• Israel targeted nuclear and military sites in Iran in airstrikes early Friday morning.
• The strikes are a major escalation that threatens to expand into a wider regional conflict.
• These are five key questions in the wake of Israel's air war.

Israel's widespread airstrikes on Iran effectively damaged the country's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, which officials said was a primary goal.

The strikes hit over 100 targets, including Iran's air defense systems, missile launchers, and senior military leadership.

Now, all eyes are on Tehran's response and the specter of a wider conflict. And there are questions over whether the US will get pulled into the fight.

Here are some main questions stemming from the attacks.

How has Iran responded?

Iran initially responded to the attack by firing 100 drones at Israel on Friday, which the Israel Defense Forces said were mostly intercepted.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Israel "should anticipate a severe punishment" in response to the strikes, and that Iran "won't let them go unpunished."

Hours later, the IDF said Iran had launched "dozens" of missiles at Israel in what appeared to be several waves. The military said its air defenses were actively intercepting threats, and video footage captured several impacts.

"The Iranian response might be delayed or split into multiple phases," said Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the UK-based Royal United Services Institute think tank.

"But their main weapon will be ballistic missiles," he added, "which have the best chance of inflicting damage on Israel, whereas drone and cruise missile attacks will face more extensive Israeli defences."

It is not unprecedented for Iran to launch powerful weapons at Israel; Tehran fired hundreds of missiles and drones at its foe in April and October last year. However, those strikes were mostly intercepted by Israel and its allies, including the US.

Beyond direct strikes, another way that Iran could retaliate is through the so-called "Axis of Resistance," a vast network of militias it is aligned with throughout the region, including Lebanon's Hezbollah and Yemen's Houthis.

Israel has been battling these forces, and Hamas in Gaza, since the October 7, 2023, attacks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long advocated for destroying Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran claims is for civilian purposes.

The US, however, has been trying to reach a new deal with Iran (and has threatened violence if a deal isn't done). The strikes could derail those efforts and even goad Iran into racing to build a nuclear arsenal.

Could this trigger a wider conflict?

Israel's strikes threaten to spark a wider regional conflict, analysts at London's Chatham House think tank warned Friday.

"Far from being a preventive action, this strike risks triggering a broader regional escalation and may inadvertently bolster the Islamic Republic's domestic and international legitimacy," Sanam Vakil, Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa program director, said.

Last year, Tehran reportedly threatened to target Gulf state oil facilities if they allowed Israel access to their airspace for strikes against Iran. It's unclear what routes Israeli aircraft used in the attacks, but there's been speculation Israel could exploit the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria to get its aircraft directly over Iraq for strikes.

Russia is also a close ally of Iran, and the two have increased their defense cooperation since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

However, Nikita Smagin, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, said in December that the Kremlin is unlikely to come to Iran's direct aid in order to avoid direct confrontations with Israel and the US.

Will the US be pulled into a fight?

The US has helped arm and defend Israel, notably in the wake of Hamas' October 7 attacks. The world will be watching to see how President Donald Trump responds.

Trump has sought to broker a new nuclear deal with Iran, and in the wake of the Israeli attacks overnight, warned of "even more brutal" strikes from Israel if Iran refuses a new agreement.

Last year, the US Navy helped shoot down Iranian missiles fired at Israel in two major attacks, and it has rotated multiple aircraft carriers and many warships into the region since 2023, in a show of support for Israel and to deter its enemies, including Iran.

The US and other NATO countries have also defended international shipping routes in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden from attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen.

What forces does the US have in the region?

The US has a substantial military presence in the Middle East, including naval forces, ground troops, and strike aircraft.

A Navy spokesperson told BI that the Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group — consisting of an aircraft carrier, a cruiser, and three destroyers — is in the Arabian Sea.

There are also three American destroyers in the Red Sea and another in the Eastern Mediterranean.

All of these warships, and the carrier's dozens of embarked aircraft, are capable of carrying out air defense missions to defeat incoming drones and missiles.

Were the strikes effective?

IDF spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said Israel's strikes "significantly harmed" Iran's main uranium enrichment site at Natanz.

"For many years, the people of the Iranian regime made an effort to obtain nuclear arms in this facility," he said, adding that the site "has the necessary infrastructure to enrich uranium to a military grade."

The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed the site was struck, but the extent of the damage remains unverified.

Satellite imagery appeared to show significant damage at the surface level.

There was also a report Friday that Israel had struck Fordow, a nuclear fuel enrichment site guarded deep under a mountain.

The IDF said that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief Hossein Salami and other senior military commanders were also killed in targeted strikes.

