Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Masiello, who took over the F-35 Joint Program Office last July, testified before an open session of the Airland Subcommittee as the program defends a fiscal 2027 request that bundles more than $13 billion for the jet in fiscal 2027 alone. The request includes a buy of 85 U.S. aircraft and full funding for the Block 4 modernization effort and the engine core upgrade.

This hearing marks the first time the F-35 program’s leader has appeared before the subcommittee since 2016. Since then, the fleet has grown from 170 aircraft to more than 1,300.

In his written testimony, Masiello pointed to a sustainment system that was originally built to support 700 to 800 aircraft, well short of the fleet now flying.

“If I have over 1,300 operational aircraft out there, I believe we have set and enabled a sustainment system for about 7 to 800,” he said. “So there is our challenge in readiness.”

The hearing comes on the heels of a Government Accountability Office report this month that found just one in four F-35s were fully mission capable (FMC), meaning able to fly all assigned missions. Overall mission capable rates of jets able to fly at least one mission fell from 67% in fiscal 2021 to 44%.

Masiello put the program’s mission capable rate at 56%, above GAO’s 44%, a gap he ascribed to methodology. He stopped short of contesting the GAO’s FMC figure, but emphasized that “context matters,” arguing the discrepancy results from how his program defines mission capable.

Partially dragging down the FMC rate is the acceptance of incomplete jets. Pressed by ranking member Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., Masiello confirmed the Marine Corps has accepted six F-35Bs with no radar installed, opting instead to wait for a newer APG-85 radar.

When Kelly asked whether an F-35 with no radar could be considered FMC, Masiello conceded, “I don’t think I would count them as fully mission capable,” adding that he would discuss the radar’s capability in more detail in the closed session that followed.

Masiello blamed years of underbuying spare parts as the fleet grew, not a broken system. In response, the program has launched what it calls the Global Support Solution Reset, a roughly $13.7 billion effort through 2031 that targets five problem areas including spares, depot capacity and maintenance plans.

“It’s not a systemic issue with the system having the ability,” he said. “It’s the fact that we didn’t put enough parts and pieces on the shelf, and we’ve increased the demand exponentially with the number of aircraft fielded, and we didn’t do the same thing with the spare parts and the system.”

Asked what is most responsible for keeping jets from FMC status, Masiello pointed to software issues and the jet’s canopies, whose limited lifespan he called a particular problem on a low-observable jet.

The modernization track is running behind as well. The full Block 4 suite, once due in 2026, is now years off. Masiello said the program has fielded 22 of 55 planned Block 4 capabilities, the suite of new sensors, electronic warfare and weapons meant to keep the jet ahead of modern air defenses. The program fielded seven of those in last year’s software upgrade, with another six due this summer.

Contributing to modernization delays are the jet’s power and cooling capabilities. The engine core upgrade, slated for fielding in 2031, is meant to power and cool the full Block 4 suite, whose new radar and sensors draw more power and generate more heat than the current jet can handle.

On program accountability, Masiello said in his written statement that the program would revise contracts to carry “meaningful incentives and penalties,” a change GAO has urged for years after finding the program paid Lockheed Martin millions in fees even as readiness slid.

But that isn’t GAO’s only recommendation. GAO has made 46 sustainment recommendations since 2014, including three in this month’s report. As of March, the Pentagon had implemented just 14, leaving most still open a decade later.

Asked by the committee’s newest member, Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., how many of the GAO’s recommendations the program had closed, Masiello wouldn’t commit to a specific number, preferring to note that they were “probably all to some degree in process.”

Despite all the criticism, the jet’s unique capabilities drew high praise from across the aisle. Kelly, a Democrat and former Navy combat pilot, called himself and the committee strong supporters of the F-35 program.

Kelly recalled flying an F-16 against an F-35, noting that he “could not see it on radar even when I’m looking right at it.” But he tied that support to accountability, telling Masiello the program needs to show it can improve readiness and control costs.

Masiello made the same case from the program side, citing the jet’s prominent role in recent operations, including Epic Fury, the U.S. air campaign against Iran. He said operators had told him it was “the only aircraft that can hit some of the targets” those missions required and could “act as a quarterback of that joint force.”

The program’s global reach adds to the sustainment burden. Allied nations own and operate most of the F-35s based in Europe and the Pacific, and they keep buying more.

