WASHINGTON (AP) — All six crew members of a KC-135 refueling aircraft that crashed while supporting operations against Iran are dead, the U.S. military said Friday.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, said the crash in western Iraq on Thursday followed an unspecified incident involving two aircraft in “friendly airspace” and that the other plane landed safely.
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. He did not identify them but offered condolences to their families.
The crash brings the U.S. death toll in Operation Epic Fury to at least 13 service members, with the seven others killed in combat. About 140 U.S. service members have been injured, including eight severely, the Pentagon said earlier this week.
The KC-135 has been in service for more than 60 years and has been involved in several fatal accidents, most recently in 2013. Adding to concerns about their reliability, the aircraft don't always carry parachutes.
Here’s what is known so far about the tanker, which is the fourth U.S. military aircraft publicly acknowledged to have crashed since the war against Iran began on Feb. 28:
U.S. Central Command said the circumstances of the crash are under investigation but that the loss of the aircraft was “not due to hostile or friendly fire.”
A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the developing situation, said the other plane involved was also a KC-135. Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., wrote on X that the other plane landed safely in Israel.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon on Friday morning that 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.
Speaking at the same news conference, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the crew heroes.
“War is hell. War is chaos,” Hegseth said. “And as we saw yesterday with the tragic crash of our KC-135 tanker, bad things can happen. American heroes, all of them.”
Hegseth and Caine spoke to reporters before the deaths of the six crew member had been made public.
Yang Uk, a security expert at South Korea’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies, 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.
Last week, three U.S. F-15E fighter jets were mistakenly downed by friendly Kuwaiti fire. All six crew members ejected safely.
The KC-135 Stratotanker is a U.S. Air Force aircraft used to refuel other planes in midair, allowing them to fly longer distances and sustain operations without landing. The plane is also used to transport wounded personnel during medical evacuations or conduct surveillance missions, according to military experts.
“The last of these planes were produced in the 1960s,” Yang said.
Based on the same design as the Boeing 707 passenger plane, the KC-135 is set to be gradually phased out as more of the next-generation KC-46A Pegasus tankers enter service.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the Air Force last year 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. Nurses and medical technicians are added in aeromedical evacuation missions.
Refueling typically happens at the back of the plane, where the boom operator is located. A fuel boom is lowered to connect with fighters, bombers or other aircraft. On many of the planes, the boom operator works lying face down while looking out of a window on the underside of the plane.
Some KC-135s can also refuel planes from pods on their wings. The tankers have room to carry cargo or passengers if needed.
Refueling tankers could play an increasingly important role if the Iran war drags on, as U.S. aircraft may need to fly longer missions to pursue Iranian forces retreating deeper into the country, said Yang.
KC-135s have been involved in several fatal accidents. The most recent occurred on May 3, 2013, when one crashed after takeoff south of Chaldovar, Kyrgyzstan, while supporting the war in Afghanistan.
In that crash, the crew experienced problems with the plane’s rudder, according to a U.S. Air Force investigation. While the crew struggled to stabilize the plane, the tail section broke away and the plane exploded midair, killing all three onboard.
The most serious midair collision involving the plane happened in 1966, when a B-52 bomber carrying nuclear bombs struck a tanker near Palomares, Spain.
The accident caused the tanker to crash, killing four onboard. The disaster led to an extensive decontamination effort to clean up nuclear material dispersed when conventional explosives in the hydrogen bombs detonated after hitting the ground.
The plane has a good safety record overall, is well-maintained and has been updated often with new equipment, said Alan Diehl, a former investigator for the Air Force Safety Center who examined mishaps that involved KC-135s.
But Diehl said an important question is whether this KC-135 was carrying any parachutes. The one that crashed in Kyrgyzstan was not, according to the investigation.
Diehl said the reasoning for not always requiring parachutes, at least in the 1980s and 1990s, included the expense of maintaining them and training to use them. He said K-135s are designed with an escape hatch on the flight deck and a spoiler to help airmen jump clear of the fuselage.
A 2008 news release from an air refueling unit said the Air Force was pulling parachutes from KC-135s, noting that it was statistically safer to stay with the aircraft, “especially when flying over enemy territory.”
“Removing parachutes from military aircraft may sound peculiar, but KC-135s are not like other aircraft,” the news release stated. “They seldom have mishaps, and the likelihood a KC-135 crew member would ever need to use a parachute is extremely low.”
Diehl stressed that it's unclear whether parachutes would have helped the crew over Iraq. But he said the second plane landing safety suggests the collision may not have been catastrophic.
When asked if the plane that crashed had parachutes, the military would say only that the cause of the incident was still under investigation.
As for why the KC-135 that crashed had six people on board, Diehl said some could have been backup crew, given that the aircraft can stay in the air for many hours.
Kim Tong-Hyung reported from Seoul, South Korea. Associated Press writer Adam Schreck in Bangkok contributed to this report.
FILE - A U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker refueling tanker aircraft takes off from the Kadena Air Base airfield in Kadena town, west of Okinawa, southern Japan, Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae, File)
FILE - A U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling aircraft performs a flyover during the national anthem before an NCAA college football game between Central Florida and Georgia Tech, Sept. 24, 2022, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)
Their backgrounds stand out. And not in a good way.
Two bankruptcies and six law enforcement jobs in three years. An allegation of lying in a police report to justify a felony charge against an innocent woman — an incident that led to a $75,000 settlement and criticism of his integrity. A third job candidate once failed to graduate from a police academy, then lasted only three weeks in his only job as a police officer.
Their common bond: All were hired recently by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during an unprecedented hiring spree — 12,000 new officers and special agents to double its force — after the agency received a $75 billion windfall from Congress to enact President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign.
The president put a premium on swift action, and for ICE that meant rapid-fire recruitment and hiring, which in turn led to new employees with questionable qualifications. Their backgrounds and training have come under scrutiny after numerous high-profile incidents in which ICE agents used excessive force.
“If vetting is not done well and it’s done too quickly, you have higher risk of increased liability to the agency because of bad actions, abuse of power and the lack of ability to properly carry out the mission because people don’t know what they are doing,” said Claire Trickler-McNulty, who served as an ICE official during the Obama, first Trump and Biden administrations.
The agency has said the majority of new hires are police and military veterans. But evidence is mounting that applicants with questionable histories were either not fully vetted before they were brought on or were hired in spite of their past, an investigation by The Associated Press found.
On Thursday, prosecutors announced felony assault charges against ICE officer Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. for allegedly pointing a handgun at the occupants of a car after pulling alongside them on a Minneapolis-area highway in February. Court records show Morgan had a history of financial problems, and the police department in Alexandria, Virginia, said he was an entry-level recruit for six weeks in 2022 but never completed its police academy. It is unclear when he started at ICE, which didn't return messages seeking comment.
ICE’s acting director, Todd Lyons, said during a congressional hearing in February that he was proud of the hiring campaign, which drew more than 220,000 applications. “This expansion of a well-trained and well-vetted workforce will help further ICE’s ability to execute the president’s and secretary’s bold agenda,” he said.
Unlike many local law enforcement agencies, ICE said it shields the identity of employees to protect them from harassment, making a full accounting of the new hires impossible.
The AP focused on more than 40 officers who recently made public their new jobs as ICE officers on LinkedIn pages, using public records to check their backgrounds. All but one were male.
While most of them had conventional qualifications as former correctional officers, security guards, military veterans and police officers, it's unclear how many should have potentially been disqualified because AP did not have access to their full personnel files. But several had histories of unpaid debts that resulted in legal action, two had filed for bankruptcy and three others had faced lawsuits that alleged misconduct in prior law enforcement jobs, the AP found.
Marshall Jones, an expert on police recruiting at the Florida Institute of Technology, said it's hard to get a full picture of ICE's new employee pool without more data. But he said ICE has likely hired some “less than ideal candidates” who meet minimum requirements but would be passed over in a normal hiring cycle.
“If you’re hiring hundreds or thousands of people, even with the best of background processes, there are going to be outliers,” he said. “The question is, are these normal outliers from human beings doing things, or is there a systemic challenge in properly vetting folks if there are issues?”
The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, did not answer questions about specific hiring decisions. But it acknowledged some applicants received “tentative selection letters” and offers to begin working on a temporary status before they had been subjected to full background checks.
“ICE is committed to ensuring its law enforcement personnel are held to the highest standards and rigorously vets them throughout the hiring process,” the department said. “Vetting is an ongoing process, not a one-time occurrence.”
The process includes reviewing their criminal histories and credit scores and conducting background investigations that include interviewing prior employers and other associates, which can take weeks. But the deluge of hires has strained the agency, which promised signing bonuses of up to $50,000 and advertised that college degrees were not required.
An internal memo, first reported by Reuters in February, told ICE supervisors that if they receive “derogatory information about a newly hired employee’s conduct” they should refer the allegations to an internal affairs unit for investigation. Such information could include the employees’ termination or forced resignations, the memo said.
Among the new hires is Carmine Gurliacci, 46, who resigned as a police officer in Richmond Hill, Georgia, to join ICE in Atlanta in December, according to a resignation letter obtained by AP.
He filed for bankruptcy in 2022, saying he had no income and had been unemployed for two years after moving from New York to Georgia, court filings show. He said he was living with a friend and doing chores in exchange for housing, listing tens of thousands of dollars of unpaid loans, bills, child support and other debts. He also had filed for bankruptcy in 2013 in New York, when he listed $95,000 in liabilities, records show.
Serious financial problems are “a pretty big red flag” because they might make employees susceptible to bribes or extortion, which have been problems at ICE, Trickler-McNulty said.
After his 2022 bankruptcy petition was approved, Gurliacci rejoined the work force, hopping to six Georgia law enforcement agencies within three years, each time resigning before moving on, records obtained by AP show.
He left one campus security job in 2023, citing “unforeseen personal issues that render me unable to fulfill my duties,” a resignation letter shows. But he then began working for the Butts County Sheriff's Office soon after.
He lasted months there before moving to the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office, where he quit after two months on the job, records show. The federal government recently obtained his Chatham County personnel file as part of a background check, two months after he started at ICE.
Reached by phone, Gurliacci told a reporter he would call back. He never did and did not respond to follow-up messages.
Another new hire is Andrew Penland, 29, who joined ICE after resigning in December as a sheriff’s deputy in Greenwood County, Kansas.
Penland had spent most of his career as a deputy in Bourbon County, Kansas, but left last year after facing a lawsuit alleging he arrested a woman on false allegations in 2022. The county’s insurer paid $75,000 to settle the case, the agreement shows.
The woman, June Bench, recounted in an interview what happened. One of her neighbors, a county official, claimed Bench had purposely made a wide turn and nearly hit him with her car.
Penland responded to the property. Body camera video shows he urged the neighbor to press charges and told the man Bench would go to jail but he would not have to testify in court because it would get resolved through a plea.
Bench denied the allegation and said it was part of a personal dispute. But Penland arrested her on a felony assault charge, took her to jail and seized her car. Penland wrote in a report that he watched surveillance video showing her neighbor jumping out of the way of her speeding car.
It took a week for Bench to get out of jail and more than a year to defeat the charge, which was dismissed for lack of evidence. When she obtained the video Penland cited as proof, it showed her car appearing to make a routine turn and no near-collision with the neighbor.
Bench said she was outraged to learn Penland had been hired by ICE.
“That’s scary to me. He abuses his power,” she said.
After being reached for comment, Penland deactivated his LinkedIn account and alerted ICE to the inquiry but did not respond to AP.
A third new ICE hire, Antonio Barrett, initially failed to graduate from a Colorado law enforcement academy in 2020, one of two students who did not “complete portions of the academy” and received “an incomplete grade,” an email obtained by AP shows.
He finished the program after a community college arranged a special one-day training and test for him, and landed a job at the police department in La Junta, Colorado, in July 2020. But he only worked three weeks before resigning and never worked in local policing again.
Previously, Barrett worked as a corrections officer at a Colorado prison.
He was accused in a lawsuit of excessive force for inflicting pain on a handcuffed inmate when he and another colleague forcibly removed the man from a wheelchair in 2017. But state officials argued their actions were not excessive and a court agreed, dismissing the case.
Barrett didn't respond to a message seeking comment.
ICE has denied removing any training requirements, saying new recruits receive 56 days of training and 28 days of on-the-job training. The agency said that most of the new officers have already completed law enforcement academies.
But former ICE academy instructor Ryan Schwank testified in February that agency leaders cut training on the use of force, firearms safety and the rights of protesters. He said the new recruits include some as young as 18 who lack college degrees and whose primary language is not English.
“We’re not giving them the training to know when they’re being asked to do something that they’re not supposed to do, something illegal or wrong,” he said.
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AP reporter Claudia Lauer contributed to this report.
FILE - Federal immigration enforcement agents detain an individual near West 27th Street and South Ridgeway Avenue in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago, Dec. 16, 2025. (Anthony Vazquez/Chicago Sun-Times via AP, File)
FILE - Todd Lyons, senior official performing the duties of the director at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, listens during a Senate Homeland Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner, File)
FILE - Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) trainees practice shooting handguns at the indoor firing range at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) in Brunswick, Ga., Aug. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Fran Ruchalski, File)