• Israel launched a major operation on Friday targeting Iran's nuclear program.
• Israeli officials said aircraft struck Iran's main enrichment facility at Natanz, among other sites.
• It's hard for Israel to completely wipe out Iran's nuclear program, given that much is underground.

Israel launched an air assault against Iran early Friday morning that officials said is intended to damage Tehran's nuclear program.

Hundreds of Israeli warplanes participated in a series of widespread airstrikes targeting sites associated with Iran's nuclear and missile programs, as well as military leaders and air defense systems, in a major escalation that has already drawn a retaliatory attack from Tehran.

Specifically, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his forces "struck at the heart" of the country's nuclear enrichment and weaponization programs, and targeted its main enrichment facility at Natanz. The extent of the damage is unclear so far, but analysts said it appeared to be limited based on satellite imagery.

Netanyahu had long pushed for a military approach to Iran's nuclear program, as opposed to the deal that the Trump administration was hoping to settle to prevent Tehran from building nuclear weapons.

Iran has said that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes.

However, military and nuclear experts say firepower alone won't be enough to completely wipe out Iran's nuclear program. It has many scientists with nuclear expertise and has stored its most critical facilities in bunkers buried deep underground.

This makes the facilities particularly challenging targets that, from the air, can only be reached by the largest bunker busters, which Israel lacks, or repeated strikes in the same spots.

Natanz, home to Iran's largest uranium enrichment site, is located several floors underground in the center of the country. The Israel Defense Forces said its airstrikes damaged an underground area of the facility that contains an enrichment hall with centrifuges, electrical rooms, and additional infrastructure.

Satellite imagery captured on Friday revealed what appears to be significant damage at Natanz, but only on the surface.

Iran's other main enrichment site, Fordow, is buried even deeper in the side of a mountain and is the country's most "hardened" facility, said Darya Dolzikova, a senior research fellow for proliferation and nuclear policy at the UK-based Royal United Services Institute think tank.

In comments shared with Business Insider, Dolzikova said Fordow has not been affected by the Israeli strikes, nor have other locations. "Should Iran make a decision to produce a nuclear weapon, it would likely do that at hardened and potentially still secret sites," she said.

It's unclear what air-to-ground munitions Israel used to strike Natanz and the other targets affiliated with Iran's nuclear program. However, it would take a very large bunker-buster bomb to reach underground and destroy the more hardened sites.

The likely best weapon for the job is the US military's GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, one of the most powerful non-nuclear bombs and the largest bunker buster in America's arsenal at 15 tons. These munitions can only be carried by the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber and the B-21 Raider in development.

Israel doesn't have bomber aircraft capable of carrying the largest bunker-buster munitions. The IDF shared footage showing its fighter jets — F-35s, F-16s, and F-15s — taking off and landing during the strikes. Weapons experts pointed out that some of the aircraft appear to be carrying 2,000-pound guided bombs. Israel's F-15I, though, can carry 4,000-pound anti-bunker bombs.

Military analysts with RUSI estimated in March that the Fordow site could be as deep as 260 feet underground, likely beyond the reach of even America's MOP. Damaging it would almost certainly require repeated strikes, likely over days or weeks.

US officials said Washington was not involved in the Israeli strikes. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Iran not to retaliate against American forces in the region, something Tehran and its allies have done in the past.

The US Navy has one aircraft carrier and seven surface warships in the Middle East right now. These assets are capable of providing air defense in the event of a larger Iranian response. So far, Tehran has retaliated by launching dozens of drones at Israel.

Beyond the nuclear sites, Israeli officials said forces also went after other high-profile Iranian targets, including its top scientists, senior military commanders, air defenses, and ballistic missile program.

• Trump wants an F-35 stealth fighter with two engines because he doesn't like single-engine planes.
• He wants to call this new twin-engine F-35 the F-55.
• A former F-35 program manager told BI that this would basically mean building a new aircraft.

Lockheed Martin's F-35 stealth fighter is equipped with the world's most powerful fighter engine. It only has one of them, though, and President Donald Trump wants it to have two.

That's no small change. Redesigning an F-35 for twin engines is essentially building a whole new aircraft, a former US Air Force pilot who was involved with the F-35 program told Business Insider. That could take decades and require huge expenditures from an administration that's set on slashing government spending.

"The airframe is completely designed around a single engine," explained retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Eric Gunzinger, who worked on the advanced F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter as a program manager for flight simulation test and evaluation.

"To put two engines in it would be a complete redesign of not only the hardware and the airframe, but also the software," he said. The plane would need to be larger and could see decreased range.

Trump pitched an idea on Thursday for a new twin-engine version of the F-35 that he said he would call the F-55.