Masiello said Poland signaled plans to double its 32-jet order during his visit this month, though he had not yet seen a contract. That growing fleet draws on the same global spares pool and sustainment system now straining to keep U.S. jets ready, even as it spreads the program’s cost and industrial base across allied countries.

Masiello warned that funding only part of the fiscal 2027 request would slow the production line and cut deliveries. For now, the readiness fight, modernization and the sustainment reset all hinge on a budget Congress has yet to pass.

The mission capable rate, which measures the percentage of time aircraft can perform at least one of their tasked missions, dropped from 67% in fiscal 2021 to 44% in fiscal 2025, GAO found.

The full mission capable rate, the share of time aircraft can perform all assigned missions, slid from 38% to 25% over the same period.

Air Force officials attributed part of the fiscal 2025 drop to new jets that couldn’t perform their missions because of software delays, along with scarce parts and corrosion problems, according to the report.

“The F-35 is DOD’s most costly weapon system, but it hasn’t met performance goals and costs to sustain the aircraft continue to increase,” GAO wrote in a summary accompanying the report.

The F-35 Joint Program Office’s answer to the decline in readiness is what the office officially calls the Global Support Solution Reset. The strategy, launched in June 2025, aims for an 80% mission capable rate and a 65% full mission capable rate by 2030.

Getting there won’t come cheap: JPO estimates it will take $13.7 billion more than previously planned through fiscal 2031, money the services must request in their annual budgets.

The GSS Reset addresses concerns GAO has flagged for years, including spare parts shortages, maintenance problems and heavy contractor reliance, among other long-running issues.

Only about $2.2 billion of that total is for the GSS Reset, according to the report. The other roughly $11.5 billion covers the gap between what the services had budgeted and what F-35 sustainment actually requires.

JPO officials told GAO that readiness will likely worsen before it improves, and program documentation suggests improvements may not materialize until late 2026 or later.

GAO identified several risks that could keep the GSS Reset from succeeding.

“JPO will be reliant on the private sector to deliver more than $7 billion in additional parts and other material. But capacity constraints persist for key parts,” the report states.

A 2025 study by Lockheed Martin, which builds the F-35 and leads its sustainment alongside engine maker Pratt & Whitney, found 48 parts that the supplier base can’t produce enough of, including canopies, which GAO has previously identified as a top driver of grounded jets.

Costs keep climbing, too, threatening the services’ ability to pay for the Reset. By the mid-2030s, GAO projects the services will face a roughly $1.2 billion annual gap between what their F-35s cost to sustain and what they say they can afford.

Those estimates may understate the problem. GAO noted the fiscal 2027 projections were developed before Operation Epic Fury and may not capture the costs associated with additional flight hours.

Incentives spent on readiness haven’t delivered as intended, GAO found, echoing a Pentagon Inspector General audit published in December.

From 2020 through 2023, the program office paid Lockheed more than $114 million of roughly $269 million in available incentive fees meant to improve full mission capable rates and parts supply, even as both metrics generally stagnated or worsened.

Lockheed’s incentive fees were tied to readiness thresholds. In 19 of 39 performance periods, the JPO and Lockheed adjusted the recorded full mission capable rate upward, citing factors outside the company’s control, such as service-caused delays, which qualified the contractor for higher payments. Had fees been paid on the raw rates alone, GAO estimated Lockheed would have earned roughly half as much.

Pratt & Whitney, the program’s other prime contractor, has met its engine sustainment targets since 2022 after fixing problems GAO flagged in earlier reviews, the report noted.

“Lockheed Martin continues to partner with the Joint Program Office and our industry partners to ensure we are delivering efficient and effective sustainment for the warfighter,” a Lockheed Martin spokesperson said in a statement to Defense News. “We have recently invested more than $2 billion in advanced funding to accelerate spare parts to increase readiness rates across the F-35 fleet.”

The F-35 Joint Program Office concurs with the report’s findings and fully supports its three recommendations, a spokesperson told Defense News.

“Through our Global Support Solution Reset initiative, the JPO remains focused on achieving our 2030 readiness goals and ensuring strict fiscal accountability for every sustainment dollar spent,” the spokesperson said.

GAO also found the F-35 JPO could not produce consistent records of its incentive fee payments. It calculated fees using a formula that differed from the contract without documenting the change, and over the course of GAO’s review, provided three different versions of its incentive fee spreadsheet.

JPO officials told GAO they abandoned the contracted formula because it overstated Lockheed’s performance, and the corrected formula they used paid the company an estimated $3.7 million less than the flawed one would have.

