The U.S. military has some of the biggest sticks in the world, and right now a lot of them are Voltroning together within striking distance of Iran.
An eye-opening and massive number of C-17 Globemaster military transport and cargo planes have been observed heading to Europe and the Middle East, in what some monitors have forewarned looks like the build-up to major war in Iran.
One regional watcher and pundit commented in response: “112 C-17s are in or on their way to the Middle East. Guys, that’s a lot. Like Desert Storm a lot. Stay tuned.”
This as on Friday the prominent open source account Armchair Admiral and others used public flight tracking data to tally that the huge armada of US Air Force C-17s and counting are en route – a trend since mid-January.
“A total of 112 U.S. Air Force C-17’s have now either arrived or are en route to the Middle East with a further 17-18 in-progress flights, a number of Royal Air Force logistics flights from RAF Marham to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, and movement on U.S. Air Force CORONETs,” the source said.
C-17s are massive, and can deliver huge amounts of equipment or large numbers of troops in a single go. The US military lists some of the following key capabilities:
- Payload capacity of over 170,000 pounds
- Ability to operate on short, austere runways as small as 3,500 feet
- Intercontinental range, with in-flight refueling extending reach even further
- Rapid load/unload design to keep missions moving under pressure
Iran and the US just concluded an initial round of indirect talks mediated by Oman, but despite some hopeful statements issued by either side, it is very clear Iran is not willing to negotiate its ballistic missile program – a sticking point being demanded by Washington. A second round is expected in the coming days, unless military action ensues first.
Iran’s foreign minister has newly questioned whether Washington is taking these talks seriously, or if they are merely a pretext for more time to allow for a US force build-up in the region.
#USAF United States Air Force / #RAF Royal Air Force – Middle East Activity
7 February 2026 – 1700zA total of 112 U.S. Air Force C-17's have now either arrived or are en route to the Middle East with a further 17-18 in-progress flights, a number of Royal Air Force logistics… https://t.co/7Twe8eyoP2 pic.twitter.com/7Elg9P7etE
— Armchair Admiral 🇬🇧 (@ArmchairAdml) February 7, 2026
So airbases in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait. Trump’s critics have underestimated how well he’s unified the Sunni kingdoms against Iran. Go back to, say, 1989, and tell all the Middle East experts that one day an American Republican President would be able to build a coalition of Muslim countries that are more hostile to Iran than Israel and they’d look at you like you’d just grown a second head.
Also note that the Royal Navy presence, along with the EU adding the Iranian Republican Guards to the list of terrorist groups, shows that Europe is also tired of Iran’s current jihadi regime.
Two F-22 Raptor stealth jets originally slated for Super Bowl LX flyover have been removed due to “operational assignments,” the Air Force announced Friday.
Katie Spencer, who helps organize the Department of the Air Force’s sports outreach programs and coordinated the flyover formation, said the F-22s were part of the original concept but were reassigned as operational demands increased.
“We wanted fifth-generation aircraft from the Air Force and fifth-generation aircraft from the Navy,” Spencer said in a Friday interview with The Military Times. “But as things happen in our military, operational tempo has increased, and so the F-22s got pulled for some operational assignments.”
Spencer declined to detail the specific missions that required the aircraft’s reassignment, but F-22s have recently been involved in several high-profile operations. In June, the fighters played a key role in Operation Midnight Hammer, a B-2 Spirit bomber-led strike campaign targeting Iranian nuclear facilities.
Uncle Sam is notoriously possessive of the fifth generation air superiority fighter. So let’s break out the Bad Boys II meme again.
The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and the USS Michael Murphy, a guided-missile destroyer.
Other U.S. naval assets, including the USS Bulkeley, USS Roosevelt, USS Delbert D. Black, USS McFaul, USS Mitscher, USS Spruance and USS Frank E. Petersen Jr., are positioned across key waterways surrounding Iran, from the eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea.
Lincoln and Roosevelt are both* is a Nimitz-class supercarrier (and that’s Theodore Roosevelt, so they carrier’s nickname is literally “Big Stick”). USS Roosevelt [addded – LP], Michael Murphy, Bulkeley, Delbert D. Black, McFaul, Mitscher, Spruance and Frank E. Petersen Jr. are all Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyers.