"The F-35, we're doing an upgrade — a simple upgrade — but we're also doing an F-55. I'm going to call it an F-55," Trump said during a business roundtable in Qatar. He said that the jet would be a "substantial upgrade" with two engines because "I don't like single engines."

"We're going to do an F-55" if the price is right, Trump said. "And that will be two engines and a super upgrade on the F-35."

The F-35 is a fifth-generation stealth aircraft made by US defense giant Lockheed Martin. It was developed and manufactured as part of a multinational program, and since the first jet rolled off the production line, more than 1,100 have been delivered to the US and militaries overseas.

The F-35 stealth fighter is a cornerstone of US airpower, with not just the ability to penetrate contested airspace but also quarterback American combat assets. While some Trump allies have criticized the aircraft over its high costs and questioned its ability to compete with drones, the president appears to be supportive of the program and the plane's prime contractor, as Trump also wants to upgrade the F-22 Raptor.

Both the F-35 and the F-22 are receiving upgrades, the most notable for the former being the Block IV upgrades and Tech Refresh 3 expected to deliver significantly improved capabilities. The president's plans appear to be outside of these ongoing efforts on the fifth-gen fighters.

In the case of the F-55, it almost certainly amounts to building a new fighter rather than modernizing existing F-35s considering the engineering challenges.

Trump's comments came several weeks after Lockheed Martin's CEO James Taiclet said his company would "supercharge" the fighter aircraft and turn it into a "fifth-generation-plus" aircraft with nearly the capabilities of a sixth-generation fighter like the F-47, which will be built by competitor Boeing. The upgraded F-35 could include improved stealth tech and materials, better sensors, and longer-range weapons. The CEO made no mention of a second engine.

A twin-engine F-35? More like a new F-55 fighter

The F-35's powerful single Pratt & Whitney F135 engine sets it apart from other fifth-generation aircraft like the American F-22 Raptor, the Russian Su-57, and the Chinese J-20 and new J-35, which all have twin engines. The J-35 resembles a twin-engine F-35, at least in appearance.

The F-35's lone F135 engine produces a whopping 43,000 pounds of thrust. The F-22's engines are each less powerful, by contrast, but together create 70,000 pounds of thrust.

Gunzinger, a former F-111 Ardvaark pilot who served with the US Air Force for over 20 years, said that the F-35 has only one engine because compromises were made during development to ensure that the plane met the needs of multiple services simultaneously.

The F-35 comes in three variants: the A for conventional take-off and landing, the B for short take-off and vertical landing, and the C for carrier-based operations. These three variants are generally operated by the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy, respectively.

The Marine-operated F-35B is especially unique because of the lift fan that allows it to land and take off in a hover. A twin-engine F-35B is unlikely considering the daunting technical hurdles to build it. "Technologically, it's a bridge too far to put two engines in an F-35B," Gunzinger said.

During his remarks Thursday, Trump said he likes having more engines because there's a backup if one goes out. The only other US single-engine fighters are the F-16 Fighting Falcon and the AV-8B Harrier, the STOVL aircraft the F-35B is replacing.

Gunzinger said two engines are, indeed, better than one, pointing to several instances when single-engine aircraft with engine issues wouldn't have been lost had it had a second engine. But the F-35 is a single-engine aircraft through and through. Anything else is a effectively a different plane.

Talking about transforming the F-35 into a twin-engine aircraft is "talking about a completely different aircraft" that's years — if not decades — away, Gunzinger said. Unless there's a secret fighter jet program underway in the desert somewhere or it is based on Lockheed's failed bid to build the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter, this idea could mean starting from scratch to create a design with the right aeronautics, carrying capacity, and small radar cross-section.

Frank Kendall, who was secretary of the Air Force until late January, told Breaking Defense that "a two-engine version of F-35 would be virtually a complete redesign," adding that the idea is "an option that was never presented and that we never considered."

The White House did not provide further details on the F-55, and neither did the Air Force when BI asked. Lockheed Martin would not say whether it has been in discussions with the White House about a twin-engine F-35 or a new F-55. Lockheed said only that it looks forward to working on the administration's "vision for air dominance."

Gunzinger said that building both the F-55 and Boeing's NGAD doesn't make sense. "The Air Force really can't afford another major fighter program," he added. "With the current budget and capabilities, you really have to decide on do you want an F-55, which is a brand new aircraft, or do you want the NGAD," another brand new aircraft. And both planes would likely bring similar capabilities to the fight.

• Far-right activist Laura Loomer criticized Lockheed Martin and its F-35 jet over the weekend.
• She became the latest Trump ally to lash out against the expensive and highly capable jet.
• Elon Musk has also rebuked the fifth-generation fighter aircraft.

