The Iranian Army’s air defense system shot down another US F-15 fighter jet as part of Iran’s response to the Zionist-American aggression.
The Iranian Army’s air defense system shot down another US F-15 fighter jet as part of Iran’s response to the Zionist-American aggression.
I heard someone suggest they are claiming friendly fire on the first ones to lessen the embarrassment of being taken out by the enemy. So that’s just conjecture.
Anyone think that is plausible? They said back during recent conflicts the US would do similar things to save face.
It’s possible, though I don’t think it’s likely.
Generally speaking, USAF doctrine heavily emphasizes SEAD (Supression of Enemy Air Defenses) deploying in concert and close coordination with any sort of non-stealthy strike mission, in the interest of minimizing the risk of combat losses - and by all accounts, the USAF is very fucking good at SEAD (having developed the concept - also known as “Wild Weasel” sorties - back in the Vietnam War, after USN and USAF began taking significant losses to Soviet/Vietnamese SAMs, and refining it a lot since, both in terms of tech and doctrine).
For strike planes to be caught flat-footed like that, I would expect that they were out of range of any possible Iranian SAMs, and thus were not in the mindset of constant vigilance, and moreover their SEAD support was probably not either (or had split off to land at another base altogether).
Also: if the shootdown was from a Patriot, their RWR (basically: “what radar is looking at me”) was probably saying it was a friendly radar, and the pilots may have even thought the Patriot (or similar non-Russian system) was giving them cover from something they didn’t see, and they reacted late as a result.
Thus, I do think that the blue-on-blue explanation is likely accurate - especially considering it was three F-15Es, and not just a single one-off shoot down. IMO, someone (not Iranian) was running air defense in the area and didn’t properly check their deconfliction and IFF.
Edit: actually, it appears it was probably a Kuwaiti F/A-18. And as the article points out, if the pilot used Sidewinders, there would be zero warning, as the seeker is passive. However, I’m pretty sure standard loadouts are for a pair of heat seekers and the remaining pylons loaded with AMRAAMs… so that would only explain two of them. We’ll hear more about this in the coming days, most likely.
I think you addressed who is better equipped to actually shoot down American planes - do you also have an opinion on whether the administration would prefer to credit friendly fire over enemy fire in order to save face? I’m really not sure it saves any face. And wouldn’t command want us to be outraged by the enemy killing our pilots?
It definitely saves face.
Since the pilots all seem to have been rescued successfully, the latter bit is a moot point.
Can you help men understand it? A friendly fire incident sounds a lot like incompetence. How does that play better than an actual combat death from fighting the enemy we went to fight?
I mean… it is incompetence, but it’s incompetence/process/doctrinal failure on the part of the Kuwaiti Air Force, not the USAF. Which is the only thing KegsBreath would give a shit about in this context.
Okay so if the friendly fire is a from an ally, you can throw that ally under the bus.
Would the same apply if it were American friendly fire? Does it still save face then?
Actually, yes, imo. Enemy shoot downs are something that gives an opponent a propaganda victory. Friendly fire incidents result in remedial training and discipline (and in the case of this regime, firing people, because we can’t have people learning from mistakes now, can we). It’s an expensive mistake, but an expensive mistake is very different from a legit combat loss.
Thanks for the reply. With this administration, its easy to assume the truth about anything is being bent.
Especially if it went anywhere near Hegseth’s desk on the way.
I could easily see there having been an order to not share flight plans with our allies.
Stupid, but entirely possible given curcumstances.
Bold of you to assume that there were plans.
And that sort of crap would absolutely harm deconfliction efforts between the US and allied forces, and increase the likelihood of this sort of thing happening. So yeah, I would not be shocked to eventually learn that that played a big part here.
If that were the case, Iran would have claimed the air kills which afaik they haven’t.
Iran did claim to shoot down an F-35 last year which was an obvious lie, so I wouldn’t really put too much weight on this claim.
That being said, an F-15 is more plausible of a target against some hidden SAMs. Even Iraq shot down a prrtty decent handful of aircraft during the gulf war, despite losing their airforce in a matter of hours just because they had a crap ton of SAMs on the ground.
So Iran is behind the F-35 ejecting it’s pilot in a thunderstorm and flying away?
I thought it was just trying to get out of South Carolina.
Yeah it was the super secret drone mothership:
Kuwaiti army may not have approved of F15 sorties. Bases were supposedly evacuated and not to be used for military operations, so another explanation, is the memo to the contrary not getting to everyone needed.