. “There were military people, very professional, that preferred not doing it,” he said.

Self-denial and material costs

With the WSO recovered, the force began its extraction from the forward site approximately 14 miles north of Shahreza City in southern Isfahan province, according to open-source analysts.

Trump described the forward site as “a farm without a runway with wet, crummy soil, sand, mostly sand, wet sand, and it eats planes alive.” He noted that planners had anticipated the possibility that aircraft could become stuck and had replacement aircraft ready. When two MC-130J Commando II aircraft became stuck on the soft ground at the site, U.S. forces executed the preplanned contingency, and three additional aircraft were flown in to extract the force, Trump said.

The immobile aircraft were deliberately destroyed by U.S. forces to prevent sensitive technology from falling into Iranian hands. The destruction followed a well-established U.S. military protocol for self-denial of sensitive equipment, a doctrine that gained renewed attention after a modified stealth helicopter was destroyed during the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Trump described the decision: “We blew them up to smithereens because we had equipment on the planes that frankly we’d like to take, but I don’t think it was worthwhile spending another four hours there taking it off.”

The operation’s confirmed material losses included the original F-15E Strike Eagle, the A-10 that crashed in Kuwait and two MC-130J Commando II aircraft destroyed at the forward site. The War Zone identified imagery consistent with additional MH-6 Little Bird helicopters destroyed at the site, though the exact number remains unconfirmed.

Each MC-130J Commando II carries a unit cost of approximately $100 million, according to publicly available Air Force procurement data. Caine offered the guiding principle behind the self-denial decision: “People are more important than hardware. That is the standard we live by.”

Iranian reactions

Iranian officials disputed the U.S. characterization of the mission’s outcome. Khatam al-Anbiya spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari said the rescue operation “was completely foiled.” Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said: “If the United States gets three more victories like this it will be utterly ruined.”

Operational context

The CIA’s role in the mission, locating the WSO and running the deception campaign, represented a marked contrast with 1980’s Operation Eagle Claw, which also took place in Iran, where intelligence failures contributed to the mission’s collapse and the deaths of eight U.S. service members.

“The CIA was very responsible for finding this little speck,” Trump said. “A general was talking about it’s like finding a needle in a haystack, finding this pilot.”

Trump described the moment of confirmation: “40 miles away was the head of a human being. I’m telling you, it’s moving. And then all of a sudden, 45 minutes later, he moved a lot. Stood up and they said, ‘We have him.’”

The operation marked the first publicly acknowledged U.S. ground presence inside Iran since Eagle Claw in 1980, and the first successful combat personnel recovery from Iranian territory.

With the A-10 platform slated for retirement, its role as the Sandy in Iran raises questions about the future of the CSAR escort mission. Campbell said a capable replacement is critical.

“If the plan continues for the A-10 to retire … then it’s absolutely critical that we have a plan to fulfill both the CAS and CSAR roles,” she said. “Not just an aircraft assigned to it, but an aircraft that will routinely train for it.”

Both crew members remain in U.S. care. The Pentagon has withheld their identities, and neither has been identified by name in any official U.S. government statement.

Iranian state TV flashed an announcement claiming that Trump had accepted Iran’s terms for ending the war, describing it as a “humiliating retreat” by the U.S. president.

Iran said talks between the U.S. and Iran would begin on Friday in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Trump’s announcement on social media represented an abrupt turnaround from earlier in the day, when Trump issued an extraordinary warning that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if his demands were not met.

Trump said the last-minute deal, negotiated with Pakistan serving as a mediator, was subject to Iran’s agreement to pause its blockade of oil and gas supplies through the strait, which typically handles about one-fifth of global oil shipments.

“This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East.”

Two White House officials confirmed that Israel has also agreed to the two-week ceasefire and to suspend its bombing campaign on Iran. A few minutes after Trump’s announcement, the Israeli military said that it identified missiles launched from Iran towards Israel.

Trump, who has issued a series of threats in recent weeks only to back away, claimed progress between the two sides. He said Iran had presented a 10-point proposal that was a “workable basis” for negotiations and that he expected an agreement to be “finalized and consummated” during the two-week ceasefire.

Abrupt turnaround

The abrupt turnaround capped a whirlwind day that was dominated by Trump’s threat to destroy every bridge and power plant in Iran unless Tehran reopened the strait, which unnerved world leaders, rattled global financial and energy markets and drew widespread condemnation, including criticism from the head of the United Nations and Pope Leo.

As the clock ticked down to Trump’s 8 p.m. EDT deadline, U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran intensified, hitting railway and road bridges, an airport and a petrochemical plant. U.S. forces attacked targets on Kharg Island, home to Iran’s main oil export terminal.

In response, Iran declared it would no longer hold back from hitting its Gulf neighbors’ infrastructure and said it had carried out fresh strikes on a ship in the Gulf and a huge Saudi petrochemical complex. Booms were heard in Doha late on Tuesday night, according to a Reuters witness in the Qatari capital.

The war, now in its sixth week, has claimed more than 5,000 lives in nearly a dozen countries, including more than 1,600 civilians in Iran, according to tallies from government sources and human rights groups.

The closure of the strait, through which almost a fifth of the world’s oil supply typically travels, has sharply increased oil prices, escalating the chances of a global economic downturn or even recession.

With the U.S. midterm election campaign ramping up, Trump’s approval ratings have hit their lowest level ever, leaving his Republican Party at risk of losing its grip on Congress. Polls show sizable majorities of Americans opposed to the war and frustrated by the rising cost of gasoline.

Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, gave the order after intelligence indicated a nexus of senior IRGC leaders was meeting at the location, the official said.

The B-2s are equipped to drop 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, also known as GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, to destroy deeply fortified structures. Their immense payload allows them to strike targets at a depth beyond the reach of conventional munitions, while their flying-wing design enables them to penetrate sophisticated defenses with minimal detection.

US special forces rescue second F-15 airman from Iran

That weapon was key to last June’s Operation Midnight Hammer, when bunker busters battered three of Iran’s nuclear installations. The B-2s made roughly the same 7,000-mile journey this time.

At the six-week mark of the assault against Iran, CENTCOM reported that U.S. forces had struck over 13,000 sites across the country. Other bombers in America’s squadrons, such as the B-1 and the B-52, have played prominent roles in the current campaign, Pentagon officials say.

Cooper’s directive coincided with a high-stakes search-and-rescue effort focused on two American airmen who ejected from a fighter jet over Iranian territory on Friday. President Donald Trump would later liken that operation to a Hollywood scene during a press conference at the White House.

“You would call it central casting if you were doing a movie for location,” he said Monday, revealing that hundreds of personnel were involved in the extraction. “Those pilots came in so fast and so quick and got out of there.”

Moments after extolling U.S. forces from the lectern, the president declared that when it came to the reach of the American military, nothing was off-limits. He warned he could destroy Iran’s critical infrastructure, including bridges and power plants.

The following day, in a post on Truth Social, Trump escalated the rhetoric even further, threatening to eradicate Iranian civilization if Tehran did not capitulate to his demands by 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump wrote. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Military Times that “only the president knows where things stand and what he will do.”

While the strike underscored Iran’s capabilities, it also reignited a longstanding conversation about the need for the U.S. to protect its aircraft and other high-value equipment with underground bunkers and hardened shelters — an area in which analysts say adversaries like China have invested far more extensively.

“People are asking the valid question: What on earth was this half-billion dollar airplane doing sitting right out in the open, where commercial satellite imagery can see exactly where it was and target a weapon onto that, which apparently they did,” said Tom Shugart, a retired Navy submarine officer and adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security’s Defense Program. “I think there’s really good questions being asked about, what are we doing here? And the bigger question is, why wasn’t it already done?”

As missiles continue to hit U.S. bases in the Middle East, the Pentagon is moving to ramp up investment in base hardening. As reported by The War Zone, which has been writing about gaps in infrastructure hardening and aircraft protection for years, March saw the publication of multiple contracting solicitations seeking near-term and long-term solutions, including a Space Force call for “prefabricated transportable bunkers” and a seven-year task order for infrastructure work at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called for “more and more bunkers,” saying during a trip to the Middle East that their rapid fielding was a “theater priority,” as also reported by TWZ.