Laura Loomer, the far-right activist who has a direct line to President Donald Trump, criticized Lockheed Martin's F-35 program over the weekend, decrying the US defense giant as "woke" and lashing out against the expensive stealth aircraft.

In a lengthy post on X, Loomer suggested Lockheed Martin is delivering F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters that "are simply not ready for combat."

"The F-35 program, one of the most expensive weapons programs in history, is plagued by delays, defects, & downright incompetence," she wrote Saturday. She said the US Air Force is accepting jets that lack "functional" radar systems, without offering evidence.

She also claimed that Lockheed is "increasingly obsessed with pushing a woke agenda." Like many other US defense contractors, Lockheed scrapped its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in January after Trump returned to the White House.

The $2 trillion F-35 program is an appealing target for activists and officials seeking to slash government spending, and it has a well-documented list of problems. The Pentagon's top weapons tester said earlier this year that the program had problems delivering functional software and had fallen behind schedule to test upgraded mission systems.

Despite the issues, the F-35 is fast becoming the centerpiece of US air superiority fighters; the Pentagon approved full-rate production a year ago and plans to buy nearly 2,500 of the stealth fighters. The US military and its allies widely consider it one of the world's top fighter aircraft.

Lockheed has described the F-35's AN/APG-81 active electronically scanned array radar as "the most capable in the world." Northrop Grumman, which manufactures the system, called it the "cornerstone" of the jet's advanced sensor suite.

Loomer criticized the F-35 program's software development, saying some systems are behind schedule, and called out its "deteriorating" stealth paneling capabilities. She cited various media reports to support her case.

The F-35 is the world's most expensive weapons program, with an estimated lifetime cost of over $2 trillion. Other Trump allies, like Elon Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, have attacked the aircraft as essentially obsolete. Loomer's attack was in some ways the most thorough.

"This is government and taxpayer WASTE on an unimaginable scale, & it's coming out of our pockets!" wrote Loomer, whose opinion swayed Trump to fire the NSA director in early April.

"The F-35 is the cornerstone of the battlespace for 20 allied nations, enabling peace through strength in the 21st century," a Lockheed spokesperson told Business Insider. "It is combat proven, offers the most advanced capability and technology, and is the most affordable option to ensure the US and allies remain ahead of emerging threats."

Loomer could not be reached for additional comment.

The F-35 is constantly being upgraded and reworked to improve its capabilities. It is widely recognized as the world's top fifth-generation fighter, and is in service with militaries in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Right now, no US adversary has a comparable platform.

Musk, who criticised Lockheed in the fall, responded to Loomer on Saturday and wrote in a brief post on X: "Crewed aircraft will be destroyed instantly by cheap drone swarms."

Musk made similar comments last year about the F-35's survivability and how drones would make a better alternative. However, airpower experts pushed back on this and said the technology isn't quite there yet.

Musk's DOGE was tasked with eliminating government waste, and defense spending is a big target. Loomer singled out the Tesla CEO in her post and suggested that he — and Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — investigate the F-35 program.

• A US Navy aircraft carrier deployed to the Red Sea lost a $60 million fighter jet on Monday.
• The aircraft fell overboard after a move crew "lost control" of the jet, the Navy said.
• It's the second time that the USS Harry S. Truman strike group has lost an F/A-18 Super Hornet.

An F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet fell off the USS Harry S. Truman on Monday while the aircraft carrier was operating in the Red Sea, leaving a sailor hurt, the US Navy said.

The F/A-18E, which is estimated to cost roughly $60 million, was actively under tow in Truman's hangar bay — an area underneath the flight deck where aircraft receive maintenance — when the move crew "lost control" of the fighter aircraft. The plane then fell overboard alongside the tow tractor.

"Sailors towing the aircraft took immediate action to move clear of the aircraft before it fell overboard," the Navy said, adding in a statement that one sailor received minor injuries and an investigation is underway.

"The Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group and embarked air wing remain fully mission capable," the Navy said.

The Truman is one of two US Navy aircraft carriers that are launching aircraft for daily strikes against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. The US military began an intense bombing campaign against the rebels on March 15 and has struck hundreds of targets in the weeks since.

Earlier on Monday, the Houthis said they launched missiles and drones at the Truman and the warships in its strike group, claiming that the attack forced the carrier to turn around. Business Insider could not immediately verify these details.

A defense official told BI that "very few details can be provided currently as the incident is under investigation," adding that the crew is safe and accounted for.

The loss of a Super Hornet this week marks the second time during its involvement in the Red Sea conflict that the Truman strike group has lost one of the air wing's F/A-18.

In late December, the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg accidentally shot a Super Hornet down in what the military described as "an apparent case of friendly fire."