A Boeing E-3 Sentry reconnaissance aircraft of the US Air Force was seriously damaged on Friday in an Iranian air strike on the Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia, the American magazine Air and Space Forces Magazine reported.
Preliminary data indicated that several tanker aircraft and one E-3 Sentry were damaged in the Iranian air strike on the base, which used missiles and drones.
“The photo shows that the US Air Force E-3 has suffered significant damage“, the publication notes.
The Pentagon has not yet commented on this information.
Kelly Grieco, a fellow at the Henry Stimson Center in Washington, noted in X that the damage to the E-3 "is one of the most strategically significant losses for the United States so far in the war" with Iran. She added that the US Air Force has 16 more of the aircraft, "almost 40 percent of which are already in this theater of operations and there is no production line to replace them."
Reuters reported on March 27 that 12 US service members were injured in the aforementioned Iranian strike on the air base. Two of them were seriously injured. According to the agency, more than 300 US service members have been injured and 13 have been killed since the start of the US-Israeli military operation against Iran.
Earlier, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced that it destroyed several tanker aircraft at the Prince Sultan Air Base in Al Kharj, Saudi Arabia, where American troops are stationed.