A new Pentagon watchdog report provides the most extensive official accounting yet of the Iran war’s toll, documenting hundreds of damaged or destroyed structures, dozens of aircraft losses, billions of dollars in weapons expenditures and serious bottlenecks in replenishing advanced U.S. munitions.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
Iranian missile and drone attacks have damaged or destroyed hundreds of structures at American military installations across eight Middle Eastern countries while dozens of U.S. aircraft and drones have been lost or damaged during the war, according to the first comprehensive federal watchdog assessment of Operation Epic Fury.
The 44-page report, released Monday by the Department of War inspector general and detailed in reporting on its findings, provides a broader accounting of military losses, weapons consumption, infrastructure damage and logistical strain than the government had previously made public.
The inspector general said U.S. Central Command reported that Iranian attacks damaged or destroyed “hundreds of buildings and structures” at American bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman and Jordan.
The report covers the period through June 30, although some casualty and equipment information was subsequently updated as part of the review. Operation Epic Fury began Feb. 28 as a joint U.S.-Israeli campaign targeting Iranian nuclear, missile, naval and security infrastructure.
The financial scale of the campaign is substantial.
The Department of War estimated Operation Epic Fury had cost approximately $33.4 billion as of June 29. That included $22.3 billion in expended munitions, $7.4 billion in incremental operational obligations and approximately $3.7 billion in equipment losses.
Those figures did not include the eventual cost of repairing damaged military infrastructure, meaning the final expense could be considerably higher.
The report also provides the most detailed official accounting yet of American aircraft losses.
Four F-15E fighters were destroyed, although only one was attributed to enemy fire; three were lost to friendly fire. An F-35A was damaged by Iranian fire over Iran, while an A-10 was jettisoned after sustaining damage while returning from a combat search-and-rescue mission.
Seven KC-135 aerial refueling aircraft were damaged or destroyed. Five were hit on the ground in Saudi Arabia by Iranian munitions, while another two were involved in a collision over Iraq, with one of the aircraft destroyed.
An E-3 airborne early-warning aircraft was damaged on the ground in Saudi Arabia by an Iranian strike. The report also lists damage or losses involving multiple helicopters, an MQ-4C high-altitude drone and as many as 30 MQ-9 intelligence and surveillance drones.
Several of those losses occurred for reasons other than direct Iranian fire. Four AH-6 helicopters, for example, were destroyed by U.S. forces after becoming unrecoverable during rescue operations, while an MH-60 helicopter crashed over the Arabian Sea.
The watchdog nevertheless concluded that the conflict has imposed substantial losses on American air assets while Iranian attacks repeatedly penetrated regional defenses.
The Middle East’s integrated missile-defense network intercepted more than 6,000 Iranian one-way attack drones and more than 1,500 ballistic missiles aimed at U.S. and partner forces, according to the report. Even with that interception rate, sufficient numbers reached their targets to inflict significant damage.
Naval Support Activity Bahrain, a critical U.S. Navy logistics hub and headquarters for the Navy’s 5th Fleet, was among the installations hit.
Iran targeted the Bahrain facility with ballistic missiles and explosive drones, disrupting a logistics network that supports American forces across the region.
CENTCOM was forced to move portions of its supply operation to more distant locations, including the U.S.-British military installation at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. That produced logistics cycles lasting roughly 14 to 18 days for some supplies moving to forces in the Middle East.
Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao described the extent of the destruction bluntly in an interview about the future of the Bahrain installation.
“They blew the hell out of Bahrain,” Cao said.
He said a Navy task force was examining whether and how extensively the installation should be rebuilt to sustain the American military presence in the region.
The watchdog also documented $184 million in damage to U.S. diplomatic facilities in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Those figures are separate from damage to military bases.
Iraq accounted for by far the largest share of diplomatic-property losses at approximately $157.35 million. Kuwait sustained about $14.75 million in damage, Saudi Arabia approximately $11.5 million and the UAE about $125,000.
Mission Iraq endured more than 600 attacks during the reporting period, according to the inspector general. The U.S. Consulate General compound in Erbil suffered damage to multiple buildings, while the embassy in Baghdad and the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Compound were also hit.
