War Blog - Articles

Operation Epic Fury: the opening night of a US–Israel air campaign against Iran

In the early hours of Saturday 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel launched a coordinated, multi-axis strike campaign on Iranian military infrastructure under the US codename Operation Epic Fury (with Israel running its own parallel operation). The first wave was framed by Washington as a move to “dismantle” the Iranian regime’s security apparatus and remove “imminent threats,” while political messaging from the White House also leaned hard into coercion and regime-pressure.

What makes Epic Fury militarily significant isn’t just the scale of the target set, but the composition of the strike package: carrier aviation, surface-launched cruise missiles, and (per CENTCOM) air/land/sea precision fires—plus the first acknowledged combat use of a CENTCOM “low-cost one-way attack drone” concept. This is designed less like a single raid and more like the front edge of a rolling air campaign: blind air defences, collapse sortie generation, suppress missile forces, and keep Iran’s command network off-balance long enough to set favourable conditions for follow-on strikes.

The timeline we can state with confidence

CENTCOM says strikes began at 1:15am ET on 28 Feb (morning in Iran), prioritising locations assessed as posing an imminent threat.

Within hours, Iran responded with large missile/drone salvos aimed at Israel and at US (and partner-hosted) facilities across the Gulf. The UK Foreign Office issued shelter guidance for British nationals in several Gulf states as attacks were reported in the region.

The coalition strike package: what was used and what that implies

1) Carrier aviation for persistence and tempo

USNI reporting—based on CENTCOM imagery—shows US Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and US Marine Corps F-35Cs launching from USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) operating in the North Arabian Sea.

Carrier aviation is the workhorse for:

Time-sensitive targeting (mobile launchers, relocating air-defence emitters).
Follow-up reattacks after BDA (battle damage assessment).
Maintaining combat air patrols and defensive counter-air to protect the strike lanes and regional bases.

The inclusion of F-35C matters: it’s a strong signal the US expected to operate against dense, layered air-defence coverage, using low observability to push closer for sensor work, targeting updates, and selective kinetic SEAD/DEAD.

2) Surface-launched Tomahawk for the “first punch”

CENTCOM imagery also shows US guided-missile destroyers launching Tomahawk land-attack missiles.

Tomahawk salvos are classic for the opening hours because they:

Arrive from multiple azimuths and complicate defence geometry.
Hit fixed nodes (radars, C2 buildings, airfields, depots) with repeatable precision.
Free up aircraft to focus on dynamic targets and air-to-air protection.

3) “Air, land, and sea” fires—and the new one-way drone layer

CENTCOM explicitly states the first hours included precision munitions launched from air, land, and sea, and that Task Force Scorpion Strike employed low-cost one-way attack drones for the first time in combat.

That line is easy to skim past, but it’s doctrinally huge. A low-cost one-way drone layer can be used to:

Saturate and expend Iranian SAM missiles on cheap targets.
Force radars to radiate (making them targetable by anti-radiation weapons).
Attack soft targets (antennae farms, generator yards, exposed TELs) at scale.

It’s the “quantity” complement to stealth and standoff weapons—and it hints this campaign is built for days/weeks of pressure, not a single cinematic night.

Target sets: what was hit, and why those categories come first

CENTCOM lists four broad target categories:

IRGC command-and-control facilities
Air-defence capabilities
Missile and drone launch sites
Military airfields

That ordering is not random. It reflects a deliberate air-campaign logic.

Phase 1: Blind and fracture the kill chain (IADS + C2)

You don’t “win” against Iran by smashing runways alone. You win by breaking the system that finds, tracks, assigns, and shoots—especially Iran’s integrated air defences and IRGC command architecture.

If you suppress early-warning radars, sector operations centres, and key datalinks, you turn a national IADS into isolated SAM batteries operating with degraded picture quality and slower engagement cycles. That is what enables safer follow-on strikes by non-stealth aircraft and increases the survivability of tankers, ISR, and electronic-attack assets operating outside Iranian airspace.

Phase 2: Reduce sortie generation (airfields)

Hitting airfields does three things:

Kills aircraft and support equipment on the ground.
Disrupts fuel, weapons loading, maintenance and sortie turnarounds.
Forces dispersal—creating logistical strain and making aircraft easier to find and strike at satellite-identified dispersal points.