While the emphasis thus far has been on bunkers, Shugart said the protection gap can be seen more clearly in hardened aircraft shelters, which are visible and countable via commercial imagery. A paper, “Concrete Sky,” that he coauthored last year with Timothy Walton of the Hudson Institute found that in the Indo-Pacific, China had more than doubled its number of hardened aircraft shelters between 2010 and 2020, reaching a total of about 800, while the U.S. and its allies had built just two in the same timeframe.

The paper particularly highlights as “foolish” the decision not to build hardened aircraft shelters for the coming fleet of B-21 bombers — describing the shelters as a $30 million investment to protect aircraft worth $600 million apiece.

In recent years, the Army Corps of Engineers has worked to make modest improvements to existing bunkers. Military Times reported in 2024 on reinforcement work including better blast doors intended to protect troops inside from traumatic brain injuries caused by overpressure.

But calls to protect aircraft have been dampened in the past by concerns from leaders about the value of doing so. Shugart noted that Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, then commander of Pacific Air Forces and now chief of staff of the Air Force, said in 2023 that he wasn’t “a big fan of hardening infrastructure.”

“You saw what we did to the Iraqi Air Force and their hardened aircraft shelters,” he said, referring to U.S. strikes during the Gulf War. “They’re not so hard when you put a 2,000-pound bomb right through the roof.”

If that was true at the time, Shugart said, it might not be as true anymore.

While one missile with submunitions may be able to wipe out multiple aircraft on the ground, it would take one missile to destroy a single hardened aircraft shelter, he said. In that scenario, he estimates the missile would cost $20 million; the shelter, $5 million.

“At that point, you’re at least on the right side of the cost curve,” he said.

Moreover, he added, the Air Force’s own think tanks have also pushed for better air base protection. A paper published in 2024 by J. Michael Dahm, a fellow at the Air Force’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, posited that air base defenses had “atrophied” over the last three decades and budgeting for resilient basing had actually declined.

“To date, neither Congress nor the Department of Defense (DOD) have adequately funded air base defense requirements. Without an immediate reversal of this trend, the Air Force may be unable to generate operationally relevant combat airpower in a near peer conflict, which would likely have devastating impacts on joint and combined campaigns,” Dahm wrote. “Inadequate air base defense also strains alliances, incentivizes potential aggressors, and may ultimately result in a strategic loss that has existential consequences for the United States and its allies.”

The Air Force does have a five-year contract for new Expedient Small Asset Protection shelters as part of its Agile Combat Employment strategy — “hangars in a box” for small aircraft or vehicles. It’s not clear, though, how many have been purchased and deployed since the first one was unveiled at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, in 2023.

Walton, at the Hudson Institute, said past assumptions about hardened shelter space constraints — that they’re mainly for fighters and wouldn’t fit a large plane like the AWACS to begin with — may not hold true. He pointed to the large shelters at Andersen that have been constructed for typhoon protection, saying that could be a starting point design for sheltering the biggest and most costly warfighting assets.

“This would give you an ability to put it in the large aircraft shelter, close the doors and have it not be vulnerable to drones or submission or weapons that are coming up top,” he said. “It could still be probably penetrated by certain classes of unitary warheads, but it helps.”

Both Walton and Shugart emphasized that the threat to U.S. aircraft on the tarmac shouldn’t be considered limited to the Indo-Pacific or the Middle East. With the rise of unmanned aircraft crossing onto military installations, the threat is domestic, too, they said.

“There’s been a slate over the past years of incursions of U.S. airfields and other critical infrastructure, even within the contiguous United States; incursions by drones,” Walton said. “And it exposes how vulnerable U.S. aircraft are to attack at airfields.”

Another Hudson Institute analysis called for 12 small hardened aircraft shelters and three large ones per airfield in the Pacific, where it focused, estimating between $9 billion and $10.5 billion to shore up resilient structures and passive defenses.

Trump announced the rescue in the early hours of Sunday in a social media post that described the operation, in a mountainous area of Iran, as “one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History.”

The airman, the weapons officer of an F-15 jet shot down on Friday, was wounded but “will be just fine,” Trump said in a message on X posted by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. The pilot of the aircraft was rescued on Friday.

A U.S. official said the operation, which Israel said it had assisted, involved dozens of military aircraft and encountered fierce resistance from Iranian forces.

Iran’s military said several U.S. aircraft were destroyed during the operation, including two military transport planes and two Black Hawk helicopters. Footage posted on social media showed burned out aircraft wreckage, which Reuters verified was in the area.

RESCUE INVOLVED ‘DECEPTION CAMPAIGN’

A U.S. official told Reuters U.S. forces had to destroy at least one of the aircraft used in the rescue mission because it had malfunctioned.

The Wall Street Journal reported that two specially equipped MC-130Js aircraft used to carry out covert infiltrations and to remove troops from beyond enemy lines were blown up by U.S. forces after malfunctioning.

A senior administration official in Washington said the rescue had involved a CIA deception campaign spreading word inside Iran that U.S. forces had already found the missing airman and were moving him on the ground for exfiltration out of the country.

While the Iranians were confused and uncertain of what was happening, the missing weapons officer was located inside a mountain crevice and rescued, the official said in a statement.

The rescue of the airman offered some good news for Trump, who has faced mounting pressure over a war that has sparked a global energy crisis and threatens lasting damage to the world economy.

On Saturday, he renewed a threat to intensify attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure, saying it had 48 hours to open up shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz, the vital conduit for around a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas supply, which has been largely shut down.

In an expletive-laden social media post on Sunday, Trump said Iran must open the Strait “or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH!”

Adding to the pressure, a senior Israeli defense official said Israel, which attacked a major petrochemicals facility on Saturday, was preparing to attack Iranian energy facilities within the next week, and was awaiting approval from Washington.

But despite the heavy damage to its military and civilian infrastructure by weeks of U.S. and Israeli attacks, Iran’s chokehold over Hormuz has given it a powerful weapon and Tehran showed no sign of complying with Trump’s demand.

It has continued to launch missile and drone attacks against Israel and on Sunday, it underlined its ability to hit U.S. allies in the Gulf by launching a drone attack on petrochemicals plants in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi.

The Revolutionary Guards warned that more attacks would follow if civilian targets in Iran were hit.

PEACE EFFORTS PROVE FRUITLESS

Opinion polls show the war is viewed with skepticism by a majority of Americans, with the risks to U.S. service personnel among their major concerns, along with regional stability and the impact on their own finances.

The war, which has spread into Lebanon, where Israel has resumed its campaign against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, has killed thousands, mainly in Iran and Lebanon, where a Lebanese soldier was killed on Sunday.

But efforts brokered by Pakistan to bring the two sides to an agreement have so far been fruitless. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Tehran demanded a permanent halt to the U.S. and Israeli campaign launched on Feb. 28.

“What we care about are the terms of a conclusive and lasting END to the illegal war that is imposed on us,” he said in a message on X.

As the war has continued, the damage to vital economic infrastructure in Iran and neighboring Gulf countries has mounted and the impact is set to be felt months and even years after the fighting ends.

With oil coming through Hormuz down to a trickle, ministers from OPEC oil-producing countries were due to meet on Sunday. But the blockade of the Strait and the damage to infrastructure meant an immediate boost to oil production was not considered possible.

Israel and the U.S. have hit military and civilian infrastructure across Iran, including areas near its Bushehr nuclear plant, which Iran said posed a serious risk of radioactive contamination.

But they have not managed to suppress Iran’s ability to strike back and Iranian drone attacks have continued against industrial infrastructure in the Gulf including oil facilities, a major aluminum plant and petrochemical sites in recent days.

Earlier Iran also attacked an Israel-affiliated vessel with a drone in the Strait, setting the ship on fire, state media said, citing the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ navy.

The incidents show the risks still facing U.S. and Israeli aircraft over Iran, despite assertions by President Donald Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that U.S. forces had total control of the skies.

The prospect of a U.S. service member alive and on the run in Iran comes days after Trump threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” in a war that has killed thousands, sparked an energy crisis and threatened lasting damage to the world economy.

With Iran’s leadership defiant since the start of the war, its foreign minister in principle left the door open for peace talks with the U.S. via mediation from Pakistan, but gave no sign of Tehran’s willingness to bow to Trump’s demands.

“We are deeply grateful to Pakistan for its efforts and have never refused to go to Islamabad. What we care about are the terms of a conclusive and lasting END to the illegal war that is imposed on us,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on X.

