Operation Epic Fury entered its 38th day with U.S. forces beginning strikes on Kharg Island on April 7, Iran's primary crude oil export terminal. Iran responded by announcing it would no longer restrain itself from targeting regional oil infrastructure, a threat that pushed oil above $114 per barrel and raised the specter of a broader energy crisis.

A Monday press conference led by Trump, SecDef Hegseth, CIA Director Ratcliffe, and CJCS General Caine detailed the rescue of both F-15E crew members ("Dude 44") shot down April 3. The mission deployed 155 aircraft in total, including four bombers, 64 fighters, and 48 refueling tankers; the CIA ran a deception campaign to draw Iranian forces away from the downed airman's actual location while SOF teams extracted him from a mountain ridge.

Trump set a Tuesday 8 p.m. EDT deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or come to the negotiating table, threatening to "decimate" every bridge and power plant in Iran if the deadline passes. Iran rejected a 45-day ceasefire proposal through Pakistani intermediaries, demanding a permanent end to hostilities with guarantees against future attacks. China and Russia are assessed to be providing Iran with AI-enabled intelligence analysis, commercial satellite imagery, and military equipment.

The U.S. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Eglin Air Force Base awarded Raytheon a not-to-exceed $708.9M undefinitized contract action for Lot 12 production of the GBU-53/B StormBreaker (Small Diameter Bomb Increment II, or SDB II), covering all-up rounds, containers, test equipment, and spare parts. At award, $338.5M was obligated across fiscal years 2025 and 2026.

The SDB II is a 250-pound air-launched precision strike weapon equipped with millimeter-wave radar, imaging infrared, and laser-guided sensors, plus GPS and Inertial Navigation System (INS) guidance. It can engage moving and stationary targets in adverse weather and receive updated targeting coordinates mid-flight via Link-16 or UHF datalink — including mission abort commands after weapon release.

Work will be performed at Raytheon's Tucson, Arizona facility through March 2030. The contract is a sole-source acquisition and includes Foreign Military Sales (FMS) deliveries to Belgium, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway, South Korea, and Switzerland. The F-15E currently holds operational approval for StormBreaker; integration on the F-35 and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet is underway.

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) issued a solicitation for an Open Mission Engine (OMEN), an open-architecture software platform designed to fuse real-time intelligence, blue-force positions, threat data, and airspace updates into a single aircrew display. The effort is directly linked to a string of U.S. aircraft losses over Iran, including three F-15Es lost to friendly fire in Kuwait and two MC-130Js destroyed on a makeshift runway during the Dude 44 rescue operation — all traced to gaps in common operating picture and crew-to-crew communication.

The first planned application for the OMEN platform is a "Tactical Moving Map," giving legacy mobility airframes like the C-130 and KC-135 the kind of real-time situational awareness that modern warfighting demands but antique avionics cannot provide. The solicitation calls for an open software development kit, published application interfaces, and cross-platform compatibility to work across a diverse and aging fleet.

Bids are due April 15. Vendors can offer modular components including cloud-hosted processing, fleet management, and cybersecurity capabilities, as long as they demonstrate relevance to operations in Denied, Disrupted, Intermittent, and Limited (DDIL) environments. If a prototype is successfully fielded, a production contract could follow without competitive procedures.

The XVIII Airborne Corps completed its latest Scarlet Dragon exercise the week of March 30 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, focusing for the first time on integrating commercial, rather than purely military, datasets into battlefield data flows. Driven by lessons from early involvement with Ukraine, the corps is testing whether commercial geospatial intelligence and data streams can be ingested through existing cross-domain solutions and pushed to commanders in real time.

The exercise also stress-tested the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN), the Army's next-generation ground system, identifying friction points in how data moves to and from the platform. Soldiers are exploring how to use secure but unclassified-encrypted devices at the company level to feed data into systems like Maven Smart System faster and more accurately, reducing the 18-to-24 hour lag that currently afflicts corps-level logistics reporting.

A longer-term goal is a single predictive logistics and targeting visualization for commanders, built on quality data from all directorates. The corps is also refining low probability of intercept and low probability of detection data pathways to reduce its electromagnetic spectrum footprint while still maintaining the data-rich picture that modern multi-domain operations require.

Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One (MAWTS-1) completed a demanding sortie at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma as part of its seven-week Weapons and Tactics Instructor (WTI) course, in which a CH-53E Super Stallion successfully conducted mid-air refueling while simultaneously carrying two High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVs), each weighing approximately 2,350 kilograms, on an external dual-hook load.

The sortie was designed to mirror the pressures of a wartime mission rather than routine proficiency training, preparing aviation crews to support ground task force teams in complex and contested environments where road access is degraded or too dangerous. The CH-53E is powered by three General Electric T64 turboshaft engines delivering 4,380 shaft horsepower each, allowing a cruise speed of up to 150 knots and a standard range of 540 nautical miles without refueling.

The capability demonstrated has direct operational relevance: in a contested scenario, the ability to refuel mid-air while lifting heavy cargo allows forces to bypass contested terrain, reposition artillery systems or vehicles without warning, and sustain forward elements when conventional supply lines are cut. The course will culminate in a combined arms exercise integrating air, ground, logistics, and command-and-control functions.

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