Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine disclosed on 19 March that US forces have struck more than 7,000 targets in Iran since operations began on 28 February — an average of roughly 370 per day across 19 days 1. Caine confirmed the continued use of 5,000-pound penetrator weapons against underground coastal missile storage, the same GBU-72 Advanced 5K Penetrator munitions CENTCOM had previously employed against hardened anti-ship missile sites on the Hormuz coastline and Iranian nuclear facilities . Hegseth called 19 March "the largest strike package yet, just like yesterday was" 2.
The 7,000-target figure places this campaign among the most intensive aerial operations in modern US military history. The 2003 Iraq invasion's opening phase struck approximately 1,700 aim points in its first 48 hours. NATO's 78-day air campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 hit roughly 14,000 targets in total. At the current pace, Operation Epic Fury will surpass the Kosovo total within a month — against a country four times Yugoslavia's area, with dispersed and hardened military infrastructure. The phrase "just like yesterday was" carries its own weight: each successive day's sortie count exceeds the one before, and the burn rate of munitions, fuel, and airframe hours is compounding.
Hegseth used the same briefing to deride European allies as "ungrateful" and stated the world "should be saying one thing to President Trump: 'Thank you'" 3. He declined to set "a definitive time frame" for the war 4. The remarks landed hours before seven nations — the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, and Canada — issued a joint statement on Hormuz passage that committed no forces and named no specific contribution. Every country Trump called upon for an escort Coalition had already declined to send warships . His subsequent warning that NATO faces a "very bad future" produced diplomatic statements, not frigates. Hegseth's language is less a diplomatic misstep than a reflection of Washington's position: the US is bearing the operational burden of a Gulf war while the states most dependent on Gulf energy offer rhetorical solidarity.
The combination of escalating operational tempo, a $200 billion funding request facing congressional resistance, allied estrangement, and no articulated end-state defines the campaign's structural problem. Hegseth's refusal to set a timeline directly contradicts Trump's earlier characterisation of the conflict as a "little excursion" and the four-week window he implied at its outset. The IDF has disclosed operational plans through Passover in mid-April with deeper plans extending weeks beyond . Fortune's calculation that $200 billion funds 140 days at the current burn rate 5 assumes that rate holds steady — an assumption Hegseth's own description of daily record-breaking strike packages suggests is already obsolete.
