Pentagon: US airstrikes in Iran 'accelerating' as war shifts to new phase
Pentagon projects American and Israel warplanes will have complete control of Iran’s skies in less than a week, enabling the US to conserve valuable precision longer-range munitions.
WASHINGTON — The US and Israeli air forces will have complete control over Iran’s airspace in less than a week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday, as the campaign shifted into a new phase.
“We are just getting started. We are accelerating,” Hegseth said during a press briefing at the Pentagon. “Iran’s capabilities are evaporating by the hour.”
US strikes have destroyed what remained of Iran’s air force and all of the Iranian navy’s vessels in the Gulf, Hegseth said. The US has sunk 20 Iranian naval vessels since launching the war Saturday and has “effectively neutralized … Iran’s naval presence” in the region, the Pentagon’s top general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine, said during a briefing.
On Wednesday, a US nuclear-powered submarine sank an Iranian navy frigate, the IRIS Dena, off the coast of Sri Lanka with an Mk-48 torpedo.
The rate of retaliatory Iranian ballistic missile launches has declined since the opening volleys of the war. Pentagon officials have attributed that trend to waves of strikes by US B-2 bombers and other strike aircraft targeting Iran’s so-called southern missile belt, which includes ballistic missile launchers and associated capabilities, that lies within range of Arab states along the Gulf coast.
But drone attacks emanating from Iran have continued. Iran’s aerial counterattacks have hit roughly a dozen countries, targeting civilian and energy infrastructure, military bases and diplomatic facilities in several Gulf states. On Tuesday, the US consulate in Dubai and the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia were each hit by drones.
The US air campaign is shifting from relying on so-called standoff strikes — longer-range precision strikes fired from outside the range of Iran's air defenses — to instead allow US F/A-18s and F-15s to operate within Iranian airspace around the clock, officials said Wednesday.
The shift is enabled by greater confidence among commanders in the degradation of Iran's air defenses. It is designed to allow the US to conserve valuable precision longer-range munitions while transitioning to gravity-dropped guided bombs such as laser-guided and JDAM-equipped GPS-guided bombs.
“We have sufficient precision munitions for the task at hand,” Hegseth told reporters Wednesday, pushing back on reports of concerns within the Pentagon about the US’s limited supply of air defense interceptors.
“Our stockpiles of those [high-end precision munitions] as well as Patriots remain extremely strong.”
Asked whether Iran’s missile stockpiles could potentially outlast US interceptors in the region, Hegseth said, “Iran cannot outlast us. We're going to ensure through violence of action and our offensive capabilities and our defensive capabilities … that we set the tone and tempo of this fight."