The State Department incurred another $113 million in costs related to the Iran conflict by early June, including $79.2 million responding to contingencies such as evacuations.
About 9,000 Americans were assisted in leaving the region, including through 56 government-arranged flights and bus transportation.
The war’s human cost has also continued to rise beyond the period principally covered by the report.
From Feb. 28 through June 30, the inspector general recorded seven U.S. service members killed in action, seven killed in non-hostile incidents and 417 wounded in action. Subsequent Defense Department casualty data expanded the toll to 18 military deaths and more than 750 wounded as fighting continued into the summer.
The watchdog’s review raises another potentially consequential issue: the rate at which the United States is consuming advanced weapons.
The Pentagon’s acquisition office told investigators that Operation Epic Fury had produced “strategic inventory shortfalls” and exposed weaknesses in the defense industrial base’s ability to replenish some munitions at the rate they are being used.
Among the most persistent problems are production of solid rocket motors, availability of high-grade explosives and propellants and recruitment of skilled workers needed for weapons manufacturing.
The report said expanding production capacity requires “significant lead time,” even as the Pentagon attempts to accelerate production lines, expand manufacturing facilities, secure supply chains and work with allies to compensate for depleted inventories.
The Congressional Research Service concluded that the volume and cost of weapons expended during the operation illustrate both Iran’s military scale and the difficulty of striking its dispersed capabilities.
Iran possesses the region’s largest armed forces and has spent decades developing a domestic weapons industry, according to the report.
Tehran has also invested heavily in defensive measures including underground military facilities, widely dispersed weapons inventories, mobile missile launchers and concealment intended to make American targeting considerably more difficult.
Those findings provide more detail than public statements from administration officials, who have repeatedly rejected suggestions that U.S. forces are in danger of running out of weapons.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth dismissed such reports in August.
“We had plenty when we needed it, and we have plenty now,” Hegseth said, while declining to discuss classified information about specific weapons inventories.
President Donald Trump similarly rejected suggestions Monday that American military stockpiles are inadequate.
The United States is “producing more Exquisite and Elite Weapons than at any time in our History,” Trump said, adding that “they are being delivered on a daily basis to our Forces in the Middle East and beyond.”
Trump said production has been increased for Patriot interceptors, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems, Tomahawk cruise missiles and other weapons.
Earlier in September, Trump said the military possessed “virtually unlimited amounts” of what he described as mid- to high-grade munitions and criticized reports suggesting otherwise.
The inspector general’s findings do not state that the U.S. military is unable to continue operations. They do, however, distinguish between having sufficient weapons available for current missions and the longer-term challenge of replacing sophisticated munitions as quickly as they are being consumed.
The report describes the latter as a strategic inventory and industrial-production problem.
That distinction could become increasingly important if the conflict continues.
The United States deployed more than 50,000 service members throughout CENTCOM’s area of responsibility in support of Operation Epic Fury and conducted approximately 36,000 combat sorties and more than 1,800 fire missions during the initial phase of the campaign.
U.S. Transportation Command conducted more than 1,500 air missions supporting the operation, at times running 30 to 40 flights per day directly into the region.
Iran’s response demonstrated the vulnerability of the extensive American military network supporting those operations.
Bases across eight nations were struck, a major logistics hub in Bahrain was disrupted, aircraft were destroyed on the ground and the U.S. was forced to reroute parts of its supply network thousands of miles farther away.
The report therefore offers a more complicated assessment of the war than either the cost figures or battlefield statistics alone.
American and allied defenses intercepted thousands of Iranian missiles and drones, while U.S. forces conducted tens of thousands of combat missions against Iran.
At the same time, Iranian strikes caused substantial damage to the network of bases, aircraft and diplomatic facilities sustaining those operations, while the rate of American weapons expenditure exposed manufacturing constraints that could take significant time to resolve.
With infrastructure-repair expenses excluded from the Pentagon’s $33.4 billion estimate, hundreds of structures damaged and advanced munitions continuing to be consumed, the watchdog’s first Operation Epic Fury report provides an official indication that the war’s military and financial costs extend considerably beyond the weapons fired at Iran itself.
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