There are military operations that win battles. There are military operations that win wars. And then — very rarely — there are operations that redefine what war looks like for the next century.

Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion are doing all three simultaneously.

The Skies Belong to America and Israel

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth laid it out Wednesday with the kind of clarity that leaves no room for interpretation.

“Starting last night and to be completed in a few days, the two most powerful air forces in the world will have complete control of Iranian skies. Uncontested airspace.”

Then came the line that’s going to echo through every defense ministry on the planet: “We will fly all day, all night… flying over Tehran, flying over Iran, flying over their capital. Iranian leaders are looking up and seeing only U.S. and Israeli air power every minute of every day until we decide it’s over.”

“Until we decide it’s over.” Not until a ceasefire is negotiated. Not until the U.N. convenes. Not until Iran agrees to terms. Until America and Israel decide. That’s not diplomatic language. That’s the language of total air dominance, and it’s being delivered from the skies above Tehran.

40 Seconds, 40 Leaders

The opening strike of the Israeli operation — Roaring Lion — achieved something that military historians are still processing.

Israeli intelligence chief Major General Shlomi Binder confirmed: “In 40 seconds, we eliminated more than 40 of the most important people in Iran.”

Forty seconds. Not forty hours. Not forty days. Forty seconds. Including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Including senior military commanders. Including the political and military infrastructure that has directed Iran’s terror operations for decades.

John Spencer, the executive director of the Urban Warfare Institute and an Iraq War veteran, said it plainly: “What Israel did in this opening campaign just wasn’t imaginable in the history of war. It never happened.”

The traditional military doctrine is to degrade the enemy’s military capability first — destroy air defenses, disable command structures, eliminate forward positions — and then work your way up to the leadership. Israel flipped the script. They targeted the brain before the body. They decapitated the regime before the military even knew the war had started.

“To start off by cutting off the brain… usually you target the military first,” Spencer explained. “Here they targeted the political and military leadership and had the ability to wipe them out in a matter of hours.”

Spencer served in the 2003 Iraq invasion. He said something like this “was unthinkable even 20 years ago.” The intelligence precision, the strike coordination, and the speed of execution represent a generational leap in allied military capability.

The Numbers

The scale of the combined operation is staggering. Since Roaring Lion launched, Israeli aircraft have flown more than 1,600 sorties and deployed more than 5,000 munitions. The strikes have destroyed approximately 300 missile launchers and hit more than 600 Iranian military infrastructure sites.

Israel put roughly 200 fighter jets in the air for the opening wave — the largest coordinated air operation in the history of the Israeli air force. Spencer noted that Israel effectively matched the United States in the number of aircraft deployed, representing roughly 80 percent of Israel’s total air force capability.

Within 24 hours, Israeli jets had opened a corridor allowing sustained operations over Tehran itself. American and Israeli aircraft are now flying combined sorties over the Iranian capital around the clock.

And in a moment that will end up in aviation history books, an Israeli F-35 shot down a manned Iranian aircraft — the first time in history that an F-35 has achieved an air-to-air kill of a manned plane, and the first time in 40 years that an Israeli aircraft has downed an enemy aircraft in combat.

The Missile Math

The strategic objective behind the air campaign isn’t just punishment — it’s prevention. Israeli intelligence assessed before the operation that Iran was accelerating ballistic missile production with plans to reach 8,000 missiles by 2027. At the start of the campaign, Iran was estimated to possess roughly 3,000.

The strikes have already prevented the production of at least 1,500 additional missiles while destroying hundreds already in Iran’s arsenal. Every launcher destroyed, every production facility hit, every storage site eliminated reduces Iran’s ability to threaten Israel, American forces in the region, and Gulf allies for years to come.

The IDF stated it directly: “The possession of missiles by a regime that openly declares its intent to destroy the State of Israel constitutes an existential threat.” The operation is designed to remove that threat — not manage it, not contain it, not negotiate around it. Remove it.

The Alliance That Changed Everything

Spencer made a point that deserves more attention than the headline moments. The level of integration between American and Israeli forces in this operation represents something genuinely new in military history.

IDF spokesperson Brigadier General Effie Defrin told Fox News: “The cooperation between us and the American military is amazing. We have mutual planning and mutual executing for the plans in Iran and beyond.”

Spencer elaborated: “This isn’t separate work. This is combined work. Integrated, synchronized operations combining powers.”

Past coalition operations — Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya — involved dozens of countries contributing varying levels of capability, often operating in parallel rather than as a unified force. Epic Fury and Roaring Lion are different. Two nations, two air forces, operating as a single integrated machine with shared intelligence, shared targeting, and shared execution.

“Having a partner that is both willing and capable of bringing immense capabilities like this is very rare,” Spencer said.

The Cost

War has a price, and it’s being paid. Six American service members have been killed during Operation Epic Fury. In Israel, 13 civilians are dead and more than a thousand injured from Iranian missile and drone retaliatory strikes. The United Arab Emirates has reported three dead and 68 injured.

Those numbers are real. Those families are grieving. And every one of those losses underscores the stakes of what’s happening — this isn’t a surgical strike with zero consequences. It’s a war, fought against a regime that still has the capability to hit back, even as its military infrastructure crumbles.

Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Tel Aviv, on Israeli cities, and on Gulf targets are desperate acts by a regime watching its missile launchers disappear and its leadership get erased. The drone attack on RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus showed the threat extends beyond the immediate theater. The war is real, the danger is real, and the people fighting it are paying a real price.

The Will Contest

Spencer framed the endgame perfectly: “Wars are contests of will. Iran’s strategy is to break the will of the United States and Israel to continue the operation. The question is whether they can endure the pressure long enough to make that happen.”

That’s the only question that matters now. The military outcome isn’t in doubt — American and Israeli air power have achieved uncontested dominance over Iranian skies. The missile infrastructure is being systematically dismantled. The leadership has been decapitated. The conventional military contest is over.

What remains is the asymmetric phase — Iranian drones, proxy attacks, sleeper cells, oil disruption, and the global economic pressure that comes with a prolonged conflict in the world’s most important energy region.

Netanyahu has insisted the strikes won’t lead to “endless war.” Hegseth has said the operation continues “until we decide it’s over.” The administration has signaled that the goal is not occupation but destruction of Iran’s offensive capability and the conditions for regime change from within.

The Verdict

Twenty years ago, this operation was unthinkable. The intelligence didn’t exist. The precision wasn’t possible. The alliance wasn’t this integrated. The political will wasn’t there.

All four of those barriers fell in 2026. And the result is an air campaign that military strategists will study for the next fifty years — an operation that began by eliminating a nation’s leadership in 40 seconds and progressed to total air dominance within days.

Six Americans gave their lives making this possible. Their sacrifice should be honored with the same seriousness we bring to analyzing the military achievement — because without the people willing to fly those sorties, the technology is just hardware.

The future of warfare isn’t coming. It’s overhead. Flying all day, all night, over Tehran, until America and Israel decide it’s over.