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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[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 35 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

“Another” is misleading. If this is the fourth shootdown, it would be the first that Iran actually achieved, as the first three were blue-on-blue (Kuwait shot them down in error)

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour 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 12 points 1 hour 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.

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 9 points 1 hour ago

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

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 2 points 40 minutes ago

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.