Air Force’s ‘NASCAR pit crew’ forced into overdrive by Iran war

The U.S. Air Force‘s maintenance and sustainment efforts will be at full throttle following the war in Iran, where the service had dozens of aircraft damaged or destroyed.

There were at least 42 U.S. aircraft lost or damaged during Operation Epic Fury, a Congressional Research Service report from May revealed. That total has increased since then by at least one after an Army Apache helicopter was downed by an Iranian drone this month and the two pilots were rescued. It also doesn’t include unrelated incidents, like the B-52 Stratofortress that crashed upon takeoff at Edwards Air Force Base in California, killing the crew of eight.

The Air Force lost four F-15E fighter aircraft, three of which were accidentally shot down by Kuwait and one that Iran shot down that led to a desperate search and rescue operation for the pilots, lost one A-10 Thunderbolt II; suffered one damaged F-35A Lightning II fighter aircraft; lost an E-3 sentry airborne early warning and control system aircraft; lost about two dozen MQ-9 Reaper drones; and seven KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling aircraft sustained damage or were destroyed.

All of that is on top of the routine maintenance every aircraft will need following the war.

“It’s going to strain an already burdened maintenance and repair infrastructure within the Air Force,” Diana Maurer, director of the Government Accountability Office’s Defense Capabilities and Management team, told the Washington Examiner. “These are organizations that already are struggling with not enough spare parts, not enough people, challenges completing repairs on time, challenges with the infrastructure they have to complete those repairs. So it’s going to make an already difficult situation even harder.”

Some of the aircraft, like the F-15Es and MQ-9 drones, were shot down either over Iran or in nearby airspace, while several others, like the E-3, were on the ground when they were damaged or destroyed, which raises long-term basing questions.

“Only two crewed combat aircraft were lost in combat operations over Iran, one F-15E and one A-10. The other losses over Iran were uninhabited MQ-9s flying without defensive systems, in high-threat airspace, and for long durations. The remaining losses were due to friendly fire, a midair [crash], and attacks against U.S. aircraft on the ground,” retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula told the Washington Examiner. “Air base defense has been highlighted for decades as a U.S. military deficiency, and the aircraft losses on the ground is prompting a long-overdue, serious examination of basing, dispersal, active and passive defense.”

A KC-135 Stratotanker provides fuel to an F-16 Fighting Falcons near Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, Feb. 2, 2022. The Stratotanker, which first became operation to the Air Force in 1957, remains a steady in-air refueler along with the KC-10 Pegasus. (U.S Air Force photo by Senior Airman Megan Estrada)

" data-large-file="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/KC-135.jpg?w=696" src="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/KC-135.jpg" alt="A KC-135 in the sky." class="wp-image-4625689" srcset="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/KC-135.jpg 700w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/KC-135.jpg?resize=300,200 300w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/KC-135.jpg?resize=150,100 150w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/KC-135.jpg?resize=696,463 696w" sizes="(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px">A KC-135 Stratotanker provides fuel to an F-16 Fighting Falcons near Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea, Feb. 2, 2022. The Stratotanker, which first became operational to the Air Force in 1957, remains a steady in-air refueler along with the KC-10 Pegasus. (U.S Air Force photo by Senior Airman Megan Estrada)

He said the E-3 Sentry, which coordinates theater air operations, will be the hardest to replace after one was destroyed on the ground at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. There were only 16 of them in the service’s fleet prior to the war.

“The hardest aircraft to replace are the ones tied to scarce, high-demand missions,” said Deptula, who is now dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “Accordingly, I would put the E-3 airborne warning and control system at the top of that list. The E-3 makes up a small and aging airborne warning and control fleet, and that mission is central to command and control, airspace management, and wide-area battle management. Losing or heavily damaging even one aircraft can have an outsized operational effect because there are no substitutes that can provide the same combination of capability, endurance, crewed battle management, and theater-level coverage.”

Two of the KC-135s went down over Iraqi airspace, one of which was able to make an emergency landing. The other, however, crashed, and six troops on board were killed. The refueler involved in the fatal crash was the only one of the KC-135s that was destroyed, while the other six are believed to be salvageable, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told lawmakers earlier this month.

During the same hearing, Air Force chief of staff Kenneth Wilsbach said some of the six are already flying after getting repairs, while “the ones that have the more significant damage will take a year or two to get fixed.”

The Air Force is still relying on the KC-135, which has been the primary aerial refueler for the service since it was first deployed 70 years ago in 1956, due to continued problems with its intended successor, the KC-46A Pegasus. The latest budget proposal for the service includes a request of $3.9 billion to buy 15 KC-46A Pegasus tankers, which is an $800 million increase over fiscal 2026, according to budget documents.

Meink told lawmakers it’s “the max rate that Boeing’s able to produce the aircraft, so basically we are producing them as fast as we can with the intent of replacing, again, all the KC-135 in the fleet.”

The service announced last July that it intends to purchase another 75 KC-46 refuelers, but vice chief of staff John D. Lamontagne told lawmakers this March that they won’t finalize the deal with Boeing “until we work through some of those deficiencies.”

