Currently weve only lost seven KC-135 refuelers but even that is way too many, the crews are not protected they depend on force projection bubble and redundancy in terms of any inbound threats. As to being hit on the ground, that\s a failure of the ground based air defenses there, and id wonder if they were doing CAP around those planes on the ground. If I were that base commander id have planes in the air doing longer and higher recon in terms of what's inbound and i'd have strong reflexive moving of the planes into the air, if threats are near, id have the crews sleep in the fucking thing. but then we also probably have strong fuel restrictions active which means theres no recon, no CAP, nothing just big fat helpless super expensive planes on the fucking ground, that jugheaded iranian fucknuts can just dump some scud missles on. Shit on that plan altogether we might as well fly the planes and land them in iran, for the way this shit's going.