U.S. F/A-18F ‘Sub Buster’ Marking Points to Possible Iranian Kilo-Class Submarine Kill in Operation Epic Fury.

A U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet has returned from Operation Epic Fury carrying a “Sub Buster” marking that may indicate involvement in an engagement against an Iranian submarine, according to imagery highlighted by The Aviationist on October 2, 2026. The marking is significant because it suggests carrier-based strike aircraft may have been used to deliver the final attack after other U.S. sensors located and tracked an undersea target, extending the Super Hornet’s role into an unusual maritime kill chain.

Iran’s Russian-built Kilo-class submarine is one of the strongest candidates, although neither the target nor the weapon used has been officially confirmed. If the marking reflects a genuine combat engagement, it would demonstrate how U.S. naval forces can combine maritime surveillance, networked targeting and precision weapons to turn a submarine into a strikeable surface or fixed target without requiring the fighter itself to perform traditional anti-submarine warfare.

Related Topic: U.S. Central Command Iran Strike Wave Features F/A-18E Super Hornet Carrying Probable AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon

A rare “Sub Buster” marking on a VFA-41 F/A-18F Super Hornet points to possible involvement in a U.S. strike against an Iranian submarine during Operation Epic Fury (Picture Source: Jeff Rojas / USNI / Edited By Army Recognition Group)

On October 2, 2026, newly circulated imagery of a U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet provided an unusual visual clue to a potentially little-known maritime episode of Operation Epic Fury. Photographer Jeff Rojas captured the VFA-41 aircraft returning to NAS Lemoore carrying a broken-submarine silhouette marked “Sub Buster,” apparently recording the jet's involvement in an engagement against an Iranian submarine. The distinctive marking was first brought to wider attention in specialist aviation reporting by The Aviationist, which identified the aircraft as F/A-18F BuNo 168491 of the “Black Aces,” deployed with Carrier Air Wing 9 aboard USS Abraham Lincoln. The U.S. Navy has not publicly explained the marking, but if it represents an operational submarine engagement, it could reveal an exceptional example of a carrier-based multirole fighter being inserted into a mission normally associated with dedicated maritime-warfare platforms.

A Kilo-Class Submarine Emerges as a Leading Candidate

The first analytical distinction is between what the photograph demonstrates and what remains unconfirmed. The submarine marking itself is plainly visible, while VFA-41's connection to USS Abraham Lincoln establishes the aircraft's operational context. Separately, an official CENTCOM fact sheet for Operation Epic Fury lists F-18 fighter aircraft among U.S. assets employed and specifically includes Iranian Navy ships and submarines among target categories. What the public record does not yet establish is whether BuNo 168491 delivered the decisive weapon, supported another platform, or received the marking for participation in a wider engagement sequence. The imagery should be treated as a significant operational indicator rather than an official U.S. Navy confirmation of an individual submarine kill.

Among Iran's submarine types, the Russian-built Project 877EKM Kilo class nevertheless deserves particular scrutiny. Iran operated three of the large diesel-electric boats alongside the indigenous Fateh class and a substantially larger force of smaller Ghadir-class submarines. Compared with the coastal boats, the Kilos represented a more substantial conventional undersea capability, particularly for operations beyond the shallowest portions of the Persian Gulf. Open-source reporting surrounding Epic Fury has associated at least one Iranian Kilo with U.S. operations, making the class a credible candidate when considered alongside the general proportions of the submarine silhouette painted on the F/A-18F. That visual resemblance should not be overstated: aircraft markings are commemorative symbols, not necessarily scale-accurate recognition drawings. The safest assessment is consequently that a Kilo is one of the strongest candidates, but neither the marking nor currently available official information proves the submarine's identity.

More consequential than the submarine's exact class is the question of how a Super Hornet could have been brought into the engagement at all. An F/A-18F is not a conventional submarine-hunting aircraft: it does not perform the acoustic search mission normally associated with P-8A Poseidons, MH-60R Seahawks and their sonobuoy and torpedo systems. But that distinction changes dramatically once a submarine is detected at a known berth, caught operating on the surface, or tracked accurately enough for other sensors to generate weapon-quality coordinates. At that point the submarine ceases, temporarily, to be solely an undersea-warfare problem and becomes a high-value maritime precision target. The Super Hornet could have entered at the terminal end of a much larger sensor-to-shooter chain, with another aircraft, ship, intelligence system or surveillance platform providing detection, identification or targeting data. If that interpretation proves correct, the significance of “Sub Buster” would lie less in the F/A-18F becoming an improvised ASW aircraft and more in the U.S. force's ability to transfer an unusual maritime target across domains and assign it to an available strike platform.

From Detection to Terminal Effect: What Could the Super Hornet Have Fired?

