All six crew members aboard a KC-135 refueling aircraft that crashed in western Iraq are dead, the U.S. military said Friday.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, said the crash on Thursday followed an unspecified incident involving two aircraft in “friendly airspace,” and that the other plane landed safely. Central Command said the loss of the aircraft was “not due to hostile or friendly fire,” adding that the circumstances were under investigation.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said in a social media post that three of the six crew members were from his state and deployed with the Ohio Air National Guard’s 121st Air Refueling Wing. DeWine did not identify the service members but offered condolences to their families.
The crash increases the U.S. death toll in Operation Epic Fury to at least 13 service members, with seven others killed in combat, according to the AP report. Earlier this week, the Pentagon said about 140 U.S. service members have been injured, including eight severely.
The AP report said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity stated that the other plane involved was also a KC-135. Israeli ambassador Yechiel Leiter wrote on X that the other plane landed safely in Israel.
At a Pentagon news conference Friday morning, Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Dan Caine said the crash occurred “over friendly territory in western Iraq, while the crew was on a combat mission” and reiterated that hostile or friendly fire was not the cause. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the crew heroes, saying, “War is hell. War is chaos,” and adding, “And as we saw yesterday with the tragic crash of our KC-135 tanker, bad things can happen. American heroes, all of them.”
The AP report cited Yang Uk, a security expert at South Korea’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies, who said it would be rare for a refueling tanker to be downed by enemy fire because such operations are usually conducted in the rear of combat zones. The report also referenced a separate incident last week in which three U.S. F-15E fighter jets were mistakenly downed by friendly Kuwaiti fire, with all six crew members ejected safely.
The AP provided background on the KC-135 Stratotanker, a long-serving U.S. Air Force aircraft used to refuel other planes in midair so they can fly longer distances and sustain operations without landing. The plane can also be used to transport wounded personnel during medical evacuations or conduct surveillance missions, according to military experts, and Yang said the last of these planes were produced in the 1960s.
The report said the KC-135 is based on the same design as the Boeing 707 passenger plane and is set to be gradually phased out as more KC-46A Pegasus tankers enter service. It cited Congressional Research Service data that last year the Air Force had 376 KC-135s, including 151 on active duty, 163 in the Air National Guard and 62 in the Air Force Reserve.
A basic KC-135 crew consists of three people—a pilot, co-pilot and boom operator—while aeromedical evacuation missions add nurses and medical technicians, the AP report said. Refueling typically happens at the back of the plane, where a boom operator lowers a fuel boom to connect with other aircraft, and the report said some KC-135s can also refuel planes from pods on their wings.
The AP report said a question has also emerged about parachutes. It cited a May 3, 2013 crash in Kyrgyzstan in which the crew experienced problems with the plane’s rudder, according to a U.S. Air Force investigation; the AP reported that investigation found that crash’s KC-135 did not have parachutes. Alan Diehl, a former investigator for the Air Force Safety Center who examined mishaps involving KC-135s, told the AP that an important question is whether the Iraq crash aircraft carried parachutes.
Diehl stressed to the AP that it was unclear whether parachutes would have helped the crew over Iraq, though he said the second plane landing safely suggests the collision may not have been catastrophic. When asked if the plane that crashed had parachutes, the AP report said the military would say only that the cause of the incident was still under investigation.
A 2008 news release from an air refueling unit cited by the AP said the Air Force was pulling parachutes from KC-135s and stated it was statistically safer to stay with the aircraft, “especially when flying over enemy territory.” The report said the unit’s release also suggested parachute use was extremely unlikely for KC-135 crews, though Diehl said it remained unclear whether parachutes would have mattered in the western Iraq crash.