World News

The US lost two planes today. First an F-15 was shot down over Western Iran, with the pilot ejecting and reaching the ground. A rescue operation was launched. The rescue operation included some A-10s for ground support. The Iranians managed to hit one of the A10s, but the pilot was able to get back to the Strait before he had to bail out. But apparently the rescue mission was successful, and they were able to get him out safely.

Though it's still embarrassing for the White House, as they've repeatedly claimed that the war was already basically one, and that the Iranian Air Force was already completely decimated.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3r395l91l3o

I think there may be a kernel of truth to the White House's claim, a claim that ultimately misses the point. A core assumption of Iranian military strategy has long been that they can't go up against the US directly. They never had a hope of defeating the US directly, so their fall back plan has always been to resist an invasion by having their military dissolve into a vast insurgency force. They train their soldiers on how, in the event of a regime decapitation, to keep operating independently and transition into independent resistance insurgent cells. Like, their official doctrine, and what they teach their soldiers is, "if the Americans invade and topple the government, your job is to all go form al-Qaeda like cells and start fucking shit up. Also, we made sure to teach a bunch of you how to make improvised explosive devices. Become a martyr and free your people! If you kill just one American in the process, you win. We vastly outnumber any number of potential soldiers they could send. If each of us just took out one of them..."

They may have truly greatly devastated the Iranian Air Force. Maybe every Iranian fighter craft is now a pile of flaming wreckage. Maybe all their big radars are knocked out. But that's just the big stuff. There's also the small stuff. Small anti-air missile batteries hidden in the backs of delivery vans. ManPADS and other man-portable systems. Maybe they can't shoot down an F-35 flying at peak altitude, but these lesser systems can shoot down older planes or those flying at lower altitudes. A similar dynamic happened in Ukraine. The Russian Air Force largely flies its planes far from Ukrainian territory, attacking with standoff munitions from extreme range. And the Iranians certainly have tens of thousands of these small anti-aircraft systems scattered across the country. They're probably keeping them in random barns and random urban apartments. We're talking something like this:

You're not sneaking that thing past airport security. But you're also not tracking that thing via spy satellite. There's probably systems like these stashed in the personal homes of thousands of IRGC members. Units distributed on a vast scale to trustworthy regime-loyal people.

Remember, the Iranians have been preparing for this for 40 years. Their whole strategy is based on asymmetric warfare. They were never intending to sail and fly out and take on the US Navy and Air Force in direct combat. That's never been the goal.

The Iranian Air Force may very well have been destroyed. Yet Ukraine managed to sink most of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, even though Ukraine currently lacks any navy of its own.

I think the news the other day was that they scored a hit on the 35, not that they shot it down

Not necessarily for the humanity, more for the internet lolz.

Although considering Iraq's history with their treatment of PoWs, it would probably be in Iran's best interest to show they aren't torturing or abusing the pilots in any capacity.