US Air Force

The US Air Force is the primary strike Arm of Operation Epic Fury, which launched on 28 February 2026. In the first four weeks alone, USAF and Coalition aircraft fired more than 1,000 JASSM-ER Cruise Missiles against Iranian air defence networks, Ballistic missile infrastructure, and hardened command centres. The campaign has also seen B-52 Stratofortress bombers fly overland strike missions inside Iran for the first time in the conflict, and the EA-37B Compass Call electronic warfare aircraft make its first combat deployment, accelerated to patch a battle management gap left by degraded AWACS coverage. On 3 April 2026, an F-15E Strike Eagle of the 494th Fighter Squadron became the first US aircraft lost in combat over western Iran; one crew member was rescued after a 36-hour evasion. Despite striking over 12,300 targets and destroying 155 Iranian vessels, the Air Force had not achieved air dominance, with Iranian defences continuing to down US aircraft.

On 17 June 2026, the Air Force awarded the first funded Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) production contracts to Anduril (FQ-44A) and General Atomics (FQ-42A), excluding Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman from the franchise. The FY2027 budget request carries $1.4 billion for development and approximately $1 billion for procurement, targeting 150+ autonomous combat aircraft at under $30 million each by end of decade. The exclusion of the legacy primes is the sharpest industrial-policy signal in US combat aviation procurement in decades.

The JASSM-ER drawdown from the Iran campaign, consuming an estimated 2.5 years of planned production each month, has stripped Pacific Command of its primary long-range deterrence munition, reshaping US strategic posture globally. The CCA programme is partly a response to this tension: autonomous aircraft at under $30 million per unit are a structural hedge against the attrition costs that the Iran campaign has exposed in high-end crewed aviation.