GAO found the incentive problems extend to the current contract, covering 2025 through 2028, which includes no incentives tied to full mission capable rates at all, instead rewarding parts supply metrics with targets GAO found fall below the program’s own goals.

“Until JPO ensures the future use of incentives better achieves desired performance, it risks rewarding contractor performance that does not help meet program goals,” GAO stated.

GAO wants the Pentagon to do three things: build risk mitigation plans for efforts like the GSS Reset, covering technical data access, industry capacity, affordability and alignment with service goals; rethink how it structures contract incentives, possibly including penalties for poor performance; and build a reliable system for tracking what it pays in incentive fees and why.

GAO has now made 46 recommendations on F-35 sustainment since 2014. As of March 2026, the Pentagon had implemented 14.

The Pentagon did not provide formal comments on the report but said in draft comments that it agreed with the recommendations, according to GAO.

Despite the program’s readiness troubles, the F-35 remains the backbone of America’s fighter fleet. The Pentagon operates more than 800 of the jets and plans to buy about 1,700 more by the mid-2040s, with lifetime U.S. sustainment costs estimated at $1.6 trillion as of 2024.

The May 13 report, “U.S. Aircraft Combat Losses in Operation Epic Fury: Considerations for Congress,” draws on news accounts and statements by the Defense Department and U.S. Central Command to compile the list.

The CRS, the nonpartisan research arm of the Library of Congress, works from open sources and has no access to classified damage assessments.

The CRS authors note their count “may remain subject to revision due to multiple factors, which may include classification, ongoing combat activity, and attribution.”

The first losses came March 1-2, when a Kuwaiti Air Force F/A-18 Hornet mistakenly shot down three F-15E Strike Eagles over Kuwait. All six aircrew ejected and were recovered. The shoot-down occurred during active combat that included attacks from Iranian aircraft, ballistic missiles and drones, CENTCOM said.

A fourth F-15E was shot down over Iran on April 3, with both crew members recovered in separate search-and-rescue operations.

A KC-135 Stratotanker went down over western Iraq on March 12 during a refueling sortie, killing all six aircrew. The crew members are the only fatalities on the CRS list. The loss was not the result of hostile or friendly fire, CENTCOM said. A second KC-135 involved in the same incident landed safely at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel.

The toll on the tanker fleet grew two days later, when Iranian missiles and drones struck Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, damaging five more KC-135s on the ground and bringing total tanker losses to seven.

An F-35A Lightning II took Iranian ground fire over Iran on March 19 and returned to base.

Iran hit Prince Sultan again on March 27, damaging an E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control aircraft. A May 7 Washington Post report cited by CRS said the E-3 had been parked on an unprotected taxiway.

An A-10 Thunderbolt II went down April 3 after taking enemy fire during a search-and-rescue mission. The pilot ejected and was recovered.

Two days later, U.S. forces blew up two MC-130J Commando II special operations aircraft on the ground in Iran during the broader rescue effort for the downed F-15E weapon systems officer, after the transports couldn’t fly out of a forward airstrip. All aircrew were evacuated. An HH-60W Jolly Green II combat search-and-rescue helicopter took small-arms fire during the same mission.

Drones, meanwhile, took the heaviest hit, accounting for 25 of the 42 losses. The list includes 24 MQ-9 Reapers and one MQ-4C Triton lost in a mishap reported April 14.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach told the House Armed Services Committee on May 20 that the Reaper had been the campaign’s standout platform despite the losses.

“Perhaps maybe the most valuable player was unmanned,” Wilsbach said. “No other platform is even close to the MQ-9.”

Notable gaps and omissions

Multiple outlets reported the E-3 was not just damaged but destroyed. Photos of tail 81-0005 published days after the March 27 strike showed the rear fuselage burned through, with debris scattered around the airframe.

The Jerusalem Post and Air & Space Forces Magazine both called the airframe a write-off. The Air Force operated only 16 E-3s before the war began, six of them deployed to Prince Sultan.

The HH-60W count is also likely low. At his April 6 news conference, Joint Chiefs Chairman Air Force Gen. Dan Caine described two helicopters in the rescue flight taking fire, with a crew member on the trailing aircraft suffering a minor injury. The Aviationist noted the account suggests both airframes were hit, not one.