Trump on Saturday repeated his threats to intensify attacks on Iran if it failed to reach a deal, or open the key Strait of Hormuz waterway.

“Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT. Time is running out - 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!” he said in a post on Truth Social.

As hostilities continued, Iran attacked an Israel-affiliated vessel with a drone in the Strait of Hormuz, setting the ship on fire, Iran’s state media said on Saturday, citing the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ navy.

Iran has virtually shut the ​strait, which normally carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas.

IRAN TOUTS NEW AIR DEFENSE SYSTEMS

Iranian fire brought down a two-seat U.S. F-15E jet, officials in both countries said, while two U.S. officials said the pilot ejected from an A-10 Warthog fighter aircraft that crashed in Kuwait after being hit by Iranian fire.

Two Black Hawk helicopters engaged in the search for the missing pilot were hit by Iranian fire but made it out of Iranian airspace, the two U.S. officials told Reuters.

The scale of injuries to the crew was unclear.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said it was combing a southwestern area near where the pilot’s plane came down, while the regional governor promised a commendation for anyone who captured or killed “forces of the hostile enemy.”

Iranians, pummelled by air power since the U.S. and Israel began their attacks on February 28, celebrated the plane downings.

The Khatam al-Anbiya joint military command said it used a new air defence system on Friday, which targeted a U.S. fighter jet, three drones and two cruise missiles.

“The enemy should know that we rely on new air defense systems built by the young, knowledgeable, and proud people of this country, unveiling them one after another in the field,” a Khatam al-Anbiya spokesperson said, according to Iran’s state media.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had targeted various areas in Israel in a wave of missiles and drones. They also targeted U.S. HIMARS rocket launcher batteries in Kuwait and Patriot missile batteries in Bahrain, according to a statement read on state TV.

Increasingly frustrated with the political fallout from the war, Trump is considering a broader cabinet shake-up in the wake of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s removal this week, people familiar with the discussions said.

Any potential reshuffling could serve as a reset for the White House as it confronts rising gas prices, falling ratings and worries for Republicans heading into November’s midterm elections.

“They’ve (U.S.) got themselves caught in a sort of double bind. If they simply leave, it’s really bad, and if they try to get the comprehensive defeat of Iran ... that looks really bad as well,” said Gareth Stansfield, a professor of Middle East politics at the UK’s Exeter University and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

“They’ve managed to get themselves into a lose-lose situation with this one.”

PETROCHEMICAL ZONE STRUCK IN IRAN

Iranian state media reported air strikes at a petrochemical zone in southwestern Iran, with five people reported injured so far.

A projectile also hit an auxiliary building near the perimeter of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant, the Tasnim news agency said, killing one person. The operations of the plant were unaffected.

Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom evacuated a further 198 of its staff from the site on Saturday, Russian news agencies reported, in evacuations already planned before the latest incident.

The Israeli military meanwhile said it had carried out “a wave of strikes” on Tehran.

Israel has been waging a parallel campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon after the militant group fired at Israel in support of Iran. Early on Saturday, Israel’s military said it was striking the militants’ infrastructure sites in Beirut.

The A-10 pilot was subsequently rescued, two U.S. officials told The New York Times.

Iranian state media stated the A-10 was targeted in southern waters near the strait.

Reports of the A-10 going down Friday followed confirmation that a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle had been shot down by enemy fire.

One of two F-15E crew members had reportedly been rescued as of Friday afternoon. A search for the second crew member was ongoing.

Search-and-rescue efforts were launched in the immediate aftermath of the fighter jet crash, with videos circulating on social media appearing to show a low-flying U.S. Air Force HC-130 refueling a pair of HH-60G Pave Hawks over Iran.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday told Military Times “the president has been briefed” on the downed U.S. F-15E fighter jet.

The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command have not yet responded to requests for comment.

Iranian state media on Friday shared images of aircraft debris alongside claims that Iran had downed a U.S. F-35 fighter jet.

However, images of the aircraft’s tailfin, specifically the red stripe on its vertical stabilizer, are consistent with markings used by the 494th Fighter Squadron, 48th Fighter Wing, based at RAF Lakenheath.

Iran also shared an image of an Advanced Concept Ejection Seat allegedly from the shot down F-15E.

The shoot-down of the F-15E marks the first time during Operation Epic Fury that a manned U.S. aircraft has been brought down by enemy fire.

A U.S. F-35 fighter jet was reportedly hit by enemy fire during a combat mission over Iran on March 19, but was able to make an emergency landing at a U.S. air base in the region.

Six U.S. airmen were killed on March 12 when their KC-135 refueling aircraft crashed in western Iraq during combat operations.

On March 1, three U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets were shot down by a Kuwaiti F/A-18 in a friendly fire incident. All six F-15 crew members ejected and were safely recovered.

The A-10, meanwhile, has seen an increased role since the start of the Iran war. The attack aircraft has joined maritime interdiction operations, among other missions, along the southern edges of the conflict, targeting Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fast-attack watercraft in the Strait of Hormuz, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said last month.

Military Times reporter Michael Scanlon contributed to this report.

One of two U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle crew members shot down by enemy fire in Iran has been rescued, Israeli media first reported. U.S. officials confirmed the reports in statements to CBS News, Axios and Reuters.

A search for the second crew member is ongoing.

A multi-aircraft search-and-rescue effort for survivors was launched on Friday in the immediate aftermath of the engagement, with videos circulating on social media appearing to show a low-flying U.S. Air Force HC-130 refueling a pair of HH-60G Pave Hawks over Iran.

Israel’s N12 News first reported the rescue of the one crew member.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday told Military Times “the president has been briefed” on the downed U.S. F-15E fighter jet.

The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Iranian state media on Friday shared images of aircraft debris alongside claims that Iran had downed a U.S. F-35 fighter jet.

However, images of the aircraft’s tailfin, specifically the red stripe on its vertical stabilizer, are consistent with markings used by the 494th Fighter Squadron, 48th Fighter Wing, based at RAF Lakenheath.

Iran also shared an image of an Advanced Concept Ejection Seat allegedly from the shot down F-15E.

The shoot-down of the F-15E marks the first time during Operation Epic Fury that a manned U.S. aircraft has been brought down by enemy fire.

A U.S. F-35 fighter jet was reportedly hit by enemy fire during a combat mission over Iran on March 19, but was able to make an emergency landing at a U.S. air base in the region.

Six U.S. airmen were killed on March 12 when their KC-135 refueling aircraft crashed in western Iraq during combat operations.

On March 1, three U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets were shot down by a Kuwaiti F/A-18 in a friendly fire incident. All six F-15 crew members ejected and were safely recovered.

A total of 13 U.S. service members have been killed during combat actions against Iran.

A United States F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet has been shot down by enemy fire over Iran, U.S. officials confirmed.

One of the aircraft’s two crew members has been rescued, Israeli media first reported. U.S. officials confirmed the reports in statements to CBS News and Axios.

A search for the second crew member is ongoing.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Military Times “the president has been briefed” on the downed fighter jet.

The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Officials in Iran, meanwhile, called for the search and capture of any surviving crew members of the jet, according to reports by the semi-official ISNA news agency and the Young Journalists Club.

The governor of one of the Islamic Republic’s provinces stated that anyone who captures or kills the crew would receive a special commendation.

Video circulating on social media appeared to show a low-flying U.S. Air Force HC-130 refueling a pair of HH-60G Pave Hawks over Iran while conducting a search for the downed crew.

Iranian state media on Friday shared images of aircraft debris alongside claims that Iran had downed a U.S. F-35 fighter jet.

However, images of the aircraft’s tailfin, specifically the red stripe on its vertical stabilizer, are consistent with markings used by the 494th Fighter Squadron, 48th Fighter Wing, based at RAF Lakenheath.

Iran also shared an image of an Advanced Concept Ejection Seat allegedly from the shot down F-15E.

The search-and-rescue effort inside Iran during an ongoing conflict greatly raises the stakes for the United States.

U.S. Central Command on Tuesday issued a statement denying claims that “Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps downed an ‘enemy’ fighter jet over Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.”

“All U.S. fighter aircraft are accounted for,” the CENTCOM statement read. “Iran’s IRGC has made the same false claim at least half a dozen times.”

The location of the downed jet has not yet been confirmed.

The shoot-down marks the first time during Operation Epic Fury that a manned U.S. aircraft has been brought down by enemy fire.

