RAF Fairford exposes US military’s weak link fighting Iran war 

The disruption of an alleged plot involving explosives near a U.K. airbase considered a crucial node in America’s global airpower network has raised concerns toward the vulnerability of one of the Pentagon’s most important force projection assets.

RAF Fairford hosts an array of U.S. warplanes, including B-1 and B-52 bombers operating in the U.S. war launched against Iran in February. At least equally as vital to the U.S. military‘s capacity to pursue this conflict and others across the globe are aerial tankers such as the KC-135 that have operated from the NATO ally base since the Cold War, allowing offensive aircraft to conduct sorties thousands of miles away.

With Iran having already inflicted extensive damage to U.S. bases in the Middle East, the strategic value of long-range refueling aircraft in Europe has only increased—as have the risks associated with open threats by Iran against RAF Fairford and other sites hosting them.

And while no links have yet been established between Tehran and the five men arrested Sunday, accused of planning a potential attack at RAF Fairford, the implications of the incident highlight an uncomfortable reality about a blind spot in U.S. security abroad.

“Because the United States military relies on the tanker aircraft to extend ranges, it is a point of vulnerability,” Nora Bensahel, a U.S. defense expert and professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told Newsweek.

And while such vulnerability has been traditionally associated by defense analysts with tankers being caught in the act of midair refueling, she said a realization has emerged that foes with the right tools would be “much better off damaging those planes before they ever take off than trying to engage them once they’re airborne.”

“We are entering a period—if we’re not already there, we will be—where those aircraft are going to be extraordinarily vulnerable on the ground, and any smart adversary that has the capability would choose to attack them on the ground before they take off,” Bensahel said. “It’s a very worrying military problem.”

How Tankers Fuel US Air Power

Just how crucial the U.S. tanker fleet is to waging long-range operations can hardly be overstated.

“In general, tankers are key enablers of modern air operations,” Raphel Cohen, director of the RAND School of Public Policy’s National Security Program and retired U.S. Army reserve colonel who previously served on congressionally appointed National Defense Strategy commissions, told Newsweek. “That’s because modern aircraft burn a lot of jet fuel, particularly in combat operations.”

“Especially if you want to fly aircraft from airfields that are further away from the adversary (which you often want to do so that they are out of attack range), you need to refuel aircraft enroute,” Cohen said. “In some cases, you want aircraft to loiter over a target area—waiting for a target to pop up—but that too requires more fuel and by extension more tankers.”

Timothy Walton, senior fellow at Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology who has participated in war-gaming scenarios for the U.S. and allies, told Newsweek described aerial refueling aircraft as “vital to modern U.S. air operations,” including the ongoing conflict with Iran.

“Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps aircraft depend on aerial refueling,” Walton said. “The U.S. Air Force employed more than 200 tankers in Europe and the Middle East during Operation Epic Fury alone in 2026, and it required scores of additional tankers to maintain strategic deterrence, defend the homeland, and address other theater, diplomatic support, training, and depot maintenance demands.”

Their role is not limited to the Persian Gulf. In the event of a large-scale conflict with China or Russia, Watson argued that the demand for tankers would be even greater in order to provide an air bridge bringing enemy territory within range.

But that demand also carries with it a major burden for a fleet that U.S. Transportation Command chief Air Force General Marshall Reed described in March—just weeks into the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran—as “the most stressed fleet that we have” in the U.S. military.

Walton noted that the “Air Force’s 1950s-era KC-135 fleet is increasingly unreliable and expensive to operate and urgently needs replacement.” And yet, “without effective aerial refueling, U.S. forces could be severely constrained in a conflict,” he said.

Why Europe Isn’t Safe

That’s a problem Iran has already identified. Reports indicate five KC-135 aircraft were damaged in an Iranian ballistic missile attack against Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base in March.

The destruction wrought by Iranian attacks on U.S. bases in the region has prompted debates about the utility of maintaining such heavily exposed forward operating locations. But events linked to another war raging elsewhere has demonstrated how even aircraft deep in friendly territory may not be afforded adequate protection.