The report does not list any AH/MH-6 Little Birds. Between two and four Little Birds operated by the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment were intentionally destroyed at the same Iranian airstrip where the two MC-130Js were demolished in place, The War Zone reported in early April, and photos geolocated by open-source analysts showed the burned-out helicopters next to the C-130 wreckage.

The 160th SOAR operates under U.S. Special Operations Command, and the absence of a DoD or CENTCOM statement on the Little Birds may explain why none appear in the CRS list.

Cost of war continues to climb

Acting Pentagon Comptroller Jules Hurst told the House Appropriations defense subcommittee on May 12 that the cost of operations in Iran has risen to $29 billion, up from the $25 billion figure he provided April 29.

“So, at the time of testimony from the ask, it was $25 billion, but the joint staff team and the comptroller team are constantly looking at that estimate, and so now we think it’s closer to $29 [billion],” Hurst told Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif.

Hurst blamed the increase on “updated repair and replacement of equipment costs and also just general operational costs keep people in theater.”

The figure does not include the cost of repairing damaged air bases and other U.S. installations in the region.

The increase would mark the largest single-year F-35 buy from the Pentagon since fiscal 2022 and a sharp reversal from last year’s reduced procurement.

The headline number depends on Congress passing a separate funding bill. Only 32 of the 85 requested aircraft are funded through the base discretionary budget. The remaining 53 are tied to a $350 billion mandatory funding request that the administration plans to pursue through a second reconciliation bill, alongside the $1.15 trillion base topline.

That bill has not yet been introduced.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has acknowledged that a second reconciliation bill could be a tough sell, and some House Republicans have pushed back on the idea after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act cleared Congress last year.

If the bill fails, the F-35 buy could plummet to 32 aircraft, below even the fiscal 2026 baseline of 47.

As proposed, the 85-aircraft buy breaks down to 38 F-35As for the Air Force, 37 F-35Cs for the Navy and Marine Corps, and 10 F-35Bs for the Marine Corps, according to the Department of War’s FY2027 Procurement Programs (P-1) book. The total program cost runs to roughly $21.4 billion across all three variants, according to budget justification documents.

The request also targets long-running problems with the program. A $324 million line inside the mandatory funding request would accelerate procurement of 200 Block 4 modification kits, advancing the first fleet delivery from fiscal 2031 to fiscal 2030.

Block 4, the upgrade package that adds new sensors, weapons integration, and electronic warfare capability, has slipped roughly five years from the original schedule. Much of the delay traces to hardware problems with the Technology Refresh 3 processor, the brains behind the Block 4 software.

The budget also targets the readiness problems that have plagued the aircraft. The F-35 fleet averaged a roughly 50% mission-capable rate in fiscal 2024, meaning that fewer than half of the aircraft were ready for combat at any given time. That figure falls well short of the program’s 65% availability target.

Acting Pentagon Comptroller Jules Hurst last week told reporters that the F-35 had been “underfunded in the past as part of the budget” and said the fiscal 2027 request is structured to drive that rate higher.

Service-by-service, the Air Force absorbs the largest share of the joint buy. The 38 F-35As requested by the Air Force are 14 more than the 24 funded in fiscal 2026. Combined with 24 F-15EXs sought in the same budget request, the Air Force’s total fighter buy reaches 62, still 10 shy of the 72-aircraft annual minimum National Guard generals told Congress this month is the floor for stopping the fleet from “actively shrinking.”

The Department of the Navy’s request doubles last year’s F-35 buy: 37 carrier-variant F-35Cs for Navy and Marine Corps squadrons, and 10 short takeoff and vertical landing F-35Bs for the Marine Corps. The increase comes after years of slower naval F-35 buys.

The maritime buy aligns with a 2025 Marine Corps aviation plan that cut the service’s planned F-35B fleet from 353 to 280 aircraft while raising its F-35C objective from 67 to 140. The shift moves the Marine F-35 force toward squadrons aboard Navy aircraft carriers rather than amphibious assault ships.

The proposed joint force F-35 budget request has not silenced critics of the procurement rate, with one taking direct aim at the Air Force.

Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, told Air & Space Forces Magazine the 38 F-35A figure represents “budget triage” rather than a serious recapitalization rate.

He argued the Air Force needs to buy even more F-35As to modernize its fleet.

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.

Two weeks earlier, on March 13, five KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft were damaged on the flight line, two U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal, as reported by Military Times.

Since Feb. 28, Iran has struck radar systems, satellite communications and mission-critical aircraft at at least seven U.S. bases across Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The attacks have focused on infrastructure that U.S. forces depend on to detect threats, refuel aircraft and direct air operations in the region.

By late March, Iranian missile and drone launches had dropped more than 90% since the conflict began, according to U.S. Central Command. Meanwhile, the attacks that persist have zeroed in on radar sites, SATCOM terminals, tankers and now an AWACS.

Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, said the pattern points to deliberate targeting, rather than opportunism. The strikes are systematic and target three “distinct functional categories,” she said, including radar and communications infrastructure, aerial refueling tankers and now the AWACS.

“Each is a critical enabler of U.S. air operations,” Grieco told Defense News. “That’s not random. That’s a target set derived from an understanding of how U.S. airpower functions and where it is most exposed. The pattern suggests deliberate doctrine, or something close enough to it, not opportunism.”

Joe Costa, director of the Atlantic Council’s Forward Defense program and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for plans and posture, said Iran’s targeting approach makes tactical sense.

“It’s much easier to hit stationary infrastructure on the ground than planes flying in the air,” Costa said. “The U.S. has a dynamic process to quickly reallocate global resources to mitigate risks to troops and the mission, but the real cost is the cumulative impacts this operation will have on long-term readiness for other U.S. priorities.

“The more assets we use and lose now, the less will be available later until maintenance cycles, repairs and new purchases are complete.”

Strikes on communications, missile defense infrastructure

Iran’s retaliatory campaign targeted communications infrastructure from the opening hours of the conflict.

On Feb. 28, an Iranian drone struck Naval Support Activity Bahrain, home of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet. Satellite imagery later obtained by The New York Times showed damage to large SATCOM terminals at the installation.

Satellite imagery also confirmed damage to the AN/FPS-132 phased array early warning radar in Qatar, with at least one of the system’s three arrays struck in the opening days of the conflict, according to Planet Labs imagery obtained by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Similar strikes hit radar facilities at Al Ruwais and Al Sader in the UAE, according to satellite imagery reported by The War Zone.

Qatar purchased the AN/FPS-132 radar system from the U.S. in 2013 for $1.1 billion. The Iranian drones used to strike it cost an estimated $20,000 to $60,000 per unit.

CENTCOM and Space Force Public Affairs directed Defense News to previously released operational updates and declined to comment further about the strikes.

The targeting also extended to missile defense infrastructure.

Satellite imagery confirmed the AN/TPY-2 radar for a U.S. THAAD battery at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan was struck and apparently destroyed in the opening days of the conflict, later confirmed by a U.S. official. The AN/TPY-2 is the primary sensor for the THAAD system. Without it, a THAAD battery cannot independently search for or track targets.

An already waning E-3 fleet

The damage to the Prince Sultan E-3 on March 27 comes at a time when the fleet is already stretched thin. The Air Force’s E-3 inventory has dwindled to 16 aircraft, the last delivered by Boeing in 1992.

In fiscal 2024, the fleet posted a mission-capable rate of 55.68%, according to Air Force data reported by Air & Space Forces Magazine, meaning fewer than nine aircraft were operationally available on any given day.

As of March 26, the Atlantic Council’s Forward Defense program, which tracks U.S. military assets committed to Operation Epic Fury, estimated that between 66% and 75% of the available E-3 fleet was deployed to the theater.

Air & Space Forces Magazine, which reviewed imagery of the damaged aircraft, reported the extent of the damage likely renders the E-3 unrepairable.

Grieco said the near-term impact is real, but manageable. Prior to the damage, six aircraft were forward-deployed, and the theater was operating “at the margins of what continuous battle management coverage requires,” she told Defense News.

“Five aircraft means accepting either a single continuous orbit or periodic gaps when a second cannot be regularly sustained. In those gaps, the air picture degrades, air battle management is less effective and the theater’s ability to coordinate a complex, multi-aircraft operation becomes significantly more constrained,” she said.

“The United States could send another E-3 to the theater,” Grieco added, “but there are only 15 left in the entire fleet — and every one deployed to the Middle East is one less available everywhere else.”

Philip Sheers, an associate fellow in the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security, said the loss emphasizes the burden on the airborne battle management fleet. About half of the 16-aircraft E-3 fleet is mission capable, he said, and with six in the Middle East, only two or three remain for other needs.

“There is very little slack remaining for flexibility and adjustment, and that places a huge burden on the remaining fleet as well as other systems to fill in the gaps, potentially at the expense of other priorities,” Sheers said.