A U.S. F-35 fighter jet was reportedly hit by enemy fire during a combat mission over Iran on March 19, but was able to make an emergency landing at a U.S. air base in the region.

Six U.S. airmen were killed on March 12 when their KC-135 refueling aircraft crashed in western Iraq during combat operations.

On March 1, three U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets were shot down by a Kuwaiti F/A-18 in a friendly fire incident. All six F-15 crew members ejected and were safely recovered.

A total of 13 U.S. service members have been killed during combat actions against Iran.

As of March 31, 348 U.S. personnel have been wounded, Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, U.S. Central Command spokesperson, told DefenseScoop. Of those injured, the majority have since returned to duty. Six remain seriously wounded.

Reuters contributed to this report.

“Expertise is not a drone, but a skill, a strategy, a system where a drone is one part of the defense,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Reuters on Monday.

Ukraine now produces roughly 1,000 interceptor drones a day through hundreds of vetted manufacturers, deliberately dispersed so that no single strike can cripple the supply chain, Zelenskyy reported last month. The country has the technical capacity to double that figure, he said, but lacks the budget to do so.

While Ukraine has built that infrastructure gradually over the last few years, most countries now trying to integrate interceptors into the air defense have not invested in building the necessary logistical framework needed to effectively build, arm or deploy the cheap flyers.

Some countries have already learned this lesson the hard way.

After some Ukrainian companies built interceptor drone factories abroad without state approval, multiple buyers complained because the drones were sold without the warheads or expertise needed to operate them properly, Zelenskyy said on Friday, per Ukrainska Pravda.

“They had also been sold a certain number of interceptors — again without explosives,” Zelenskyy said about a European country he visited recently. “And they asked me whether we could send more operators. I said no.”

The bottleneck isn’t the interceptor itself, but the logistics infrastructure to produce and sustain them at scale, officials said.

“It seems there is still a misconception,” Artem Moroz, head of investor relations at Brave1, wrote on LinkedIn last month.

Brave1, Ukraine’s defense-tech accelerator, has worked with more than 500 defense startups since 2023 and now serves as the primary gateway for foreign governments seeking access to Ukrainian drone technology and production partnerships.

“Many believe Ukraine could simply send a few hundred interceptor drones to the Middle East and stop the Shahed drones currently hitting critical infrastructure,” Moroz said. “Drone warfare is far more complex than that.

“Yes, hardware matters. And Ukraine knows how to build drones at scale. But the real advantage lies in the infrastructure behind them.”

Companies launch drone-production innovations

The gap between buying a drone and building the system to sustain it is the market several defense companies are now racing to fill.

A handful of defense companies from Helsinki to San Francisco are offering the production line, the detection system and the supply infrastructure compressed into a portable unit that can be shipped anywhere to produce up to dozens of drones a day.

Sensofusion, a Finnish defense company founded in 2016, sells a full-cycle drone production chain as one of the latest innovators in this arena.

The company’s $2.4 million (€2.1 million Euros) Tactical Drone Factory is a standard 20-foot shipping container equipped with industrial 3D printers, an electronics assembly station and enough spares to run around the clock with a crew of three, producing up to 50 interceptor drones a day, according to the company.

What sets the Finnish system apart from its competitors is that it’s not just a factory: It ships as a package with Sensofusion’s Airfence radio-frequency detection and tracking platform, designed to detect a hostile drone, cue an interceptor and guide it to the kill — a full sensor-to-effector chain in a box.

The company says each interceptor costs less than $580 (€500) and is built to chase targets at speeds up to 310 mph (500 km/h).

Although Sensofusion boasts some of the highest production numbers on the market, it’s not the first company to market the concept of a portable all-in-one drone production hub.

Firestorm Labs' xCell system, the most tested U.S. equivalent to Sensofusion, uses two containers and works at a significantly slower pace by producing roughly 50 drones per month. Its newly announced SQUALL airframe is the first drone purpose-built to come off a mobile factory line, according to the company.

Founded in 2022, Firestorm’s biggest selling point is its testing and validation. The company holds a $100 million U.S. Air Force contract, has run field exercises with Air Force Special Operations Command and the Air National Guard and raised $47 million in Series A funding.

Per Se Systems, a French firm, operates in a middle ground by building micro drone factories on trailers — instead of shipping containers — that produce up to ten drones per hour on a generator with 19 hours of autonomous operation.

Per Se has been field-tested with 12 French Army regiments and is embedded in four active development projects with the French military, according to Army Recognition.

The drawbacks of production containers

Some logistics and strategy specialists say the all-in-one package wrapped into the portable factory concept ignores some critical battlefield questions that could render the projects useless.

A container full of printers, raw materials, sensitive electronics and proprietary design files concentrates exactly the kind of capability an adversary would want to destroy or capture, according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis that identified several strategic vulnerabilities in frontline drone production.

And the problems compound from there.

Airframes can be printed, but the motors, batteries, electronic speed controllers, radios and sensors that make a drone combat-capable cannot, and those components must be trucked to the container through the same supply chains the factory is supposed to bypass.

Quality control under field conditions remains untested. Vibration, temperature swings, dust and intermittent power degrade the dimensional tolerances that 3D-printed parts require, and no company has demonstrated sustained production outside a controlled environment.

“Industrial resilience is combat power,” the CSIS experts concluded. “The next war will not be won by who initially fields the most drones, but by who sustains building them at scale.”

Several countries are catching on to the growing need to invest in drone production logistics.

Five NATO nations — the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Poland — launched a joint initiative in February to develop affordable interceptor drones within a year under a program called LEAP, explicitly drawing on Ukrainian battlefield know-how to do it.

Ukraine’s experts say they are ready and willing to share their hard-earned lessons with allies, including the strategies to build a new layer of defense alongside the new weapons themselves.

“What Ukraine has built is a deep operational ecosystem across multiple domains, designed for conflicts where entirely new types of threats appear,” Brave1’s Moroz said.

“And ecosystems like this are extremely hard to copy,” he explained. “Even investing hundreds of billions or a trillion today would not easily replicate the experience, integration, and speed of iteration built over years of real combat.”

His final words of advice to allies?

“Drones are the tool. The infrastructure is the weapon.”

Citing multiple U.S. officials, the Post report suggested ground operations could involve both conventional infantry and special operations elements, but would not yet rise to the level of a full-scale invasion.

Decisions on whether or not to green light operations, which would put U.S. troops at substantially more risk to Iranian threats, now rest with President Donald Trump.

“It’s the job of the Pentagon to make preparations in order to give the commander in chief maximum optionality,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement provided to Military Times. “It does not mean the president has made a decision.”

The Post’s report comes as U.S. military assets continue to flood the region. On Friday, U.S. Marines and sailors assigned to the Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group arrived in U.S. Central Command waters.

The group, which is led by the America-class amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli and includes the embarked 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, departed earlier this month from its homeport of Sasebo, Japan.

The Pentagon has also confirmed elements from the 82nd Airborne Division headquarters and a brigade combat team are slated to deploy to the Middle East. Based out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the 82nd acts as the Army’s rapid-response force and is often among the first units sent to respond to emerging crises.

The report also comes on the heels of an Iranian missile and drone attack on Friday that injured a dozen U.S. service members at Prince Sultan Airbase in Saudi Arabia. Two of the 12 injuries are considered to be serious.

The strike also reportedly damaged multiple U.S. aircraft, including an E-3 Sentry AWACS and multiple KC-135 tankers.

Thirteen service members have been killed in action and nearly 300 wounded during Operation Epic Fury, a joint undertaking by U.S. and Israeli militaries against the Islamic Republic that began on Feb. 28.

The majority of the wounded have since returned to duty, according to U.S. Central Command.

Prior to Friday’s attack, 10 U.S. troops remained in serious condition.

A dozen U.S. service members were wounded Friday in an Iranian missile strike on Prince Sultan Airbase in Saudi Arabia, the Wall Street Journal first reported.

Two of the 12 personnel, all of whom were reportedly inside an installation building at the time of the attack, are in serious condition.

Attempts to contact U.S. Central Command had not been returned as of publication.

Friday’s strike, which reportedly damaged multiple U.S. refueling aircraft and involved Iranian drones as well, comes as the U.S. military continues to pour assets into the region.

The Pentagon on Wednesday confirmed elements from the 82nd Airborne Division headquarters and a brigade combat team are slated to deploy to the Middle East.

The 82nd, based out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, acts as the Army’s rapid-response force and is often among the first units sent to respond to emerging crises.

U.S. Marines and sailors with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, which includes up to 5,000 personnel and several warships, are also reportedly heading toward the Middle East after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved a request from CENTCOM to help curtail Iran’s regional attacks.

The 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, part of the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group, has also been rumored to serve as a potential reinforcement. The group deployed in recent weeks and is currently operating in the U.S. 3rd Fleet area of operations in the eastern Pacific.

Marines and sailors with the 11th MEU carried out a large-scale amphibious assault exercise on March 2 aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California, prior to steaming toward open water.

Thirteen service members have been killed in action and nearly 300 wounded during Operation Epic Fury, a joint undertaking by U.S. and Israeli militaries against the Islamic Republic that began on Feb. 28.

The majority of the wounded have since returned to duty, according to U.S. Central Command.

Prior to Friday’s attack, 10 U.S. troops remained in serious condition.

Military Times reporters Eve Sampson and Riley Ceder contributed to this report.

The global price of oil continues to skyrocket as Iran’s missiles and drones hit vital infrastructure in Arab Gulf states. Billion-dollar American radar systems have also been targeted and destroyed across the Middle East by Iran, seemingly degrading U.S. defenses.

U.S. military presence near Iran includes dozens of locations and tens of thousands of troops in harm’s way. This raises the question: If a missile is launched from Iran toward a U.S. military base in the region, how do service members know in time to stay safe?

The United States and its allies have built a layered system to watch the skies day and night. This system uses satellites in space, radar on the ground, ships at sea and aircraft in the air. It also depends on well-trained military members from U.S. Space Command who make quick decisions with the data. As a former U.S. Air Force officer and now aerospace and national security law professor at the University of Mississippi, I’ve studied the vast network of alliances and systems that make this happen.

Patriot air defense interception is costly: Here’s how it works

Together, these tools form a missile defense network that can spot danger early and give warnings. The fastest way to spot a missile is from space. U.S. satellites, like the U.S. Space Force’s Space-Based Infrared System, circle high above Earth. These billion-dollar satellites, the crown jewels of missile defense, can spot the bright heat from a missile launch almost instantly.

When a missile is fired, it creates a strong enough heat signal to be seen in space. The satellites detect this heat using sensitive, infrared sensors and send an alert within seconds. This early warning is critical. It gives the military on the ground or at sea time to get defense systems ready.

The warning signal from space is then received on the ground by systems known as the U.S. Space Force’s Joint Tactical Ground Stations. The signal is sent from space using secure satellite communications, received by these ground stations and then quickly distributed to other parts of the missile defense network.

Radar to detect and track missiles

But satellites cannot do everything to detect and track missiles. They need help from systems on Earth. After a missile is launched, ground-based radars take over from the initial satellite signal. Radars work by sending out radio waves. When those waves hit an object, like a missile, they bounce back. The radar then uses that information to track where the object is and where it is going throughout its flight.

The U.S. uses both short and long-range radars together. One powerful, long-range radar is the AN/FPS-132 Upgraded Early Warning Radar. It can see missiles from over 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers) away and track them as they travel. Another key system is the U.S. Army’s AN/TPY-2 Surveillance Transportable Radar. This radar has a range of almost 2,000 miles (3,219 kilometers) and looks more closely at the missile to provide more information about the threat. TPY-2 systems typically sit right next to weapons systems that will destroy the missile to ensure the timely relay of tracking data.

In sum, satellites spot the launch and radars follow the missile through the sky until defense systems destroy it.

However, Iranian forces recently struck both a TPY-2 in Jordan and a FPS-132 in Qatar. These systems are expensive and difficult to quickly replace. This has required the U.S. to move an additional TPY-2 from Korea to place it in the Middle East.

U.S. missile defense tracking was certainly degraded by losing these resources, but other radars are still part of the network. For example, the U.S. Space Force operates another FPS-132 in the U.K., which could potentially provide radar support to the Middle East.

In addition to ground and space-based sensors, U.S. Navy ships carry powerful radar systems as part of their Aegis Combat System, known as the AN/SPY-1, which can provide up to 200 miles (322 kilometers) of coverage. Ships can sail closer to areas where threats may come from and help fill gaps that land-based radars cannot cover.

U.S. Air Force aircraft also play a big role. Planes like the E-3 Sentry can watch large areas using radar from the sky. Drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper can stay in the air for long periods and track activity below with radar and sensors. These moving sensors help the system stay flexible. If one area needs more coverage or is degraded, ships and aircraft can move there to fill in.

Why drones are harder to catch

Drones require a different set of tracking tools and have proven more difficult to destroy than missiles from Iran. The legacy systems are simply better suited to missiles than new drone technology. To detect drones, the U.S. typically uses several tools: radar; radio signal tracking, which can pick up control signals; and cameras and other sensors, which can see drones directly.

Missiles are fast and hot, which makes them easier to detect with the current systems. Iranian drones, such as the Shahed system, are different. Their heat signature is often minimal due to using gas-powered engines not easily detected by infrared sensors. Without this heat signature, that initial warning cue is delayed, making it difficult for radar to know what to track.

Drones are usually smaller and fly low to the ground, making them hard to see on radar. They can be hidden by buildings or tough to distinguish from birds and other objects. Some are made of materials that do not show up well on radar, such as fiberglass and plastic. Others move slowly, which can make them harder to notice or stand out.

Many of Iran’s drones do not show up on radio signal detection systems because they cannot be remotely controlled. These drones are programmed with GPS coordinates and navigate themselves to a target.

Multiple methods

No single method works all the time to defend against drone attacks. Instead, these tools work together to find and track drones. The U.S. and its allies continue to improve their systems to catch both missiles and drones. For example, the U.S. is in discussions to buy acoustics sensors from Ukraine, which can hear drones coming when they cannot be seen using other methods.

New sensors, better software and faster communication will all help strengthen defenses. The goal is simple: Detect threats earlier, respond faster and hit the target faster.

Aaron Brynildson is a law instructor at the University of Mississippi.

Both Bahrain and Washington have blamed an Iranian drone attack for the March 9 blast, which the Gulf kingdom said injured 32 people including children, some seriously. Commenting on the day of the attack, U.S. Central Command said on X that an Iranian drone struck a residential neighborhood in Bahrain.

In response to questions from Reuters, Bahrain on Saturday acknowledged for the first time that a Patriot missile was involved in the explosion over the Mahazza neighborhood on Sitra island, offshore from the capital Manama and also home to an oil refinery.

In a statement, a Bahraini government spokesperson said the missile successfully intercepted an Iranian drone mid-air, saving lives.

“The damage and injuries sustained were not a result of a direct impact to the ground of either the Patriot interceptor or the Iranian drone,” the spokesperson said.

Neither Bahrain or Washington has provided evidence that an Iranian drone was involved in the Mahazza incident.

The use of costly, advanced weaponry to defend against attacks by far cheaper drones has been a defining feature of the war. The incident points to the risks and limitations of this strategy: The blast from the powerful Patriot, whether or not it intercepted a drone, contributed to widespread damage and casualties, while Bahrain’s air defenses were unable to prevent strikes that night on the nearby oil refinery, which declared force majeure hours later.

When asked for comment, the Pentagon referred Reuters to Central Command, which did not immediately reply to questions.

In response to questions sent to the White House, a senior U.S. official said the United States was “crushing” Iran’s ability to shoot or produce drones and missiles. “We will continue to address these threats to our country and our allies,” the official said, adding that the U.S. military “never targets civilians.” The official did not answer specific questions about the Patriot attack.

On February 28, the first day of U.S. strikes on Iran, an Iranian girls school took a direct hit. Investigators at the U.S. Defense Department believe U.S. forces were likely responsible, Reuters first reported, possibly because of outdated targeting data, two U.S. sources previously told the news agency.

Video of the aftermath of the Mahazza blast in Bahrain verified by Reuters shows rubble around houses, a thick layer of dust in the streets, an injured man and screaming residents.

Both Bahrain and the United States operate U.S. Patriot air defense batteries in the kingdom, a close U.S. ally located on the Persian Gulf that hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet along with the regional U.S. naval command.