Both Bensahel and Walton pointed to the example of Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web, an ambitious series of covert drone attacks that damaged or destroyed between 20 and 40 Russian military aircraft behind enemy lines in June.

“U.S. airfields around the world are vulnerable to a range of attacks, ranging from terrorist saboteurs to one-way attack drones similar to those employed by Ukraine in Operation Spider Web,” Walton said.

“As witnessed at Prince Sultan Air Base, dispersion alone is insufficient to avoid attack in an era of persistent surveillance and precision targeting,” he added. “The Air Force will need to fund passive and active defenses to ensure the resilience of its tanker operations.”

If ultimately proved to have ties to Iran, the RAF Fairford plot also would not mark the first time that efforts to sabotage U.S. military bases abroad have been attempted.

With Germany still reeling from the detection of an explosive-laden of suspected Russian origin detected at Leipzig airport last month, Cohen pointed to an even longer history of groups such as the far-left Red Army Faction attacking U.S. military installations in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.

Decades later, four militants affiliated with the Islamic Jihad Union were arrested in 2007 for plotting to bomb Ramstein Air Base in Germany, the largest U.S. military installation on foreign soil.

The U.K.’s decision to allow the U.S. to conduct operations against Iran from RAF Fairford has since put the site directly in Iran’s rhetorical crosshairs. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned in July that “any base used for aggression against Iranian territory is a legitimate target for us” in direct response to the move.

Iran has also been suspected of involvement in a number of attacks in Europe claimed by groups such as the self-proclaimed Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, most of them targeting Jewish institutions. The Islamic Republic has consistently denied any involvement.

In the wake of RAF Fairford incident, the Iranian Embassy to the U.K. said in a statement that it categorically “rejects and strongly condemns the recent unfounded and malicious speculations published by some British individuals and media outlets attempting to link Iran to arrest of five suspects in the vicinity of RAF Fairford base.”

“The circulation of such fabricated speculations, particularly in the aftermath of the criminal acts of aggression committed by the United States and the Israeli regime against the Iranian people, will serve no purpose other than to fuel Iranophobia propaganda in the U.K.,” the Embassy said, adding that the nation “reserves the right to take appropriate legal measures, as necessary, to safeguard the rights and interests of the country and its people.”

Striking the Heart of the Alliance

The U.S. tanker fleet network is broad. It includes key sites among NATO allies such as RAF Fairford and RAF Mildenhall in the U.K., Chièvres Air Base in Belgium, Ramstein Air Base and Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany, Souda Air Base in Greece, Aviano Air Base and NAS Sigonella in Italy, Lajes Field in Portugal, Morón Air Base in Spain and Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.

But many NATO nations have not offered consent to allow the U.S. to conduct operations against Iran from their territories. Some have outright forbidden U.S. aircraft involved in the war from entering their airspace.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump continues to exert pressure on European allies to step up in support of the conflict. Against this backdrop, Kelly Grieco, senior fellow with the Stimson Center’s Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program, said “a successful attack on one U.S. air base would likely have a bigger political effect than a military one.”

“An attack would immediately force the host government to weigh the risks of allowing the United States to continue to use bases on its territory to support operations in the Middle East,” Grieco told Newsweek. “Some governments might respond by offering support and tightening security, while others might limit how their bases could be used.”

“The aircraft on the ground are a vulnerability,” she said, “but so is the larger network of allied bases and permissions that make U.S. operations possible.”

The current frays in transatlantic ties thus threaten to not only exacerbate existing strains on a central component of U.S. air power but also create a whole host of new problems for a conflict with dwindling popularity at home and abroad.

“Overall, the Trump team’s failure to go to war with our allies in support, or even giving them warning, has made it incredibly difficult for the U.S. military, especially in the logistics,” Peter Singer, professor at Arizona State University’s Center on the Future of War and senior fellow at New America, told Newsweek.

“Insulting and threatening so many U.S. allies after the fact has worsened matters,” Singer said. “It is a near perfect illustration of what [World War II-era U.K. Prime Minister Wiston] Churchill famously said, ‘There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.'”

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Edward T. Cummins