A separate image shared by Rojas, showing VFA-41’s weapons-expenditure board from Operation Epic Fury, offers useful context for assessing how the squadron could have prosecuted such a target without establishing which munition was actually involved. The board indicates that the Black Aces employed a broad mix of precision-guided bombs and standoff weapons during the deployment, including JDAM-family munitions, AGM-154 JSOWs and AGM-84K SLAM-ERs. None of the recorded expenditures is publicly tied to the “Sub Buster” marking, so any attempt to identify a specific weapon remains necessarily speculative. The target’s condition would have been decisive.

A submarine stationary alongside a pier, in a maintenance area or otherwise fixed in position could have been engaged with a conventional precision-guided bomb such as a GBU-31 or GBU-38, while the dual-mode GBU-54 would have offered additional flexibility where terminal refinement was required. The heavier GBU-31 family is particularly noteworthy because it could deliver substantial destructive effect against a large exposed vessel, although the precise warhead configuration cannot be inferred from the marking alone. In this context, the more important point is that VFA-41 possessed several credible weapon options capable of inflicting anything from severe localized damage to a mission-ending effect once the submarine was no longer protected by the underwater environment.

A different engagement geometry would bring the squadron’s standoff weapons into sharper focus. If the submarine was surfaced and maneuvering rather than fixed in port, weapons such as the AGM-154 JSOW or AGM-84K SLAM-ER would become more compelling possibilities because they offer greater separation from the target and more sophisticated terminal-guidance options than a basic coordinate-only weapon. The JSOW C-1 variant is particularly relevant in theoretical terms because it was designed to engage moving maritime targets and can receive targeting updates after launch, while SLAM-ER combines long-range precision with an imaging-infrared seeker and a two-way data link that allows terminal refinement against sea targets.

That does not mean either weapon was necessarily used: the available VFA-41 board does not identify which AGM-154 variant was employed against which target, and no public evidence links any specific SLAM-ER expenditure to the submarine represented on the aircraft. Harpoon remains another theoretically suitable anti-ship weapon, but its absence from the photographed squadron tally makes it less strongly supported by the evidence currently available. Taken together, these possibilities suggest that the decisive factor may not have been a single specialized “submarine weapon,” but rather the ability of the Super Hornet to employ whichever precision munition best matched the target’s location, movement and exposure at the moment of engagement.

What “Sub Buster” Could Reveal About the Reach of U.S. Carrier Warfare

The “Sub Buster” marking on F/A-18F BuNo 168491 provides something more interesting than a simple victory symbol. If it accurately reflects participation in an Iranian submarine engagement, the aircraft may represent the visible endpoint of a multi-domain targeting architecture in which detection, identification, tracking, command-and-control and weapon delivery did not necessarily reside on the same platform. The submarine itself may have been located by dedicated maritime or intelligence assets, while a Super Hornet from USS Abraham Lincoln was selected to generate the required terminal effect. That possibility is consistent with the direction of U.S. naval warfare, in which the value of an individual platform increasingly depends on its ability to operate inside a distributed network rather than exclusively through its own onboard sensors.

A Kilo-class boat, potentially one of Iran's Project 877EKMs, remains a compelling candidate when the country's pre-operation order of battle, the marking's general appearance and publicly reported submarine losses are considered together. Yet the exact class should remain explicitly characterized as an open-source assessment until authoritative evidence emerges. The same standard applies to the weapon: JDAM offers a credible explanation for a fixed target, while GBU-54, JSOW C-1 and SLAM-ER introduce progressively more sophisticated options for targets requiring terminal refinement, movement compensation or standoff engagement. The presence of all of these weapon families within VFA-41's documented combat expenditure demonstrates that the squadron possessed several plausible means of producing the effect represented on the aircraft without establishing which one was actually used.

For that reason, the most significant interpretation is not that a Super Hornet necessarily “hunted” a submarine in the traditional anti-submarine warfare sense. The more technically credible possibility is that U.S. forces located and characterized a submarine through a broader maritime surveillance architecture and then used the F/A-18F as one element of the resulting engagement chain. If subsequently confirmed, such an episode would demonstrate a particularly important strength of U.S. carrier aviation: the ability to redirect a highly adaptable strike aircraft against an unconventional high-value maritime target when tactical conditions create the opportunity.

Until the U.S. Navy releases further details, the exact submarine, weapon, target condition and engagement sequence remain unresolved. The “Sub Buster” marking nevertheless provides a rare visual indication that VFA-41's role during Operation Epic Fury may have extended beyond conventional strike missions into a far more unusual area of maritime warfare, one in which the Super Hornet's importance derived not from replacing dedicated anti-submarine platforms, but from being capable of delivering precision effects once the wider U.S. force had transformed an undersea threat into a targetable surface or fixed contact.

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Written by Teoman S. Nicanci – Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group

Teoman S. Nicanci holds degrees in Political Science, Comparative and International Politics, and International Relations and Diplomacy from leading Belgian universities, with research focused on Russian strategic behavior, defense technology, and modern warfare. He is a defense analyst at Army Recognition, specializing in the global defense industry, military armament, and emerging defense technologies.