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This has nothing to do with sinking an aircraft carrier. This is about the suppression of enemy air defences/wild weasel mission.
480th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron flies a specialised variant of the F-16, called the F-16CJ, to suppress enemy air defences (SEAD). These aircraft are equipped with specialised electronic countermeasures, sensors and missiles to do this. Part of this mission involves purposefully baiting out air defence sites to fire at you, to reveal their location, this is the "wild weasel" part of the mission. Which would explain why he got fired upon and had to evade surface to air missiles targeting his aircraft. Another press release by the US states that this was the first time aircraft were fired upon carrying out the wild weasel mission in over 20 years. This press release mentioned Houthi SAM launches against US aircraft.
What this really goes to show, I think, is just how necessary stealth and 5th generation capabilities are on the modern battlefield. The US had to deploy F-35s, from land and another aircraft carrier, to continue the SEAD mission. Along with B-2s for bombing runs with bunker busters and lots of mass. If even the Ansarallah/Houthis in Yemen, albeit with lots of Iranian help, can put up this kind of air defence network that can restrict the movements of non stealth aircraft, then stealth is the price of entry for carrying out a modern air campaign. Ukraine also shows this, neither side can fly over each other's airspace, because they lack stealth aircraft in any sufficient numbers. It also explains why China is making so many stealth aircraft, J-20s and J-35s. And the new prototypes that they're iterating on.
It also illustrates, again in my opinion, that the battle in Yemen was almost a testing ground for the US and Iran to deploy their most advanced weapons, in anticipation for the inevitable Israel-US vs Iran conflict. Iran does have some advanced domestically produced air defence systems, with advanced AESA radars, long ranges, etc. Some of that probably ended up in Yemen. Unfortunately the US and Israel were able to learn from their experiences in Yemen against Iranian equipment, because they had no manned aircraft losses during the 12 day war in Iran.
There was this incident with the carrier, so there's pretty strong indication that it was in fact under threat https://www.newsweek.com/satellite-image-shows-us-carrier-that-lost-plane-making-dramatic-turn-2065407
and the US nearly lost a F-35 as well https://www.twz.com/air/f-35-had-to-maneuver-to-evade-houthi-surface-to-air-missile-u-s-official
Yes that's true of course, but it doesn't have much to do with the press release you posted, which mainly focuses on the wild weasel mission performed, the pilot intentionally baiting out anti aircraft fire. The maneuvering of the aircraft carrier pictured is about defending against anti ship ballistic missiles, which is a whole other topic, a very interesting one in terms of area denial tactics. The press release mentions shooting down cruise missiles and one way attack drones though
The AGR-20F APKWS is a good anti drone and cruise missile solution, because one F-16 or F-15 can equip 42 of them, and they're about 22 000 USD each, compared to hundreds of thousands for modern air to air missiles, which have a much smaller magazine capacity on the aircraft, usually 6-8 at maximum. There are also specialised air to air versions of it now, though it's a laser guided rocket, so not much of a difference. The AIM-9M is however quite old and therefore significantly cheaper than most air to missiles, hence cost savings mentioned.
108 aerial victories for a squadron, and an individual pilot shooting down 6 aerial targets, is not a record number anymore though. A US F-15E squadron based in Jordan shot down over 150 during the Israel - Iran conflict, with some pilots shooting down over 20 drones and cruise missiles.
The part about SAM launches vs F-35s is actually mentioned in another press release, linked here, you'll probably find this interesting.
On the airstikes vs Iranian nuclear facilities
Yeah, fair the carrier incident is a separate thing. I do think that what it's going to come down to is the ability to produce weapons and counter measures at scale. Even with the cost being brought down, the bottleneck might end up being actual industrial capacity in the US. Another problem is stuff like rare earths that China has a monopoly on, and US military is now cut off from. Developing independent supply will take at least half a decade. So, it'll be interesting to see how that impacts weapon production in the near future. With the existing stocks becoming depleted thanks to Ukraine and Gaza, I wonder what the remaining capacity looks like.
I imagine that if there was an all out war with Iran, then they would just use hypersonics to attack the airfields and carriers which is probably the surest approach to neutralizing F35s.
With the APKWS counter drone and cruise missile rockets though, that's just a laser guidance kit mounted to an unguided Hydra 70mm rocket, with a proximity fuse and cheap infrared seeker for the air to air variant. Much like how a UMPK kit turns an unguided Russian FAB bomb into a guided glide bomb, or a a JDAM kit turns a Mk 80 series unguided bomb into a guided bomb. The US has plenty of Hydra rockets already produced, the limitation on production would be on the guidance kits. Anti ballistic missile interceptors are the much bigger production bottleneck for stuff like THAAD and SM-3.
With Iran, during the last attack the US evacuated bases close by like Qatar, and attacked from areas where Iran would not attack, like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, even Greece potentially. And their aircraft carriers remained outside of the range of even Iran's longest range anti ship ballistic missiles. This also explains all the recent "mutual defence pacts" in the Middle East, as a strategy to encircle Iran. Iran then attacked the evacuated base in Qatar as a form of symbolic retaliation. Also for a counterforce attack with conventional ballistic missiles, a high degree of accuracy over long range is required. Iran is working on that by fitting optical seekers to the maneuverable warheads of their ballistic missiles, first starting with the shorter range missiles, and expanding to the longer range ones. I think they're up to 1200km range now. But it's quite challenging. Some from of radar guidance/radar mapping like on the Pershing-II and potentially the Chinese DF-21 could be more feasible long term.
I mean, the US is currently having trouble ramping up stuff like artillery shell production. Even a relatively simple rocket is a far more complex thing to produce.
And that's why I specifically noted the scenario of total war. Right now, Iran just absorbs the hits because it doesn't want to escalate. However, if there was an open war then these bases would obviously be hit, and carriers alone aren't a solution because they can only carry so much gear. This is really the key problem the US has in general, the logistics are vastly in favor of the adversaries. The US has to ship everything across the ocean, while Iran or Russia can just transport things by rail.