On the menu today: A concise and comprehensive look at the Iranian air force, navy, and drone arsenal, strikes in the Persian Gulf, and the potential of sleeper cells on American soil, including a report of a potential Iranian “numbers station.” And in the fight to stop Iranian drone attacks, the Pentagon is reaching out to a country that has a whole lot of experience with that deadly problem. Read on.
The Regime’s Defenses Collapse
Before the current war began, the Islamic Republic of Iran Armed Forces consisted of approximately 610,000 active-duty personnel plus 350,000 reserves, the 13th-largest total military manpower in the world, according to the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies.
The Iranian regime splits its air power between two forces, the conventional Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force and the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force. Available public information about the size of Iran’s air fleet is somewhat contradictory in the details. The independent analysis site WarPowerIran states Iran has 778 aircraft, but “while impressive in terms of available quantity of aircraft, the IRIAF suffers from an aging fleet and limited military-industrial capabilities as they relate to modern combat platforms.”
Similarly, “FlightGlobal’s World Air Forces 2025 listed 65 F-4s, 35 F-5s, 41 F-14s, 18 MiG-29s, 21 Su-24s, and 12 Mirage F1s in the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force, plus a smaller number of tankers and special-mission aircraft. Iran has also received an unknown number of Yak-130 light attack aircraft in recent years.”
Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared from a lectern at the Pentagon, “The Iranian Air Force is no more, built for 1996, destroyed in 2026.”
Whether or not the Iranian Air Force is destroyed, it is now minimally functional, if it can function at all:
Public reporting has confirmed only a handful of losses of Iran’s manned aircraft. Israel said it destroyed an Iranian F-4 and F-5 at Tabriz as they prepared for takeoff, and released video of the strike. Israel has also released videos in June 2025 during Operation Midnight Hammer of it destroying a number of Iranian F-14s. Qatar’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses shot down two Iranian aircraft during attacks on the country, and Qatari state media identified them as Su-24s.
Satellite imagery and official statements have also pointed to strikes on the systems that allow an air force to fight. Reuters published satellite images showing damage at Konarak, including destroyed storage bunkers and damage around an air and naval complex, and images showing a destroyed radar system at Zahedan airbase.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the Israel Defense Forces announced “an Israeli Air Force F-35I ‘Adir’ fighter jet shot down an Iranian Air Force YAK-130 fighter jet. This is the first shootdown in history of a manned fighter aircraft by an F-35 ‘Adir’ fighter jet.” (Keep in mind the Yakolev YAK-130 is a trainer, relatively modern and capable of light attack duties, but you would expect an F-35I to win a dogfight against a much older, Russian-manufactured fighter.)
Of course, as noted earlier this week, the world of air combat is shifting to drones and away from manned aircraft. As of yesterday, the New York Times reported Iran had fired more than 2,000 drones at enemy forces and other countries. The aviation news site AeroTime had a more specific breakdown of targeted countries and number of interceptions:
In the United Arab Emirates, a Defense Ministry spokesperson said air defenses detected 812 drones and intercepted 755, with 57 getting through and causing damage.
Kuwait said it intercepted 283 drones. A Bloomberg-compiled tally put the first two days of the war at 541 drones targeted at the UAE, 283 at Kuwait, 36 at Jordan, 12 at Qatar and nine at Bahrain. Combined with the UAE’s later figure, the publicly reported totals indicate at least about 1,150 drones launched at regional targets since February 28, with the overall number likely higher.
Like its air force, Iran splits its navy into two parallel forces, the traditional Islamic Republic of Iran Navy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, a separate paramilitary force focused on asymmetric warfare. According to SlashGear:
In total, the IRIN has more than 100 vessels and over 18,500 personnel, according to estimates from 2025. The IRGC Navy operates asymmetric warfare vessels of various kinds, amounting to around 45 or more smaller warships. Combined, Iran operates some 145+ military combat vessels and hundreds of smaller watercraft, and it’s likely that they’re all in play in the conflict. Much of its strength lies in fast-attack watercraft that are designed to breach the perimeter defenses of larger vessels to swarm and attack. This isn’t all that Iran has floating on or under the water’s surface, as there’s also a small fleet of diesel-powered submarines.
A more detailed look at the types of ships and vessels of the Iranian navy can be found here.
Hegseth, yesterday:
The Iranian navy rests at the bottom of the Persian Gulf, combat ineffective, decimated, destroyed, defeated, pick your adjective. In fact, last night we sunk their prized ship, the Soleimani. Looks like POTUS got him twice.
Keep in mind, the “Soleimani” is a new class of Iranian ship, a catamaran-style missile corvette. According to U.S. Central Command, the Shahid Soleimani or Shahid Sayyad Shirazi, was targeted near the port of Bandar Abbas.
Hegseth continued:
Their navy, not a factor. Pick your adjective, it is no more. In fact, yesterday in the Indian Ocean, and we’ll play it on the screen there, an American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo, quiet death. The first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II.
That ship was the IRIS Dena; the Pentagon released video of the strike. Our Luther Ray Abel, a veteran of the U.S. Navy, has more on that strike: “Our submariners, known as the Silent Service, did the job we ask of our fast-attack boats, and did it textbook.”
Shortly after Hegseth’s remarks, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine said that American forces had “destroyed more than 20 Iranian naval vessels.”
Unfortunately, some sort of boat appears to have conducted a successful attack on an oil tanker off the coast of Iraq. From Bloomberg:
An oil tanker suffered an explosion off the coast of Iraq which damaged a tank that is losing water, signaling wider risks to shipping in the Persian Gulf beyond the Strait of Hormuz.
The Sonangol Namibe was approached by a small boat near Khor Al Zubair in Iraq and its crew later heard a loud bang, according to Sonangol Marine Services. It is the first incident that far north in the Persian Gulf since the US and Israel began bombing Iran over the weekend.
The company said there are no reports of any pollution and there was no cargo on board, allaying earlier concerns that it could have been spilling oil. Sonangol Marine Services said the ship’s hull appeared to have been breached, but that it was losing water from a ballast tank — a compartment designed to help with the vessel’s stability.
Separately, the crew of a container vessel Safeen Prestige abandoned ship after being hit by a projectile above the waterline while transiting the Strait of Hormuz Wednesday.
During yesterday’s briefing, Caine released some figures indicating the Iranians are losing their ability to fire ballistic missiles and drones: “As of this morning, U.S. Central Command is making steady progress. Iran’s theater ballistic missile shots fired are down 86 percent from the first day of fighting, with a 23 percent decrease just in the last 24 hours, and their one-way attack drone shots are down 73 percent from the opening days.”
A recurring concern during these military operations is the remaining U.S. stockpiles of various weapons. Caine addressed this yesterday but did not go into details:
We have sufficient precision munitions for the task at hand, both on the offense and defense. But I want to tell you, teammates, as a matter of practice, I don’t want to be talking about quantities. And I know there’s been a great debate about that, and I appreciate the interest, but just know that we consider that an operational security matter.
This ongoing U.S. military operation has come with costs. The Pentagon has released the names of the six U.S. service members killed in the conflict so far. The first four names released are from the 103rd Sustainment Command US Army Reserves out of Des Moines, Iowa: Captain Cody Khork; Sergeant 1st Class Noah Tietjens; Sergeant 1st Class Nicole Amor; and Sergeant Declan Coady. The Pentagon subsequently announced that Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert M. Marzan, 54, of Sacramento, California, and Major Jeffrey R. O’Brien, 45, of Indianola, Iowa, were the other casualties who were killed in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, during “an unmanned aircraft system attack.” May our heroes in uniform rest in peace.
One last thought, closer to the home front. For a long time, the U.S. government officials have worried about “sleeper” cells or agents of the Iranian regime operating on American soil. Back in June 2025, when the U.S. struck Iran’s nuclear sites, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin warning, “The ongoing Iran conflict is causing a heightened threat environment in the United States. . . . U.S. law enforcement has disrupted multiple potentially lethal Iranian-backed plots in the United States since 2020. During this timeframe, the Iranian government has also unsuccessfully targeted critics of its regime who are based in the Homeland for lethal attack.”
Brian Harris, a cybersecurity expert, writes on his Substack about a potential Iranian “numbers station”:
In early March 2026, shortwave listeners started logging a voice station on 7910 kHz USB that appears to transmit structured numeric groups on a repeatable schedule. It’s unconfirmed, but multiple reception reports and propagation hints have pushed some monitors to tag it as likely Iranian in origin, at least as a working hypothesis. Reported by the Italian radio monitoring blog IZØKBA Lorenzo, the signal has been heard across parts of Europe and via KiwiSDR receivers, with observers noting consistent evening activity and “short voice messages consisting of structured numeric sequences.”
A “numbers station” is a shortwave radio frequency that is believed to be a coded form of communication to spies, saboteurs, and agents living undercover in a hostile state.
This could all change in a split second. But the U.S. campaign against Iran began early Saturday morning, and I am writing this on a Thursday morning. So far, the only terrorist attack on U.S. soil was by Ndiaga Diagne, a 53-year-old naturalized American citizen from Senegal, who wore a sweatshirt emblazoned with the words “Property of Allah” during his shooting attack in Austin, Texas, early Sunday morning. Diagne may have been motivated by opposition to the U.S. military operation against Iran, but so far, no ties to the Iranian regime have been publicly disclosed.
Perhaps the FBI and other domestic law enforcement have been thoroughly effective at arresting or disrupting Iranian sleeper cells or agents. Or perhaps the Iranians have concluded that a successful terror attack on American soil would merely make Americans angrier and more supportive of U.S. military action against their regime.
Or perhaps everyone in Iran with the authority to give the “go” order aren’t around anymore, or have other problems right now.
ADDENDUM: The Financial Times reports, “The Pentagon and at least one Gulf government are in talks to buy Ukrainian-made interceptors to fend off attacks by Iranian drones, according to industry figures in Ukraine.”
It was a bit more than a year ago that our president dressed down Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in front of the television cameras and derisively concluded, “You don’t have the cards.”
Now our military is asking the Ukrainians for help.