Bahrain plays a critical role in the security of the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint that carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas and has been almost entirely closed by Iran, causing unprecedented disruption to world oil supplies.

On the night of the explosion in Mahazza, the refinery on Sitra came under Iranian attack, according to Bahraini national oil company Bapco. Videos show smoke rising from the facility on the morning of March 9.

Reuters could not establish whether the cause of the explosion during a night of Iranian attacks on Sitra would have been immediately apparent to U.S. and Bahraini forces. Bahrain in its statement did not say why it had not mentioned the involvement of a Patriot at the time. Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the incident.

Produced by Raytheon, part of RTX Corp. [RTX], the Patriot is the U.S. Army’s primary high-to-medium-range aircraft-and-missile interceptor system and forms the backbone of U.S. and allied air defenses. Raytheon didn’t respond to a request for comment about the incident.

Bahrain’s government declined to say whether the missile that detonated on March 9, was fired by its own forces or by the United States.

But research associates Sam Lair and Michael Duitsman and Professor Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey concluded with moderate-to-high confidence that the suspect missile was likely launched from a U.S. Patriot battery located about 4 miles (7 km) to the southwest of the Mahazza neighborhood.

The conclusions of the three American munitions and open-source intelligence researchers, reported here for the first time, were based on their review of open-source visuals and commercial satellite imagery.

Reuters showed the Middlebury analysis to two target-analysis experts and one Patriot system missile researcher, who found no reason to dispute its conclusion.

One of them, Wes Bryant, a former senior targeting advisor and policy analyst at the Pentagon, said Lair, Duitsman and Lewis’s conclusions were “pretty undeniable.”

Key to the Middlebury analysis was a video shot from an apartment building and shared on social media. The video shows the suspect Patriot roaring across the night sky at low altitude on a northeastern trajectory. It then angled downward and out of sight. A flash of light in the distance appeared to mark its detonation 1.3 seconds later.

Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley specializing in digital forensics, reviewed the video for Reuters to determine if it was generated by artificial intelligence. He found “no obvious evidence that the video is fake.”

Lair, Duitsman and Lewis geolocated the video to a neighborhood in Riffa, Bahrain’s second-largest city. Reuters confirmed the geolocation. The earliest post of the video Reuters could find online was at around 2 am local time on March 9.

“The Riffa site’s location and orientation are consistent with the trajectory” of that of the suspect Patriot, the analysis said.

Multiple videos posted to social media the morning of March 9 show damage to residences in Block 602 of the Mahazza neighborhood. The researchers first geolocated the visuals using landmarks that appeared to match commercial satellite imagery of the area and visible street addresses. Reuters independently verified the geolocation.

The researchers then traced the trajectory of the suspect missile from Block 602 straight back to what they assessed – based on commercial satellite imagery – was the U.S. Patriot battery based less than half a mile from where the video of the missile in flight was recorded in Riffa.

A battery consists of a radar unit, a command hub and up to eight launchers that are integrated to detect, track and intercept aircraft and missiles.

Using commercial satellite imagery, the researchers determined that five launchers were visible at the Riffa site two days before the March 9 incident.

The battery has been there since at least 2009, according to satellite imagery. The Bahraini Defense Force did not start operating its own Patriot systems until 2024, according to a Lockheed Martin press release.

The Riffa site has features that are both distinctive to U.S. Patriot batteries in the region and different from those of known Bahrain-operated batteries, the researchers said, including protective walls, unpaved roads and a lack of permanent buildings. Based on these elements, the researchers concluded that the battery is likely operated by the United States, which uses Patriots to defend its naval sites in Bahrain.

The researchers were unable to say with confidence what caused the Patriot to explode. But they added that based on the available evidence, including the pattern and spread of damage on the ground, it appeared to have detonated mid-flight.

They concluded that it was possible the Patriot was aimed at a low-flying drone and that the combined explosion of the missile and drone ignited the blast, the analysis said.

“If this was the case, this was an irresponsible intercept attempt as it endangered the lives and the homes of allied civilians in a residential area,” the analysis said

This scenario matches what Bahrain’s government spokesperson said happened: that the Patriot intercepted an Iranian drone and both detonated in the air.

However, the analysis said, the direction of the damage and the lack of available evidence of a drone over the neighborhood suggested another scenario, that “the explosion was the result of the detonation of the warhead and unexpended propellant of a Patriot interceptor.”

Despite the claim by Bahrain, the researchers said it was less likely the missile made contact with a drone. Reuters could not independently verify the presence or not of an Iranian drone during the incident.

The analysis said that videos taken after the attack and photographs released by Bahrani authorities show that the blast damage was concentrated along four streets of Mahazza.

A Bahrain television news broadcast on March 9 and a government press release showed an extensively damaged home about 400 feet (120 meters) from the center of the main blast area, with interior photos showing holes in a wall created by shrapnel, the analysis said.

When all the damage is considered together, the Middlebury analysis noted, it matches what one would expect if a Patriot missile exploded in the air over a road intersection in the neighborhood. Pieces of the missile then flew about 120 meters farther and hit another house, the analysis said.

Robert Maher, an audio specialist who reviewed the video at the request of Reuters, said his analysis supports the approximate location of the explosion over the damaged homes.

In the video, a flash is seen about eight seconds in, but an explosion is never heard before the clip ends 19 seconds later. That’s because light travels faster than sound. Based on how long the sound would take to reach the person who shot the video, the explosion had to be more than four miles away. The damaged homes were about 4.6 miles (7.4 km) away, which fits with the timing.

Maher said that in the audio from the video he heard no drones or other missiles, although their sounds would have been faint or inaudible if they were more than four miles away from where the video was taken.

“I don’t see anything that is inconsistent with my observations from the audio,” Maher said after reviewing the Middlebury analysis.

Defense and industry officials say Patriot misfires are rare, but they do happen, including an errant missile in 2007 that hit a farm in Qatar.

In an X post on March 9, U.S. Central Command denounced Iranian and Russian news reports that said the incident in Mahazza was the result of a failed Patriot, calling it a “LIE.” It said an Iranian drone struck a residential neighborhood.

Reuters and the Middlebury researchers were unable to obtain or review any visual evidence of missile or drone fragments. Reuters attempted to contact witnesses in Bahrain, but several people declined to speak, citing fear of reprisals. Human Rights Watch has documented arrests of people in Bahrain during the war for posting videos on social media of attacks.

In the video of the suspect missile in flight, the Patriot appears to pass a much steeper smoke trail that the researchers said likely belonged to a first interceptor fired moments earlier.

Patriots are often fired in pairs to increase the chances that one hits the target. Neither the researchers or Reuters could establish what happened to the first missile.

The low trajectory of the second missile and its deviation from the route of the earlier launch could be signs of a possible problem, the researchers said. But they could not rule out the possibility that it was shot in that direction on purpose.

Bahrain’s spokesperson said any suggestion of malfunction or misfiring of the Patriots in Bahrain “was factually incorrect.”

British ministers met on Friday to discuss the war with Iran and Iran’s blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, according to a Downing Street statement.

“They confirmed that the agreement for the U.S. to use U.K. bases in the collective self-defence of the region includes U.S. defensive operations to degrade the missile sites and capabilities being used to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz,” the statement said.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said this week Britain would not be drawn into a war over Iran. He initially rejected a U.S. request to use British bases for the strikes on Iran, saying he needed to be satisfied that any military action was legal.

But Starmer modified his stance after Iran conducted strikes on British allies across the Middle East, saying that the United States could use RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia, a joint U.S.-U.K. base in the Indian Ocean.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked Starmer since the conflict started, complaining he was not doing enough to help him.

On Monday, Trump said there were “some countries that greatly disappointed me” before he singled out Britain, which he said had once been considered “the Rolls-Royce of allies.”

The Downing Street statement on Friday called for “urgent de-escalation and a swift resolution to the war.”

Opinion polls in Britain suggest widespread skepticism about the war, with 59% of those surveyed by YouGov saying that they were opposed to the U.S.-Israeli attacks.

The deployments of the USS Boxer, along with its 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and accompanying warship, comes as Reuters reported that President Donald Trump’s administration was considering deploying thousands of U.S. troops to reinforce its operation in the Middle East.

Trump told reporters on Thursday that he was not putting troops “anywhere,” but that if was going to, he would not tell journalists.

The sources, who were speaking on the condition of anonymity, did not say what the role of the additional troops would be.

