Pentagon confident Epic Fury ‘on plan,’ offers detailed damage assessment on Iran strikes

The Pentagon said Thursday that Operation Epic Fury is on target to meet the president’s goals and expressed confidence that strikes have significantly diminished Iran’s overall military capabilities.  

“Our objective's unchanged, on target, and on plan – destroy missiles, launchers, and Iran's defense industrial base so they cannot rebuild. Destroy their navy. And Iran never gets a nuclear weapon. Our objectives from day one,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said at a press conference. 

Hegseth also indicated that the U.S. military is “on plan” to achieve the war objectives set by the White House in President Donald Trump’s estimated timeframe but declined to specify deadlines. 

“We wouldn't want to set a definitive timeframe on that, but as we've said, we're on plan,” he said. “So, we're looking at those metrics very closely.”

Earlier this month, Trump said the operation was projected to last "four or five weeks," but left open the possibility that it could “go far longer than that" if the United States main goals take longer to achieve.

Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dan Caine provided the following damage assessment in their remarks, giving a sense of the massive scope of the operation so far: 

• U.S. forces have sunk more than 120 Iranian naval vessels, including all 11 of its submarines, and 44 minelayers that threaten the Strait of Hormuz. 
• The U.S. carried out strikes on more than 7,000 targets across Iran, including military ports, air defense systems, and defense manufacturing. 
• Iranian drone launches are down 90% from the start of the conflict as a result of the U.S. strikes. 
• The U.S. military has dropped several 5,000-lb penetrator bombs into underground storage facilities that store coastal defense cruise missiles. 
• The U.S. struck over 90 targets on Iran’s Kharg Island, the largest oil export terminal in the country. 

While the U.S. and Israeli strikes significantly degrade Iran’s capability to threaten the United States and its neighbors, Iran has still retained the capacity to strike sensitive targets across the Arabian Gulf, especially with its cheap, one-way attack drones.  

Earlier this week, for example, Iran launched an attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex, home to the largest Liquefied Natural Gas export terminal in the world. The Gulf monarchy said the strike, which included Iranian suicide drones, caused “extensive damage” to the facility. 

Iran also struck an oil refinery on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast in the port city of Yanbu. The drone attack reportedly caused minimal impacts to the facility. 

Both strikes were in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike on Iran’s South Pars natural gas field. 

Tehran’s lingering drone and missile capabilities, though significantly degraded, also continue to pose a threat to shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz–effectively halting a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade.