Two EA-37B Compass Call aircraft slipped out of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in late March, crossed the Atlantic to RAF Mildenhall, and kept going — south to Souda Bay in Crete, then into the combat zone. It was the first operational deployment of the Air Force's newest electronic warfare platform, and it went straight into a shooting war.

The aircraft — serials 17-5579 and 19-1587, both wearing the DM tail codes of the 55th Electronic Combat Group — are now supporting Operation Epic Fury, the ongoing U.S. air campaign against Iran. Their mission: jam Iranian communications networks and blind the air defence radars that have already claimed an F-15E and an A-10.

CENTCOM confirmed the deployment on April 2. For an aircraft type that had never left American airspace in an operational capacity, this was not a gentle introduction.

From Turboprop to Business Jet

The EA-37B is built on a Gulfstream G550 airframe — a $60 million executive jet repurposed as an electronic attack platform. It replaces the EC-130H Compass Call, a modified C-130 Hercules that has been jamming enemy signals since the 1980s. Only four of the ageing turboprops remain operational.

The jump in capability is dramatic. The G550 flies higher, faster, and farther than the Hercules it replaces. Its jet speed means it can keep pace with strike packages rather than orbiting behind them. And its electronic warfare suite, built by L3Harris and BAE Systems, is a generation ahead of the old EC-130H's equipment — capable of targeting modern networked air defences of the kind Iran operates.

The Air Force plans to buy 10 EA-37Bs in total. With two now forward-deployed, that means 20 percent of the planned fleet is already in combat before the programme has even reached full production.

Why Electronic Warfare Matters Now

The deployment is not a coincidence. Iran's integrated air defence network — a layered system of S-300PMU-2, Bavar-373, and Khordad-15 surface-to-air missiles — has already demonstrated it can bite. The shootdown of an F-15E Strike Eagle on April 3 was the first loss of a U.S. combat aircraft to enemy fire in 23 years. An A-10 was hit the same day.

Electronic warfare aircraft like the EA-37B exist to degrade those defences before strike aircraft arrive. By jamming the radar signals that guide SAMs to their targets, Compass Call creates blind spots in the enemy's detection grid — corridors through which fighters and bombers can operate with reduced risk.

The old EC-130H did this job for decades over Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. But Iran's defences are more modern, more networked, and more lethal than anything the Compass Call fleet has faced before. Sending the EA-37B — with its newer suite designed specifically for these threats — signals that the Pentagon considers Iran's air defence network a first-order problem.

Baptism by Fire

Most new aircraft types enter service quietly — routine training flights, peacetime deployments, years of working out the kinks before combat. The EA-37B skipped all of that. Its first trip outside the continental United States is a war zone.

That urgency says something about the state of the air campaign. Five weeks into Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. has lost multiple aircraft, expended hundreds of cruise missiles, and discovered that Iran's air defences are tougher than pre-war assumptions suggested. The EA-37B's rushed deployment is a response to a real operational gap — one the ageing EC-130H fleet can no longer fill.

Whether these two aircraft prove the concept or reveal teething problems, their combat debut will write the playbook for electronic warfare in the next generation. The first chapter is being written right now, somewhere over the Middle East.

Sources: Scramble, Air & Space Forces Magazine, The War Zone, AeroTime