Iran destroyed critical US radar plane in strike on airbase. Experts fear it’s a ‘serious blow’ to the battlefield

Iran’s destruction of a critical American spy plane has raised concerns among military analysts who fear the damage could impact U.S. abilities to spot incoming threats.

Images of the wrecked U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry aircraft show a broken tail that appears to have been severed entirely from the body of the plane.

The Boeing aircraft — a key part of the military’s airborne warning and control system, or AWACS — is capable of tracking hundreds of targets at a time while monitoring thousands of square miles. The plane itself serves as an airborne command post with a distinctive rotating radar dome above the fuselage.

Images of the plane’s destruction surfaced over the weekend following a strike on a Saudi Arabia air base on March 27. Several U.S. service members were injured in the attack.

The loss of one in a fleet of 17 AWACS amounts to a “a serious blow” to American surveillance capabilities, according to CNN military analyst Cedric Leighton, a former Air Force colonel who has flown on the aircraft.

That fleet has effectively been reduced to 16 E-3 Sentry aircraft, six of which were stationed at Prince Sultan air base prior to Friday’s attack, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The planes are critical “battle managers” analyzing airspace for attacks “and other lethal effects that the entire force needs for the battle space,” according to former F-16 pilot Heather Penney, director of studies and research at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

The aircraft, in essence, “see the bigger picture,” she said.

“They’re the chessmaster, while [fighter pilots] are the bishops,” she told the magazine.

Losing one among 17 Sentry planes could create significant gaps in coverage, according to experts.

“Iran is gradually eating away at the network of early warning systems that the U.S. has built over decades in the region,” Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at King’s College London’s School of Security Studies, told NBC News.

Their destruction “further degrades the overall monitoring capability of the U.S.,” he said.

The Independent has requested comment from the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command.

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a Bronze Star recipient who served for 21 years, told NBC News that “we’re not doing OK at all.”

Davis, a senior fellow and military expert at Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank, said the U.S. is “not militarily prepared for this to be a sustained war.”

“There were too many in the administration that thought this was going to be a quick and easy thing,” he added, noting that Iran “still has plenty of missiles to keep going at a sustained rate.”

“If we’ve had this much trouble with what was considered a militarily inferior Iran, what does anybody think would happen if we had to fight on the ground, in the sea and in the air against a Russia or a China?” he told the network.

CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper said last week that Iran’s missile and drone launches were down by more than 90 percent since the start of the U.S. war on February 28, but Iran remains capable of launching attacks that can impact critical sites and vessels, even with an allegedly diminished supply, according to experts.

More than 300 American service members have been injured since the beginning of the attacks last month, and at least 13 service members have been killed. Roughly 20 U.S. aircraft have been damaged.

President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly vacillated between military threats and claims of diplomatic progress, threatened again Monday to “completely” destroy Iran’s key oil export hub Kharg Island as well as other energy sites if the nation did not agree to lift a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and pursue a peace deal.

The administration is also reportedly weighing a potentially risky ground operation to seize uranium from deep inside Iran, marking a major escalation of the war.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the U.S. will “operate within the confines of the law” when questioned about the president’s threats to destroy electricity plants and desalination plants — civilian infrastructure that could amount to war crimes under international law, if targeted.

“Of course this administration and the United States armed forces will always act within the confines of the law,” Leavitt added. “But with respect to achieving the full objectives of Operation Epic Fury, President Trump is going to move forward unabated, and he expects the Iranian regime to make a deal with the administration.”