The refuelers have had issues with the Remote Vision System for boom operators because the initial version had visibility concerns, the boom telescoping actuator caused problems preventing it from refueling certain aircraft, and there were leaks reported in the fuel system.

“Today, our airmen are meeting the mission, but are always doing so while managing significant strain. We are flying aircraft that, in many cases, are older than airmen who maintain them. We are operating at a high operations tempo across multiple theaters, and doing so while preparing to be ready for any future conflict,” Wilsbach said, later noting that the service is “still flying the same [KC-135s] that we flew when I was a young second lieutenant.”

An F-15E Strike Eagle takes off for a combat flight during Operation Epic Fury, March 16, 2026. (U.S. Air Force photo)

" data-large-file="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/F-15E.jpg?w=696" src="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/F-15E.jpg" alt="An F-15E is seen in flight." class="wp-image-4625696" srcset="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/F-15E.jpg 700w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/F-15E.jpg?resize=300,129 300w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/F-15E.jpg?resize=150,65 150w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/F-15E.jpg?resize=696,299 696w" sizes="(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px">An F-15E Strike Eagle takes off for a combat flight during Operation Epic Fury, March 16, 2026. (U.S. Air Force photo)

He also said the MQ-9 Reaper drone has been a “tremendous capability that we’ve used very well inside of Epic Fury, and they’ve conducted a lot of extremely high-risk missions that we would choose not to put a manned platform in and they’ve been very effective.” Wilsbach added that despite the losses, “we’re not in a crisis with the MQ-9 at the moment.”

Both the House and Senate included a “right to repair” provision in the defense bill this year, which focuses on giving the services more leeway in being allowed to repair their own weapons and equipment instead of relying on the defense contractors that manufacture the specific system to repair them, which “right to repair” supporters argue increases costs and can cause major delays.

“Right to repair is in the House’s final version of the NDAA, and every service that asked us for it is going to get it,” said Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC), a former Green Beret and member of the House Armed Services Committee. “When you are contemplating a protracted conflict in a far-off contested environment, where access to contractors may be limited and rapid organic maintenance is critical to mission success, this is a readiness requirement, not a nice to have. We owe this to the warfighter, we delivered, and I am proud to have fought for it alongside Congresswoman Goodlander.”

Maintainers

Even without a war, the Air Force spends billions of dollars annually to ensure maintainers have everything they need to keep aircraft safe and mission-ready, though there have been multiple government reports about delays, backlogs at depots, and more.

There are three Air Force maintenance depots in the United States, known as Air Logistics Complexes, and they are at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, and Robins Air Force Base in Georgia. These facilities maintain the aircraft the service relies on, including the F-16, F-35, KC-135, C-130, and more.

“There’s the daily flying operations, so every day maintainers go out and they preflight, they launch, they refuel, they arm airplanes, they do that for aircrew training. Especially in the fighter world, there’s a battle rhythm and a level of ops tempo that’s required to maintain aircrew readiness to start with. And so doing that does a lot of things. It trains the aircrew because you don’t want to just have available aircraft, and sometimes availability and reliability are not synonyms, so availability is required for readiness. But availability on its own doesn’t give you readiness, because the aircrew has to be able to employ in a high-threat environment,” retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom Miller, who served as deputy chief of staff for logistics, engineering and force protection, told the Washington Examiner.

“The maintainers in the Air Force have a really tough job. They do incredible work every day. But I’m encouraged that the chief and the secretary have that focus, and they won’t lose focus on that as we go forward and they reset from all the operations,” he added.

Miller, now an executive partner at the strategic adviser firm Elara Nova, compared the Air Force maintainers to a NASCAR pit crew, pointing out that they constantly practice fixing the vehicle so they can do it as quickly as possible during a race.

Maurer, from the GAO, similarly compared maintaining aircraft to taking care of a car. “Sometimes they break down unexpectedly, so you need to be able to have the ability to meet unexpected repair needs. But you also want to do periodic maintenance to ensure that the aircraft can fly, in many cases for decades.”

In fiscal 2019, 31% of aircraft maintenance ran into delays based on their original target date, and that jumped all the way up to 73% in fiscal 2024, according to a recent GAO report. There was, however, a lot of variance between the delays involved in the maintenance for each type of aircraft.

“What we have seen is a decrease in the mission capability, which is how often the Air Force is able, how frequently the Air Force is able to have its planes in the air able to meet mission needs. There are a variety of problems. There are a lot of root causes to that,” said Maurer, who was involved in that report.

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Officials said a major factor in the delays was unplanned work that was not factored into the original time frames. Depots often revise their target completion dates and they have a higher percentage of on-time maintenance completion on those timelines.

The White House submitted a supplemental budget proposal to Congress on Wednesday that called for $67 billion for the Pentagon to cover the cost of the war. The breakdown of the request does not specify how much money would go to aircraft maintenance and repairs, though it did include $17.3 billion for “operational costs,” without specifying what that would cover.