But one of the officials said the troops were departing the West Coast of the United States about 3 weeks ahead of schedule.

The White House and Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The deployments could help provide Trump with additional options as he weighs expanding U.S. operations, with the Iran war well into its third week.

Those options include securing safe passage for oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, a mission that would be accomplished primarily through air and naval forces, the sources said. But securing the Strait could also mean deploying U.S. troops to Iran’s shoreline, said four sources, including two U.S. officials.

Reuters granted the sources anonymity to speak about military planning.

The Trump administration has also discussed options to send ground forces to Iran’s Kharg Island, the hub for 90% of Iran’s ​oil exports, the three people familiar with the matter and three U.S. officials said. One of the officials said such an operation would be very risky. Iran has the ability to reach the island with missiles and drones.

The United States carried out strikes against military targets on the island on March 13 and Trump has threatened to also strike its critical oil infrastructure. However, given its vital role in Iran’s economy, controlling the island would likely be viewed as a better option than destroying it, military experts say.

Any use of U.S. ground troops — even for a limited mission — could pose significant political risks for Trump, given low support among the American public for the Iran campaign and Trump’s own campaign promises to avoid entangling the U.S. in new Middle East conflicts.

Trump administration officials have also discussed the possibility of deploying U.S. forces to secure Iran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

The sources did not believe a deployment of ground forces anywhere in Iran was imminent but declined to discuss specifics of U.S. operational planning. Experts say the task of securing Iran’s uranium stockpiles would be highly complex and risky, even for U.S. special operations forces.

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “There has been no decision to send ground troops at this time, but President Trump wisely keeps all options at his disposal.

“The president is focused on achieving all of the defined objectives of Operation Epic Fury: destroy Iran’s ballistic missile capacity, annihilate their navy, ensure their terrorist proxies cannot destabilize the region, and guarantee that Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon.”

The Pentagon declined to comment.

The discussions come as the U.S. military continues to attack Iran’s navy, its missile and drone stockpiles and its defense industry.

The U.S. has carried out more than 7,800 strikes since launching the war on Feb. 28 and damaged or destroyed more than 120 Iranian vessels so far, according to a factsheet released on Wednesday by the U.S. Central Command, which oversees the roughly 50,000 U.S. troops in the Middle East.

US casualties

Trump has said his goals go beyond degrading Iran’s military capabilities and could include securing safe passage through the strait and preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

Ground forces could help broaden his options to address those goals, but carry significant risk. Even without any direct conflict in Iran, 13 U.S. troops have been killed so far in the war and about 200 have been wounded, although the vast majority of the injuries have been minor, the U.S. military says.

For years, Trump has railed against his predecessors for getting involved in conflicts and has vowed to keep the United States out of foreign wars. But more recently he has refused to rule out the possibility of “boots on the ground” in Iran.

A senior White House official told Reuters that Trump has various options for acquiring Iran’s nuclear material but has not decided how to proceed. “Certainly there are ways in which it could be acquired,” the official said, adding: “He hasn’t made a decision yet.”

In written testimony to lawmakers on Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Iran’s nuclear enrichment program had been obliterated by strikes in June and the entrances to those underground facilities had been “buried and shuttered with cement.”

The sources said the discussions on U.S. reinforcements go beyond the arrival of an Amphibious Ready Group next week in the Middle East, with an attached Marine Expeditionary Unit that includes more than 2,000 Marines.

But one of the sources noted that the U.S. military was losing a significant number of forces with the decision to send the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier to Greece for maintenance after a fire on board the vessel.

Trump has also oscillated on whether the U.S. should secure the Strait of Hormuz.

After initially saying the U.S. Navy could escort vessels, he called on other countries to help open the key water way. With little interest from allies, Trump on Wednesday mused about simply leaving.

“I wonder what would happen if we ‘finished off’ what’s left of the Iranian Terror State, and let the Countries that use it, we don’t, be responsible for the so called ‘Strait?,’” Trump posted on Truth Social.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, Erin Banco and Gram Slattery; additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Don Durfee and Rosalba O’Brien)

The U.S. military’s Central Command said the vast majority of those wounded had suffered minor injuries and 180 troops had already returned to duty. Ten of the injuries are serious, it said.

Troops had been injured in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq, and Israel, Central Command added.

Thirteen U.S. troops have been killed since Iran launched strikes against U.S. military bases following ⁠the start of the conflict on Feb. 28.

Iranian attacks have also struck diplomatic missions, hotels and airports, and damaged energy infrastructure in Arab Gulf states.

Last week, Reuters reported that as many as 150 U.S. troops had been wounded in the conflict, highlighting the danger from Iranian strikes.

The United States, meanwhile, has carried out strikes against more than 7,000 targets in Iran.

About a dozen MQ-9 drones have been destroyed in the war, said a U.S. official on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle can loiter at altitudes of around 50,000 feet for more than 27 hours, gathering intelligence with sophisticated cameras, sensors and radars.

The Reaper, which entered service with the U.S. Air Force 16 years ago, can be equipped with weapons such as air-to-ground missiles.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Rosalba O’Brien)

Tech Sgt. Ashley B. Pruitt, 34, hailed from a large family in Bardstown, Kentucky, and was “very, very” proud of her military career, her husband Gregory Pruitt said Sunday.

“I’ll give you something brief: in a word, radiant,” he said in a phone interview, trying to hold back tears. “If there was a light in the room, she was it.”

Survivors include the couple’s 3-year-old daughter and Sgt. Pruitt’s stepson.

Pruitt joined the military nine years ago and had previously deployed overseas three times. She had nearly 900 combat flight hours and two associate degrees from the Community College of the Air Force.

Most recently, she had served with the 99th Air Refueling Squadron from Sumpter Smith Joint National Guard Base in Birmingham, Alabama. She was an assistant flight chief of operations and was an instructor in operating the boom on the KC-135, which refuels other planes in midair so they can fly longer distances and sustain operations without landing.

A crash in friendly airspace

The aircraft was supporting operations against Iran on Thursday in “friendly” airspace when an unspecified incident involving another aircraft occurred, according to U.S. Central Command. The other plane landed safely, U.S. military officials said. The crash is being investigated.

The U.S. military identified the crash victims late Saturday. Three were connected to the Sumpter Smith base and the 6th Air Refueling Wing at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, and the other three were out of an Ohio Air National Guard base in Columbus.

“To lose a member of the Air Force family is excruciatingly painful, especially to those who know them as son, daughter, brother, sister, spouse, mom, or dad,” U.S. Air Force Col. Ed Szczepanik, commander of the 6th Air Refueling Wing, said in a news release. “To lose them at the same time is unimaginable.”

Maj. Gen. Matthew S. Woodruff, the Ohio adjutant general, called the three from Columbus “remarkable Airmen whose service and commitment embodied the very best of our Ohio National Guard.”

The Congressional Research Service says the Air Force last year had 376 KC-135s, including 151 on active duty, 163 in the Air National Guard and 62 in the Air Force Reserve. It has been in service for more than 60 years.

‘I will see him in the smile of our son’

Capt. Seth R. Koval, 38, was an instructor pilot for the KC-135R Stratotanker with 19 years of service, according to the Ohio National Guard.

A resident of Stoutsville, Ohio, he was an aircraft commander with the 121st Air Refueling Wing out of Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base in Columbus. The military said he had trained pilots in air refueling, aeromedical, cargo and passenger operations.

“He grew up dreaming about becoming a pilot and to stand beside him as he made his dreams come true was an honor,” Koval’s wife, Heather, said in a family statement posted on Facebook.

Koval’s wife described him as an amazing husband, father, son, brother, friend and airman who was a loving, generous “fixer of all things.” The most important thing about him was that Jesus was his lord and savior, she said.

“I will see him in the smile of our son and carry him with me in every moment,” she wrote.

Koval was from Mooresville, Indiana, according to the U.S. government. He had a bachelor’s degree in aviation operations from Purdue University and deployed five times in the past 12 years. Koval had more than 2,000 flight hours, including 443 in combat, the Ohio Guard said. He was promoted to captain in 2022.

A life defined by service, generosity and love

Capt. Curtis J. Angst, 30, was in the military for a decade after getting a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Cincinnati. He enlisted in the Ohio Air National Guard in 2015, with deployments in 2015 and this year.

