Essential US AWACS Plane Destroyed Amidst New Iranian Attacks, as US Continues Losing Critical Capability in Region
USS Tripoli has finally arrived in the CENTCOM region, which presumably means somewhere in the northern Arabian Sea. Given that the Lincoln was said to have scurried away to a 1,000km distance, we can only assume the Tripoli will keep a similar range away from Iranian missiles while Trump continues to bide his time with his weak-handed bluffs.
In the meantime, US losses have mounted in the region. Today came the following announcements:
Saudi Arabian Prince Sultan Airbase was hit with many US KC-135s damaged and destroyed:
Pro-IRGC outlets have released satellite imagery showing heavy damage across the main tarmac at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, with large fires still burning in the aftermath of an IRGC missile strike.
Three U.S. Air Force KC-135 tankers were reportedly destroyed, with additional aircraft severely damaged.
But shocking new images have also now revealed that an E-3 AWACS plane worth nearly $300 million (1993 dollars, inflation adjusted to $600-700m today) was also completely destroyed:
Pictures show the total loss of 81-0005, an E-3G “Sentry” Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) Aircraft with the U.S. Air Force’s 552nd Air Control Wing based out of Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, following yesterday’s Iranian ballistic missile and drone attack on Prince Sultan Airbase
By the way, take a look at the accuracy of the hit—right on the radome of the plane, which lies beside it:
Before and after:
New reports claim Russia has been providing Iran with precisely these satellite coordinates for the hits.
Experts believe the AWACS were rushed there in order to make up the radar gap for the strategic-level radars like the AN/TPY-2s that had already been destroyed by Iran—but now even the AWACS are getting smoked, leaving the US increasingly blind.
Remember the existential hubbub surrounding Russia’s A-50s being hit?
Aviation historian and anti-Iran-regimist Babak Tagvhaee remarks on the losses:
The legend himself was not pleased:
Funny how much the Special Combat Operation is starting to resemble the Special Military Operation.
A dozen troops were also wounded in the attack, with two of them “seriously” according to NYT.
Unsourced reports on social media claim one has died, but this has not been verified.
Even NYT admits this was one of the most serious breaches of US air defense in the war:
The combined missile and drone attack amounted to one of the most serious breaches of American air defenses in the course of the monthlong war with Iran.
Let us again be clear about Trump’s current plan:
The plan is to continue bombing Iran to maintain psychological pressure while building up troops in the region as a further pressure lever in the hopes that Iran’s leadership will grow frightened and finally agree to negotiate and compromise. There are no real remaining military objectives left because all the original ones were proven to be impossible to actually implement—i.e. regime change, Iran’s surrender, collapse of the IRGC or wider military structure, societal upheaval, etc.
Now the only operative plan remains to get Iran to negotiate a ceasefire that can look at least mildly favorable to Trump’s optics. The problem is, thus far Iran has continued to maintain absolutely maximalist demands, such as the total removal of all US bases from the region, as well as guarantees of never striking Iran again.
Disregarding the completely unrealistic—and to be frank, childish—ideas about ground troop invasion of Iranian land, we can therefore conclude that Trump’s one final remaining emergency lever will be to massively bomb Iran’s energy infrastructure, a kind of desperate last-ditch hail mary out of spite, the fit of a sadistic sore loser.
But even this is obviously fraught with great risk because:
It will not accomplish anything, due to Iran’s grid decentralization
It will cause an even bigger headache for the US when Iran responds in kind and lights up the entire region’s critical infrastructure to an even greater degree
But the pressure is actually increasing on the US-Israeli Axis powers because the Houthis have now cashed in their promise of opening up a new front with the launch of ballistic missiles onto Israel earlier today.
Likewise, Hezbollah has been ramping up the humiliation of Israeli forces in lower Lebanon with the advent of FPV drones, including those on fiber-optics, which have reportedly taken out many Merkava tanks in the past few days alone, with footage attesting to various hits. The IDF is scrambling to recover after announcing intent to annex southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s retaliation has been so fierce several videos appeared of Israeli mayors of border towns hysterical about the damage that’s been done, and the fact that their settlements are being completely abandoned by fearful Israelis.
Jerusalem Post even whines about the potential collapse of the IDF:
Protests have again erupted in Israeli society against the government’s disastrous wars.
Police are forcibly dispersing hundreds of protesters in Rabin Square, Tel Aviv at a demonstration against the war. The largest demonstration to date, after all previous ones were also dispersed.