If Iran is indeed treating its nuclear weapon program as non-negotiable, as its been claiming in talks, then regime change is inevitable. As Operation Midnight Hammer showed, both President Trump and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu regard Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat, and the popular uprising against the mullahs over the collapse of Iran’s economy have finally created conditions ripe for consigning the Islamic Republic of Iran to the dust-heap of history.
Chances of that regime lasting out the year would appear to be slim and none.
*Wrong Roosevelt.
Tags: aircraft carrier, Ali Khamenei, C-17 Globemaster, destroyer, EU, F-22, Foreign Policy, Iran, Israel, Jihad, Jordan, Kuwait, Military, Oman, Qatar, Royal Air Force, Saudi Arabia, UK, USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Bulkeley, USS Michael Murphy
I hope the Iranian can be freed of the open air prison called the Islamic Republic of Iran.
My favorite thing about this administration is all the no new wars.
The USS Roosevelt is NOT the USS Theodore Roosevelt, but is a DDG named for both FDR and his wife Eleanor, thus why it’s just the USS Roosevelt.
[Corrected. – LP]
the two big unanswered questions are these
1) can US/Israeli assets deflect truly large number of drones?
2) is a decapitation strike and oil embargo enough to drive IRGC out of power without US ground troops? they are unlikely to surrender
war is a very fluid situation
that said I don’t think even a couple hundred Shaheds at once can actually get near a Phalanx
and we might have literally tens of millions of Iranians ready to give their lives to make it happen
Oh, goody. Here comes Operation Let’s Help the Iranian Opposition Now That They’re All Dead.
This will start out as shock and awe and end up as 15 frickin years of “regime change”.
“that said I don’t think even a couple hundred Shaheds at once can actually get near a Phalanx”
The current version R2D2 can engage a total of 15 targets with its 1,559 cartridge, ready supply of 20x102mm ammunition.
yeah good point
they say the CIWS range is 1-2 miles but I don’t know how effective that actually is for small fast targets
at 120MPH they’d have about a minute to knock them all down
also not sure how many rounds is ideal for drones, which are not nearly as fast as anti-ship missiles, but hard to imagine it’s less than 100, so yeah about 15 given the 1550 it has on tap
but the PDS reload time is around four minutes, so they better knock them all down :)
but yeah with a truly large attack they’d have to knock down the rest well beforehand
but looks like Nimitz carry up to four, so maybe 60 in all?
assuming they all have LOS on target
Tig, Iran has been at war with the United States since the Carter administration. It’s not new.
Trump encouraged the protestors, told them he had their back, drew a line in the sand for the regime. Then the regime stepped over that line and massacred who knows how many thousands of people. Weeks later we are still talking about the firepower Trump is amassing when a handful of well-placed missiles would have been enough.
I have yet to see any evidence of a 4 minute reload for R2D2, despite it being touted by the U.S. Navy. Usually it is a 15 minute CF at the gun, and probably another 15 minutes hauling the sixteen 100 round M548 steel boxes to the gun.
Drones are flat and small, which necessitate long bursts to achieve hit probability. The further out the drones are, the longer the bursts need to be.
The latest Mk244, Mod 0 cartridge for R2D2 has an effective range slightly less than a mile, at $ 100 per cartridge. That is $ 10,000 per engagement (for the mathematically less gifted). An HESA Shahed 136 is thought to now cost about $ 10,000, and its decoys cost less than $ 2,000.
You know what fits in a C-17? Every type of special-operations-modified helicopter that the Night Stalkers fly.
And a completely unrelated random data point: News reports say the Super Bowl military flyover was originally supposed to have a pair of F-22s instead of Eagles from the CANG, but they became not available, as “…the F-22s got pulled for some operational assignments.” (Cite: https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/02/06/f-22s-pulled-from-super-bowl-flyover-due-to-operations-planner-says/ )
A random data point that was, in fact, mentioned in the post.
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