A ‘massive alarm bell’ for air defense

A March 2026 report by the Center for a New American Security warned that proposed alternatives to dedicated airborne battle management aircraft, including space-based sensors and fighter-based networks, are either longer-term technological prospects, unproven at battle management or highly vulnerable, and should be treated as complements rather than substitutes.

Replacing the airborne capability will take time.

The Pentagon moved to cancel the E-7 Wedgetail program in its fiscal 2026 budget request, citing cost growth, from $588 million to $724 million per aircraft, as well as survivability concerns in contested airspace. Congress reversed the decision, preserving the program in the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act and blocking further E-3 retirements until enough Wedgetails are in service.

According to the Government Accountability Office, the E-7’s first flight has slipped to May 2027, with full operational capability now projected for the early 2030s. Space-based systems proposed by the Pentagon as a longer-term alternative face a similar timeline, according to Space Force officials.

Near-term, Sheers said the loss will increase operational strain on the remaining E-3s and could result in increased dependence on carrier-based E-2 Hawkeyes and the Australian E-7 Wedgetail.

“The demand for airborne sensing to manage cruise missile and drone threats is not going anywhere,” he told Defense News. “Medium and long-term, this all bodes very poorly for E-3 readiness and highlights the need for DoD and Congress to resource a real solution to the shrinking and aging E-3 fleet.”

The KC-135 tanker fleet faces parallel pressures. Already cannibalizing parts from the boneyard, the Cold War-era jets have absorbed repeated strikes.

In addition to the five KC-135s damaged at Prince Sultan on March 13, multiple refueling aircraft were also hit in the March 27 strike, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Costa pointed to broader implications that outlast the current conflict.

“The continued use and possible reallocation of high-demand, low-density assets like air defense systems will impact readiness for other U.S. global priorities,” Costa said. “That’s the real strategic tradeoff.”

Sheers said the conflict should serve as a warning well beyond the Middle East.

“The entirety of this conflict should be a massive alarm bell on the need for passive defenses, not just for U.S. forces in the Middle East, but over the homeland where drone incursions are increasingly frequent, and especially in the Indo-Pacific, where the Chinese missile threat is orders of magnitude larger and more difficult to suppress,” he told Defense News.

“Airbase vulnerability has been an issue for decades, and the drumbeat of independent analysis on this issue could not be louder,” he added. “If DoD doesn’t take these events as a wake-up call, we are setting ourselves up for disaster in a future great power conflict.”

Grieco suggested the effects may already be rippling through the campaign in ways that don’t show up in publicly available strike counts.

Those “less visible metrics” include tanker availability, AWACS coverage gaps and stockpile constraints, she said.

“If Iran’s strikes on radar and communications infrastructure are compressing warning times and creating gaps in the missile defense network, that’s operationally significant even if no additional aircraft are destroyed,” she said.

“The threshold for material degradation isn’t a single dramatic loss. It’s the accumulation of constraints that make the campaign more expensive, less flexible and less effective over time. We may already be past it in ways that won’t be visible until the campaign’s operational history is written.”

The Partnership’s Public Service Viewpoint Survey — conducted after the Office of Personnel Management canceled the statutorily required Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, or FEVS — recorded a government-wide Employee Engagement and Satisfaction Index Score of 32 out of 100. The survey was fielded from Nov. 10 to Dec. 19, 2025, and received 11,083 responses from employees at 17 large agencies and 13 midsize agencies.

Among major DOD components, the Army posted the highest score at 48.1, Air Force civilians scored 38.5, and Navy and Marine Corps civilians scored 36.4, according to the Partnership’s data dashboard. Those figures are down from 70.3, 67.0, and 68.1, respectively, in the Partnership’s 2024 Best Places to Work rankings.

The Partnership cautioned that “significant differences still exist between the PSVS and FEVS,” and that results “should not be directly compared with the results of previous federal employee surveys.”

More than 58% of respondents government-wide reported that their engagement had worsened compared with late 2024.

Only 9.1% of Army civilians agreed that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s political leadership team generates high levels of motivation in the workforce. Just 22.5% of federal employees overall said they were confident they could report suspected wrongdoing without fear of retaliation. More than 95% of respondents said it remains important that their work contributes to the public good.

Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, told Military Times that while DOD components posted the highest scores among large agencies surveyed, the results remain alarming.

“The scores were still alarmingly low, and uncover a workforce that has drastically less confidence in their political leadership and workplace performance compared to a year ago,” Stier said.