“He was doing what he loved most — flying and serving alongside the men and women he cared so deeply about,” his family said in a statement posted on Facebook by his wife, Mary.

Angst’s family said his life was defined by service, generosity and “a genuine love for people.” They described his passion for travel, the outdoors and music, and said he made others feel welcome and valued with “his constant smile and instantly recognizable laugh.”

“Those who knew Curtis remember his steady kindness and the joy he carried with him everywhere he went,” the family said.

Angst was a KC-135R pilot with the 166th Air Refueling Squadron and lived in Columbus. A statement about his death from the federal government indicated he was from Wilmington, Ohio. He had 880 flight hours, including 67 combat hours. He was promoted to captain in November.

A new father and a new major

Maj. John A. “Alex” Klinner, 33, had just been promoted to major in January and had been deployed less than a week when the crash occurred, his brother-in-law said.

The pilot left behind three small children: 7-month-old twins and a 2-year-old son, according to his brother-in-law, James Harrill.

Klinner was a graduate of Auburn University and an eight-year U.S. Air Force veteran from Birmingham, Alabama. He had just moved with his family into a new home, his wife Libby Klinner said in an Instagram post mourning his death.

He was the chief of squadron standards and evaluations at the Birmingham air base.

An outdoorsman who enjoyed hiking, Klinner was also ready to help others. When Harrill last saw him in January, Klinner had shoveled Harrill’s vehicle out of the snow during a family wedding.

“Alex was one of those guys that had this steady command about him,” said Harrill, of Atlanta, who helped set up a GoFundMe site for Klinner’s family. “He was literally one of the most kindest, giving people.”

Libby Klinner said in a post that her heart is broken for their children, who will grow up not knowing their father.

“They won’t get to see firsthand the way he would jump up to help in any way he could,” she wrote. “They won’t see how goofy and funny he was. They won’t witness his selflessness, the way he thought about everyone else before himself. They won’t get to feel the deep love he had for them.”

He deployed four times since 2019 and had put in 362 combat hours and 181 combat support hours.

A man with a ready smile

Tech Sgt. Tyler Simmons, 28, served with the Ohio Air National Guard’s 166th Air Refueling Squadron as a boom operator, according to his Air Force biography.

His mother, Cheryl Simmons, said Saturday that she was making funeral plans for her son, who lived in Columbus.

In a statement obtained by WCMH-TV in Columbus, Tyler Simmons’ family said they were saddened beyond measure.

“Tyler’s smile could light up any room, his strong presence would fill it. His parents, grandparents, family and friends are grief stricken for the loss of life,” they said.

Simmons joined the Air Force in 2017 and earned an associate degree from the Community College of the Air Force. He became a refueling specialist in 2022 and was made a technical sergeant in 2023. He deployed three times in the past decade and had 230 combat hours.

Pilot with Birmingham, Alabama, squadron

Capt. Ariana G. Savino, 31, was a pilot with the 99th Air Refueling Squadron, serving as its chief of current operations. She was responsible for the flying hour program and managing daily flight scheduling, among other duties.

Savino, from Covington, Washington, was a product of the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Central Washington University, earning an active duty commission in 2017.

She served at bases in Georgia and Mississippi and had more than 300 combat hours. She was made captain in 2021.

Writing on Truth Social, Trump said that at his direction, Central Command “executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island.”

The president said he refrained from wiping out the oil infrastructure on the island, but warned, “should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision.”

Details of exactly what happened on Kharg Island remain unclear but the military gambit outlined by Trump appears to come, at least in part, in response to an earlier statement from Iran’s newly appointed supreme leader, saying that the Islamic Republic would seek to keep the Strait of Hormuz blocked.

Mojtaba Khamenei made the defiant order in a written statement that was read out on Iranian state television. He has yet to be seen in public since being elevated to his current role after his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed on Feb. 28.

More than a dozen ships have reportedly been attacked in the Persian Gulf since the start of the conflict. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which declared that any vessel attempting to pass through the strait would be targeted, has claimed responsibility for several of those ambushes.

The supreme leader described the siege of the shipping channel as a “lever” to exert pressure on the nation’s adversaries. The strait is a vital maritime artery, carrying roughly 20% of the world’s petroleum liquids and liquefied natural gas trade.

By snarling shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has sent Brent crude oil futures soaring past $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022, up from approximately $70 before the war began.

Experts say the Iranian strategy, if not effectively countered, is capable of sowing chaos in the Gulf — with serious ramification for the wider world.

“These strikes target commercial vessels regardless of flag or ownership, including neutral of third-party ships and those connected to Gulf neighbors, fueling widespread fear and uncertainty,” Scarlett Suarez, a senior intelligence analyst at Dryad Global, a maritime research firm, said in an interview with Military Times. “Disruption is achieved through indiscriminate asymmetric attacks.”

During the 1980s “Tanker War” phase of the Iran-Iraq War, the Islamic Republic mined waters in and around the Strait of Hormuz. In 1988, an Iranian mine severely damaged the guided-missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts in the Persian Gulf, prompting a major American retaliation, known as Operation Praying Mantis, in which several Iranian vessels and two oil platforms were destroyed.

Tehran’s strategy relies on asymmetric naval warfare, oscillating between the use of fast-attack boats, unmanned vessels, drones, shore-based missile batteries and an array of sea mines.

“It’s a multidimensional threat,” Ret. Navy Capt. Bill Hamblet, now the U.S. Naval Institute’s editor-in-chief of “Proceedings,” told Military Times. “Finding the mines, clearing the mines, that’s a slow, methodical, mechanical process. And then protecting the mine-clearing operation from the other threats that could come out while they are trying to do that.”

Hamblet explained that these additional threats include not only drones and missiles, but also small, nimble attack craft.

“They arm them up with either small missiles or machine guns, and those boats can go at up to 50 knots. So, you need to be able to defend against those threats while clearing mines or escorting merchant ships,” he said.

The Islamic Republic possesses between 5,000 and 6,000 naval mines, according to a congressional report released in 2025. The arsenal includes limpet mines, which are attached directly to a ship’s hull; moored mines, which float beneath the surface and detonate on contact; and bottom mines, which rest on the seafloor and explode when they detect a passing vessel.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, in a briefing at the Pentagon on Friday, told reporters there is “no clear evidence” that Iran has placed new mines in the Strait of Hormuz.

“As the world is seeing, they are exercising sheer desperation in the Strait of Hormuz,” he said. “Something we’re dealing with, we have been dealing with it.”

Hegseth added: “Don’t need to worry about it.”

“We know the new so-called, not-so-supreme leader, is wounded and likely disfigured,” Hegseth told reporters during a press briefing. He described Khamenei’s first public statement since his elevation — delivered as a written message read aloud on Iranian state television — as “a weak one,” underscoring that the supreme leader did not appear on video or release an audio recording.

Khamenei has remained out of view since his selection on Sunday by Iran’s clerical establishment. In his missive, he vowed to “avenge the blood” of Iranians killed in the strikes.

Hegseth asserted American and Israeli forces have hit more than 15,000 targets since the war with Iran began, and he pledged the U.S. would escalate its bombing campaign even further on Friday.

“Today will be, yet again, the highest volume of strikes that America has put over the skies of Iran,” he said. ”The number of sorties, the number of bomber pulses. Ramping up, and only up."

Hegseth said that just one percent of the weapons expected to be used in the ongoing campaign will be the costly long-range standoff munitions which are among the most expensive armaments in the U.S. arsenal.

The rest, he said, will be conventional weapons, of which the U.S. has “a plethora.” The comment appeared aimed at quelling concerns that the war has rapidly depleted critical American munitions stockpiles.

“We are on plan to defeat, destroy, disable all of their meaningful military capabilities,” Hegseth continued. “They also don’t have the ability to build more.”

Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed Hegseth’s promise that the U.S. was in the process of conducting its heaviest day of kinetic fires. But he cautioned, “This mission remains complex, dangerous and difficult — and every service member has a family waiting for them to return home."

Soon after the briefing, Central Command confirmed that all six U.S. service members aboard an Air Force KC-135 refueling aircraft were killed after it crashed in Iraq on Thursday while supporting operations in Iran.

“The circumstances of the incident are under investigation,” CENTCOM wrote in a post on X. “However, the loss of the aircraft was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire.”

The deaths bring the number of U.S. service members killed in operations related to Epic Fury to at least 13.