Afghanistan remained a busy place for Air Force strike aircraft June 6-7, according to Air Forces Central. Near Bagram on June 6, for example, A-10s took out enemy combatants with 500-pound laser-guided bombs, the command said in a release. And in Now Zad, F-15Es struck enemy combatants with the same type bomb. Highlights of activities on June 7 include B-1B bomber attacks with 500-pound and 2,000-pound joint direct attack munitions against enemy firing positions in Musa Qal’eh and against an enemy building and a weapons cache in Gardez, AFCENT said in the airpower summary for that day. In total, coalition aircraft flew 52 close air support missions in Afghanistan on June 6 and 46 on June 7. In Iraq, there were 56 CAS missions on June 6 and an identical number on the following day, AFCENT said.
The Air Force overall reduced its size by 120 aircraft in fiscal year 2021, but kept about the same number of fighter, bomber and attack aircraft, according to data supplied by the service. The F-35 fleet saw the biggest increase while the B-1B bomber fleet saw the largest decline.