At least 42 United States military aircraft were lost or damaged during the Iran war, according to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) assessment cited in international media.
The aircraft itemised in the report include F-15E Strike Eagles, one F-35A Lightning II stealth fighter, MQ-9 Reaper drones, KC-135 refuelling tankers and E-3 Sentry airborne early-warning aircraft, Newswire reported.
The CRS — the non-partisan research arm that briefs the US Congress — noted that the losses spanned more than combat shoot-downs. The figure also covers aircraft damaged during operations, destroyed on the ground, or written off in other conflict-related incidents.
The assessment drew on Pentagon statements, briefings from US Central Command and media reports, the agency said. The CRS flagged uncertainty over whether the Department of Defense had publicly disclosed the full extent of aircraft losses, leaving open the possibility that the true tally is higher than 42.
Some estimates referenced in the reporting place the value of damaged and lost assets in the billions of dollars. A single F-35A unit cost runs above US$80 million; the E-3 Sentry — produced from the late 1970s — has no direct replacement in the active fleet beyond a small number of E-7 Wedgetail aircraft on order.
The figure provides the most comprehensive accounting yet of the Iran war’s airborne cost to the US. Earlier in the conflict, President Donald Trump publicly described the recovery of two downed F-15E Strike Eagle pilots as “the most daring rescue in US military history”, but the Pentagon had not aggregated total losses across platforms.
The CRS reportedly expects the findings to intensify Congressional scrutiny over the war’s military and financial cost, which has already strained US Air Force airframe-readiness rates and rerouted carrier-air-wing assets from the Indo-Pacific. The war’s economic spillovers have hit Sri Lanka through higher oil import bills and airline reroutes from Hormuz airspace closures.
