this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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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.

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[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 12 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 27 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 13 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks for the reply. With this administration, its easy to assume the truth about anything is being bent.

[–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Especially if it went anywhere near Hegseth’s desk on the way.

[–] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I could easily see there having been an order to not share flight plans with our allies.

Stupid, but entirely possible given curcumstances.

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.

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Iran did claim to shoot down an F-35 last year which was an obvious lie, [...]

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.

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

Yeah it was the super secret drone mothership: