Washington does not lose wars, Washington achieves strategic objectives.
Washington successfully degrades enemy capabilities.
Washington transitions to a ceasefire framework, but Congress has receipts.
Just revealed something that no Pentagon press briefing would ever say out loud.
42 American military aircraft shot out of the sky.
By a country that Washington had already declared defeated.
Welcome to the story behind the story.
Before we count what America lost, let us count what America said it would achieve.
The Trump administration entered Operation Epic Fury with four publicly stated objectives.
- Destroy Iran’s nuclear program completely.
- Degraied Iran’s ballistic missile capability.
- Cut-off Iran’s support for regional proxy groups.
- Force Iran’s leadership to permanently renounce nuclear weapons.
Four objectives.
29 billion dollars.
Keep those four in your mind.
We will return to them.
On February 28th, 2026, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury.
Washington was triumphant.
Supreme Leader Kamine was dead.
Nuclear sites were hit.
The state of Hormuz Defense Secretary Pete Heggseth told Congress,”
We have achieved our strategic objectives.
Now fast-forward to May the Congressional Research Service.”
The non-partisan research arm of the United States Congress.
Quietly published a report.
No press conference.
No headlines on American prime time.
No ticker on CNN. A very uncomfortable document.
42 United States military aircraft lost or severely damaged.
In a war that America won.
Let us now do what Washington refused to do.
Aircraft by aircraft.
The F-35A, lightning the second.
The most expensive weapons program in human history.
At 1.7 trillion dollars.
Shot down or severely damaged over Iran on March 19th.
Cost of one aircraft between 80 and 110 million dollars.
Iran’s foreign minister, Iraq chi, Iran’s armed forces were the first in the world to shoot down an F-35.
Washington has not denied it.
Four F-15E strike-eagles, $100 million each, $400 million total.
Three destroyed by friendly fire over Kuwait.
America paid to shoot down its own jets.
The fourth destroyed in combat over Iran.
One eight-end thunderbolt the second, $20 million.
Destroyed inside Iran.
Seven KC–135 strattotankers.
The aircraft that keep combat jets flying.
$30 million each, $350 million total.
Five of them were not airborne.
They were parked on the tarmac at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia when Iranian missiles found them.
One E3-century A-wax, $270 million.
The flying command center.
The brain of the entire operation.
Destroyed on the ground in Saudi Arabia by an Iranian missile.
Two MC–130J commandow the second special operations aircraft.
$100 million each, $200 million total.
American commandows flew them into Iran on a rescue mission.
They got stuck in soft sand inside Iranian territory.
American forces blew up their own aircraft on Iranian soil because they could not fly them out.
One H-H-60W Jolly Green the second helicopter.
$40 million, damaged by small arms fire during the same rescue mission.
24 M-Q-9 Reaper drones between $30 and $56 million each, $720 million total.
And the M-Q-9 production line was already shut down in 2025.
America cannot replace them quickly.
Iran destroyed 24 of a product no longer being manufactured.
One M-Q-4C Triton surveillance drone.
$250 million, a quarter billion dollar aircraft.
Total hardware destroyed in 40 days.
Approximately $3.5 to $4 billion.
And that is just the aircraft.
The Pentagon told Congress the full cost of Operation Epic Fury is now $29 billion.
That number jumped 4 billion in just two weeks.
83 cents of every dollar spent.
$24 billion out of $29 billion.
Went toward fixing and replacing destroyed military hardware.
And the $29 billion does not include a single dollar of base repair costs.
Those assessments are still ongoing.
Congressional sources say the final bill could reach 200 billion oracles.
$200 billion for a 40-day war that America won.
And Iran was not just hitting aircraft.
Iran hit American military bases across seven countries simultaneously.
In the first two weeks alone, confirmed base damage reached $800 million.
The U. S. Navy Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain was hit.
Repair cost for that one building $200 million.
In Qatar, Iran struck an early warning radar system valued at $1.1 billion.
$1 billion.
In Kuwait, a 50-year-old Iranian F5 jet penetrated the patriot air defense shield and bombed a U. S. compound, a half-century old aircraft.
Inside a base protected by the most advanced missile defense system in the world.
And none of this base damage is included in the $29 billion figure.
It’s still counting.
Democratic Senator Mark Kelly sat before Congress and used one word to describe America’s weapons inventory after this war.
His exact words, “I think it is fair to say it is shocking how deep we have gone into these magazines.
The American people are less safe, whether it is a conflict with China or somewhere else in the world.
We are talking about years to rebuild.
America spent $29 billion and weakened itself against every future enemy at the same time.
Now the scoreboard.
Destroy Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran still holds over 450 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium.
Enough for 9 to 11 nuclear weapons.
Fordale survived.
Buried under 80 meters of granite.
Iran’s Parliament voted to end all IAA cooperation after the ceasefire.
Iran is now less transparent than before the war.
Netanyahu himself admitted on CBS. There is still nuclear material.
There are still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled.
The man who launched the war admitted the war did not finish the job.
Iran’s ballistic missiles.
Iranian missiles were still hitting American warships in the straight of Hormuz in May 2026.
A full month into the ceasefire.
Cut off Iran’s proxy support.
Hezbollah operational.
Health is active.
My RGC network intact, force Iran to announce nuclear weapons.
No deal, no signed agreement, no verification framework.
Trump called Iran’s latest proposal a piece of garbage.
The nuclear talks are still ongoing.
The same talks that diplomacy could have produced before a single bomb was dropped.
Zero out of four objectives achieved.
Here is what the data tells us.
The United States launched Operation Epic Fury with the most advanced air force in the world.
It flew nearly 13,000 soughties.
It hit over 5,500 targets.
It killed the Supreme Leader of Iran.
And it lost 42 aircraft worth $4 billion.
It spent $29 billion.
Got its bases hit in seven countries.
Pleated its missiles for years, achieved zero out of four stated objectives, agreed to a ceasefire with a country it claimed to have defeated.
And then spent two months hiding the losses from its own Congress, American style.
The story behind the story is not about what Iran lost.
The story behind the story is about what Washington could not afford to lose next.
Because if the war had restarted with Iran’s flight patent data with its proven F-35 kill, with its confirmed drone hunting capability, with American munitions already at shocking levels, the next set of losses would not be 42 aircraft.
And someone in Washington did the math.
That is the story behind the story.
I am your host.
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