During Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025, US Air Force F-16 fighter jets cleared the way for the B-2 bombers that struck Iran’s nuclear facilities. The fighters flew hundreds of miles into Iranian territory, knocked out hostile air defenses, and flew out with very little fuel left in the tank, award citations reveal.
Earlier this month, the Air Force awarded six F-16 pilots from the 55th Fighter Squadron the Distinguished Flying Cross for their part in the operation, with special designations for service in combat. The award is bestowed for heroism or extraordinary achievement in flight.
Award citations provided by the Air Force to Business Insider spotlight these aviators, who flew nearly 300 miles into defended Iranian airspace in non-stealth jets, grappled with high-risk fuel challenges during the mission, and returned home.
“It’s rare that we get a chance to take a peek into the kinds of decisions that these aviators have to make and the ramifications of getting it wrong,” said retired F-16 pilot and former Navy TOPGUN instructor Vincent Aiello, referring to the award documents and the precarious situations the pilots faced.
During the operation, which unfolded nearly eight months before the more recent Operation Epic Fury, the six fighter pilots were tasked with executing an offensive counter-air and suppression of enemy air defenses mission to help the stealth B-2 Spirit bombers carrying 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators reach their targeted destinations, specifically Iranian nuclear facilities.
Airman 1st Class Samir Harris/US Air National Guard
The F-16 is a reliable fourth-generation fighter aircraft favored by many pilots, but they lack the advanced stealth technology that keeps other aircraft, such as F-35 fighters or B-2 bombers, hidden from adversary sensors, meaning the jets are far more vulnerable to enemy air defenses.
On radar, the fighter jet will “stand out like a sore thumb,” said John Waters, another former F-16 pilot and former commander of the Air Force’s F-16 Viper Demonstration Team.
The Fighting Falcon was developed in the 1970s and entered service toward the end of the decade, while the first operational stealth aircraft, the F117 Nighthawk, didn’t enter service until the 1980s.
During the operation, the F-16s “employed multiple AGM-88 suppressive weapons against enemy threats protecting the bombers and their Airmen during their most vulnerable time over target,” the award citations said. The AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles are made to destroy radar-equipped air defense systems.
The fighter pilots flew “at grave risk” to their lives in the F-16, “the only aircraft without low-observable design, deep into a sophisticated Iranian integrated air and missile defense network,” the award documents said. Flying so deep into adversary territory meant the crew ventured “far beyond the reach of friendly personnel recovery assets” and accepted “the considerable risk of capture” if shot down.
Fuel troubles coming and going
The mission got off to a rough start. The pilots, including three that took off from austere airfields, ran into “immediate challenges upon initial take-off when alerted to air refueling fallout.”
US Air Force
Flying in and out of new and austere airfields is difficult even under the best of circumstances, Waters said, and can impact a pilot’s situational awareness. Adding uncertainty about fuel only compounds the challenge.
The award documents don’t specify what went wrong, though two pilots were forced to direct new tanker pairings for aircraft, pre-planned aerial refueling rendezvous, while others scrambled to rejoin “with an unplanned tanker.” These kinds of changes can add strain on the already stressful aerial refueling process.
The “fuel fallout” cited in the documents suggests that one or more of the tankers were unexpectedly unavailable. For jet pilots, Waters said, a tanker reliability issue immediately becomes a fuel and timing problem, forcing rapid, complex decision-making.
In response to timeline delays, two of the F-16 pilots, their citations said, “executed air refueling at speeds above anything previously performed in the F-16” to “ensure acceptable combat air power force packaging into Iran.”
The initial fuel problems weren’t the last for the mission.
Fighter jets rarely depart with maximum fuel loads, Aiello said. More fuel means more weight, which can reduce speed and limit the number of weapons that the jet can carry.
“If you make it out, you’re gonna be tight on gas to begin with,” Waters said. Departing low on fuel is common enough that pilots joke about it, he added.
In this case, the F-16s finished their escort mission “critically low on fuel.”
“Even with fuel critically low, he resolutely escorted the package to safety, ensuring every aircraft made it out of harm’s way before executing a high-stakes tanker rejoin while critically low on fuel,” reads the citation for the senior officer, Lt. Col. Christopher Beckett.
Master Sgt. Kregg York/US Air National Guard
And while extremely low on fuel, Majs. Matthew Croghan and Alexander Trembly and Capts. Megan Langas, Abigail Maio, and Daniel Dodson each “tenaciously escorted the package to safety before executing a perilous minimum fuel tanker rejoin,” their citations read.
Air Force tanker challenges
The refueling problems referenced in the award citations point to an issue the Air Force is “whistling past the graveyard on,” said John Venable, a senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and a retired Air Force F-16 pilot.
Aircrew comments made during a Midnight Hammer lessons-learned forum he attended described tanker cancellations, Venable said, which forced major in-flight replanning, including changes to tanker tracks and receiver assignments.
During that forum, Venable said, aviators recalled that on their way home, some of the jets hit their tankers “on fumes” to refuel. Others could not reach a tanker at all and were forced to divert to some “unusual locations,” he said.
The Air Force did not respond to Business Insider’s query regarding fuel and tanker problems during Midnight Hammer.
The service’s tanker shortage, sometimes characterized as the “tanker gap,” has been exacerbated by an aging fleet and delayed modernization efforts. Those issues have been previously identified by watchdogs, congressional research, and defense experts as particular points of concern. There is a lack of backup capacity, even for an operation of limited scope and duration, Venable said.
That tanker challenge could become far more serious in a Pacific conflict, he added, where the distances are significantly greater and aerial refueling demands would be much higher.