WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- U.S. Air Force F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters that deployed to the Middle East to purportedly deter Iran in the Persian Gulf and push back against Russia in the skies over Syria have left the region, according to service officials.
“What the F-35s did is they gave us additional capacity,” Air Forces Central (AFCENT) commander Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich told reporters Oct. 4 at a Defense Writers Group event.
The deployment wrapped up in late September, according to the 388th Fighter Wing at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. All the aircraft have left the Middle East and are “in transit home,” according to a spokesperson for the 388th Fighter Wing.
Operating as the 421st Air Expeditionary Squadron, the F-35s first deployed July 26, when the fifth-generation fighters were rushed to the region by the Pentagon.
Additional U.S. Navy vessels, led by the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group with thousands of Marines, followed the F-35s. The USS Bataan amphibious assault ship brought more airpower into the region with a squadron of vertical or short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) Harriers.
The U.S. still has F-16s and A-10s in the region.
The F-35s allowed the U.S. to “continue doing the missions we were doing up in Iraq and Syria and elsewhere in the region, and increase what we were doing in support of the Navy doing basically combat air patrols over the Straits of Hormuz,” said Grynkewich, who added the Navy deployment was particularly important.
The U.S. says Russia’s tactics emerged as a major concern in July when Russian fighters dropped flares that damaged U.S. MQ-9 drones carrying out missions in Syria.
After the U.S. released video of the Russian maneuvers and deployed the F-35s, Russia has moderated its tactics and has become less aggressive, Grynkewich claimed.
“They still fly in the airspace, but not directly overhead of our forces, so I welcome that shift in behavior,” Grynkewich said. “The flares being dropped on our MQ-9s, we don’t see that behavior anymore.”
The U.S. military footprint in the region is very modest compared to the years in which Americans were occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. But U.S. air violations over Syria have also been bolstered by coalition partners, including the French and British.
“We are flying together,” Gen. Stéphane Mille, Chief of the French Air and Space Force, told reporters in September.
America’s fellow NATO member Turkey has been pummeling Kurdish groups in northern Syria it blames for a bombing in the capital of Ankara on Oct. 1, in operations that could put American troops at risk.
On the morning of Oct. 5, a Turkish drone struck targets inside a U.S. military-declared restricting operating zone (ROZ), according to the Pentagon. Strikes got within one kilometer of U.S. forces, forcing them to take cover in bunkers.
When a Turkish drone returned to the area roughly four hours later and headed towards U.S. forces, it was shot down by a U.S. F-16 within half a kilometer of U.S.
 personnel in an act of self-defense, according to U.S. officials.
On Oct. 6, the Turkish foreign ministry downplayed the episode in a statement, saying its drone “was lost due to different technical assessments in the deconfliction mechanism with third parties.”
Despite the departure of the F-35s, which Grynkewich noted was always planned to be “temporary,” the U.S. is prepared to flex forces to the region.
“My view is that deterrence is temporal,” Grynkewich said of Iran. “We’ve surged forces in response to a specific threat. That shows American commitment to the region. It shows that our American strategy has been, with our posture being less than once was, we’ve shown a commitment to bring forces in for either major exercises for assurance purposes or when a threat required it. And we certainly did that in this case.”