New details are emerging with regards to the missions carried out by the US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft deployed to Jordan on October 2024, which returned to RAF Lakenheath yesterday, July 18th 2025. These were the F-15Es equipped with 6 seven shot APKWS laser guided rocket pods for intercepting one way attack drones, for a total of 42 guided rockets per aircraft. The planes show various signs of wear and use, and feature nose art depicting horror movie characters and various interesting kill maks. By all indications they were very busy intercepting one way attack drones from Iran during the 12 day Israel/US-Iran war, but also bombing targets, who or what is unknown (Iran and Yemen are the obvious options).
Picture of F-15E Strike Eagle with 42 APKWS rockets, for illustrative purposes:
According to the markings, the squadron of 8x F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft:
- Shot down 115 one way attack drones using APKWS laser guided rockets (only 6 aircraft feature kill marks).
- Executed 54 electronic attacks, lightning bolt symbol (likey jamming the guidance systems of one way attack drones, same red colour as APKWS markings)
- Launched 28 JASSM stealth high altitude subsonic cruise missiles. (only 7 aircraft feature kill marks).
- One aircraft conducted 4 high value electronic attacks, possibly against incoming surface to air missiles or radars tracking the aircraft, black lighting bolts.
- Dropped over 100 JDAM guided bombs. (Haven't done an exact count)
A squadron of 8 aircraft taking out around 170 one way attack drones via hard kill (APKWS rockets) and soft kill (jamming) methods is, well, a lot. Especially if these were the drones that managed to make it to Jordan. I think over 1000 drones were fired throughout the entire war, with one impact.
Big question is who were they launching the JASSMs at, they were likely bombing Yemen with JDAMs, did they use JASSMs there too, or were these fired at Iran?
The 42 APKWS laser guided rockets per aircraft loadout has also been put on F-16CJ block 50 aircraft at Shaw Air Force base, in the last few days.
The concept of defensive weaponry being not purely defensive has been well understood since the ABM treaty, signed in... 1972 between the Soviet Union and United States, over 50 years ago.