Phase 3: Hunt the mobile threat (missile/drone launch sites)

Iran’s most immediate regional lever is ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones—plus proxy fires. The campaign’s early emphasis on launch sites indicates the US/Israel priority is to shrink Iran’s ability to:

Strike Israel in mass.
Strike US bases and host-nation infrastructure.
Threaten shipping and ports through wider regional escalation.

Israel, for its part, said it struck ~500 targets in western and central Iran with ~200 aircraft, focusing on ballistic missile launchers and air-defence systems, and claimed it aimed to expand air superiority over Iranian skies.

The maritime angle: a reminder that the Gulf is part of the battlefield

USNI referenced strike aftermath at Konarak Naval Base in southern Iran, including a vessel burning at the pier and damage to an airfield, based on satellite imagery.

Konarak sits on the Gulf of Oman side of Iran’s coastline—important because the coalition’s strategic problem isn’t only missiles aimed at cities. It’s also Iran’s ability to:

Threaten maritime traffic lanes.
Generate uncertainty around the Strait of Hormuz approaches.
Use coastal facilities for fast attack craft, drones, and anti-ship missile support.

Targeting nodes like Konarak signals intent to pressure Iran’s naval and coastal strike capacity, not just its land-based missiles.

Iran’s retaliation: wide, fast, and politically calibrated—yet constrained

Reporting across major outlets indicates Iran launched missiles and drones toward Israel and toward US (and partner) bases across the region—including Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE—with many intercepted.

Specific sites referenced in public reporting include Bahrain’s role as host to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet footprint, with at least one report describing a strike on a US logistics/supply site there, and CENTCOM claiming no US combat casualties and minimal damage not impacting operations.

From a military standpoint, Iran’s response looks like a mix of:

Demonstration strikes (show reach; impose political cost).
Base pressure (force US and partners into defensive crouch; strain interceptors).
Narrative leverage (drive regional fear, economic disruption, and diplomatic splits).

But it also shows restraint in one sense: if Iran’s goal were immediate maximal regional damage, you’d expect a heavier push on energy infrastructure and sustained maritime disruption. That may still come, but the opening response appears aimed at establishing that Iran can hit “everywhere,” while keeping escalation options in reserve.

What to watch next (militarily)

1) Whether this becomes a sustained air campaign

CENTCOM described Epic Fury as involving “the largest regional concentration of American military firepower in a generation.” That wording usually accompanies a multi-day operational design.

Watch for:

Nightly strike rhythms.
Repeated reattacks on IADS nodes.
Expansion of the target list from “imminent threat” systems to deeper strategic infrastructure (depots, factories, IRGC economic assets).

2) The counter-IADS duel: radars vs. standoff volume

If the coalition can keep Iranian air defences suppressed—through stealth, electronic warfare, decoys, and one-way drone saturation—then Iran’s ability to contest airspace shrinks quickly, and the campaign accelerates.

If Iranian SAMs remain viable and start scoring or forcing cautious stand-off ranges, coalition aircraft will lean even harder on cruise missiles and long-range stand-off munitions—slowing the tempo and increasing the cost per aimpoint.

3) Missile-hunting results: can mobile launchers be meaningfully reduced?

The hardest problem is the mobile launcher (TEL) hunt. Success here depends on:

Persistent ISR (space + airborne).
Rapid “sensor-to-shooter” links.
Tight deconfliction across huge airspace.
High sortie rates and quick BDA loops.

If Iran can keep generating missile salvos, then Gulf bases and Israel will remain under periodic pressure, forcing interceptor expenditure and political strain.

4) Regional base defence capacity and interceptor economics

Even “successful” defence is costly. Each mass salvo forces decisions:

What to intercept (and with what layer).
How to preserve limited high-end interceptors.
How to protect runways, fuel farms, and command posts.

Iran will try to win on cost-imposition, making the defensive bill rise while it replaces cheaper drones and rockets.

Bottom line

Operation Epic Fury is not just another headline strike—it’s an attempt to impose a campaign-level military problem on Iran: degrade the IRGC command network, suppress air defences, and reduce missile/drone capacity while maintaining coalition operational freedom from the Gulf through to Israel’s air corridors. The early indicators—carrier airpower, Tomahawk launches, and the explicit introduction of low-cost one-way attack drones—suggest a design for tempo and endurance, not symbolism.

Whether it works will hinge on two brutal variables: (1) the coalition’s ability to keep Iran’s air defences fractured and its launch forces on the run, and (2) Iran’s willingness to expand the battlefield—into energy, shipping, and partner territory—when it decides the opening round has been weathered.