All the while, the reality sets in that US and Israel have vastly exaggerated the amount of Iranian launchers they destroyed:
As of this writing another major refinery in Bahrain has gone up in flames:
The IRGC has finally finished off or burned down the largest oil refinery in the Middle East, located in Bahrain
🔘There’s no place left to even assess the damage. The Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO) has acknowledged that the plant has been completely burned out.
🔘BAPCO is essentially the foundation of the national economy and one of the oldest refineries in the Persian Gulf region. The Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO) is Bahrain’s state-owned oil and gas company. The Bapco Refinery has a capacity of 400,000 barrels per day.
Iran’s launches remain steady as US and Israel no longer have any capability to suppress the remaining capacity without heavy risks to their most capable craft:
Some people forget that mobile launchers cannot be hit in the same way as static “positions” or C2 nodes, with long-range stand-off strikes using Tomahawks, etc. These truck-mounted launchers move around and need to be hit directly by something nearby like a plane or drone, rather than a missile which can take an hour or more to traverse the vast Iranian territory needed to reach interior Iran where the launcher is located.
Drones are ideal for this, but Iran has been dangerously attriting the US MQ-9 Reaper fleet of late, with some estimates calculating up to 10% of US’s entire fleet having been destroyed thus far.
The next problem is that given the USS Lincoln’s retreat to 1,000km+ from Iranian shores, most of the aerial assets on the carrier cannot even reach interior Iran as that requires a nearly 4,000km total combat range which none of the Lincoln’s attack craft (F-18s and F-35s) can even come close to.
Sure, they get refueled near the Persian Gulf by aerial tankers right before entering Iran, you say. But this vastly limits sortie counts and strains logistics, not least of which reason being that US’s KC-135 refueler fleet has also now faced accelerating attrition as we have seen earlier. Either way it’s a moot point because these craft are not going to penetrate interior Iran even if they could, simply because it’s far too dangerous and F-35s in passive/stealth mode can’t stray too far from their E-3s which they network and datalink with. Those E-3s definitely can’t get close to Iran’s shores, and now they too are being destroyed as seen earlier.
So, as you can see, the entire chain is being greatly strained which allows Iranian launchers to operate without much issue in the interior of the country, which is also why I believe even the “one third of Iranian launchers destroyed” claim is likely exaggerated. Recall they had claimed to have destroyed 70-90% of them in June 2025, and Iran magically rebuilt them all since then. In reality, very few of them were ever destroyed because the US and Israel simply don’t have the capability to destroy mobile launchers en masse deep inside Iran. Just recall the great ‘Scud hunt’ of the Iraqi war:
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Other related items of note:
A funny thing happened today after Gulf countries made not-so-subtle threats against Iran. UAE in particular was quickly silenced by Iran’s blows. UAE Ministry of Defense reported major attacks against it today:
Which was quickly followed by a statement from UAE’s foreign minister which essentially walks back previous implied threats, claiming they had been “misinterpreted”:
Now they seek a “political solution”. It seems ballistic missiles often have that effect.
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As well as the destroyed AWACS, Iran claims to have hit a P-8 recon craft, with other sources claiming multiple EC-130Hs destroyed:
If true, together these represent major attrition to US’s “eyes in the sky” and ELINT fleets, which blinds US capabilities even further in the region.
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The current status of the US carrier fleet:
It can be seen that very few are available despite needing to be dispersed around the world in all of the US’s most important theaters.
Despite all this, WaPo reports that the Pentagon is still preparing for “weeks” of ground operations as troops continue streaming in to the region:
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Trump must be confident of what those troops can accomplish given that he’s already considering renaming Hormuz after himself:
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Lastly, amidst the ‘major success’ of his Special Combat Operation, Trump presided over an important cabinet meeting on the ongoing operations. It went about as you’d expect:
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Fabulous. Iran is showing the world exactly how to bargain with the US and Israel. There is only one way, consistent destruction, death by a thousand cuts.
In the meantime, the world is on the precipice of a huge energy and base chemical shortage -
45% of global sulphur for sulphuric acid
30% of global helium supply gone for microchip manufacture, medical and superconductor industries
30% of fertilizer and 20% oil.
No matter if the war ends, this is the situation. Time to punish the USA/Israel with sanctions for destabilising the world economy, now if only there was a UN that wasn't corrupted by blackmail...
"...all the original ones were proven to be impossible to actually implement—i.e. regime change, Iran’s surrender, collapse of the IRGC or wider military structure, societal upheaval, etc."
I guarantee the people dreaming up these objectives are sealed within some kind of administrative thought bubble, cut off from the real world.
The same thing happened with Russia: sanction-induced economic collapse, leading to regime change and Putin getting the Gaddafi treatment.
Pure western projection and wishful thinking.
Has that strategy ever actually worked?