Stier added that the timing of the survey, which followed major 2025 workforce reductions, makes the findings more significant.

“This survey was conducted after the bulk of the federal workforce cuts had taken place, which makes the results even more disturbing,” he told Military Times. “It is likely that those who left were even more demoralized than those who stayed.”

OPM canceled the 2025 FEVS, the first interruption since the survey began in 2002, citing plans to refresh the questions and avoid prohibitive costs. The agency has said the FEVS will resume later in 2026.

DOD’s civilian workforce stood at roughly 694,000 people in early 2026, down from about 795,000 at the start of 2025, according to OPM data cited by Defense One. That included nearly 50,000 departures through the Deferred Resignation Program, with thousands more taking early retirement. About 30,000 positions deemed essential to national security were later refilled.

A Defense Contract Management Agency employee told Federal News Network that budget cuts and staffing shortfalls are undermining the agency’s ability to ensure weapons delivered to warfighters meet all performance requirements.

“We are asked to do more, but cannot,” the employee said. “Something will eventually fail and fail badly.”

An informal Federal News Network pulse poll of 141 current DOD employees conducted this month found rising strain as operational tempo increases. “Leadership has not shown leadership,” one respondent said. “The lack of morale will bite them if/when we need to go to a wartime pace. The workforce will not elevate the level of effort.”

Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson accused Defense One of cherry-picking data and described the Partnership for Public Service as anti-Trump, without specifying which parts of the survey would provide a more complete picture.

In response to the Pentagon’s characterization of the organization as anti-Trump, Stier told Military Times that over the past 20 years, the Partnership has helped leaders across the political spectrum to identify problems and track progress. It conducted the Public Service Viewpoint Survey to fill a “critical data gap on the federal employee experience” that was created with the cancelation of FEVs, he said.

“Good management shouldn’t be partisan. Every leader needs to understand their workforce, and federal agencies are no different,” Stier said. “DOD leadership should pay attention and act on to this very important and troubling data.”

In the Partnership’s press release, Stier said the findings are particularly concerning amid ongoing military operations: “Especially now as the U.S. engages in a new war with Iran, no government can serve or protect the public effectively with such rampant dysfunction.”

In response to a request for comment, the Army referred Military Times to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The Pentagon, Air Force and Navy did not respond to requests as of press time.

The U.K. Ministry of Defence confirmed Saturday that U.S. forces had begun using the British base for “specific defensive operations to prevent Iran firing missiles into the region.”

The BBC reported at least three B-1B Lancers at the base, with the first aircraft arriving the evening of March 6 and two more on March 7.

Aviation tracking outlet The Aviationist reported four arrivals in the initial deployment, followed by a second flight bringing the total to eight B-1Bs in Europe.

According to The Aviationist, three of those aircraft diverted to Ramstein Air Base in Germany after low visibility prevented landing at Fairford following a mission over Iran; five are currently at Fairford.

The B-1B, originally built by Rockwell and now supported by Boeing, is operated by Air Force Global Strike Command and is a supersonic conventional strike aircraft capable of carrying up to 24 AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles internally.

B-1Bs have already played a significant role in the war. According to reports from early briefings, CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper said B-1 and B-2 bombers had carried out pinpoint strikes on missile sites deep inside Iran during the operation’s first 72 hours.

In a March 2 post on X, CENTCOM said the bombers struck deep inside the country “to degrade Iranian ballistic missile capabilities.” At a March 5 press briefing at CENTCOM headquarters, Cooper said that America’s bomber force had struck nearly 200 targets deep inside Iran, including around Tehran, in the preceding 72 hours.

The forward deployment comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that strikes on Iran are “about to surge dramatically.”

On March 4, Hegseth said that the U.S. had gained control of Iranian airspace and was shifting from advanced stand-off weapons to gravity bombs. Basing bombers at Fairford significantly shortens turnaround times compared to flying round-trip missions from the continental United States.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer authorized U.S. use of British bases on March 1 for what he described as a “specific and limited defensive purpose” of destroying Iran’s missiles “at source,” following initial resistance to a request from President Trump. RAF Fairford is the U.S. Air Force’s only dedicated forward operating location for heavy bombers in Europe.

Three B-52H Stratofortress bombers from Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, arrived at Fairford on March 9, the BBC reported, joining the B-1Bs already at the base.

U.S. Air Force Europe declined to confirm or deny the deployments.