whiterock said:FLBear5630 said:BearFan33 said:Realitybites said:
Iran shoots down U.S. F-15 fighter jet
Another F-15 down. Unclear if the pilot survived, but at this point it does not seem so. No denial by CENTCOM.
"the tail seen here would indicate an aircraft assigned to the 494th Fighter Squadron at RAF Lakenheath in England, based on its red band. This is one of the units that has been deployed to the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of operations for Epic Fury.
Previous documented F-15E crashes in the Middle East or Afghanistan don't involve aircraft from the 494th Fighter Squadron, as far as we can ascertain. Specifically, since Desert Storm (when the 48th Fighter Wing operated F-111s, not F-15Es), these (non-combat) losses occurred in Iraq (April 2003, 335th FS, 4th FW), Afghanistan (July 2009, 336th FS, 4th FW), and Libya (March 2011, 492nd FS, 48th FW)."
As far as I can tell, this is the 4th or 5th F-15 that has been shot down, in addition to the F-35.
NO. WE HAD 3 SHOT DOWN IN A FRIENDLY FIRE ACCIDENT OVER KUWAIT. IF THSE REPORTS ARE TRUE, IT WOULD BE THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL DOWNING OF A US AIRCRAFT OVER IRAN.
"If confirmed, the loss would be the first known combat loss of a crewed U.S. Air Force aircraft over Iranian territory since the war began."
So the 4th or 5th F15 losses you are talking about are from the last 15 years or just in this iran conflict?
All loses stink but need to be clear if it's combat losses vs non-combat losses. Is the plane shot down or did it have engine trouble and go down?
If we lost 4-5 fighter jets in Iran I'd argue we don't have air superiority.
People forget air superiority is not just plane to plane...
"Air Superiority" means you have a more favorable position in the air than your opponent. We are quite a bit beyond that. Iran has no position in the sky whatsoever. It literally cannot get any more lopsided. We fly as many missions as we wish, and Iran flies zero. Think late WWII when we ran non-stop bombing missions over Germany. Germany still had fighters. Still shot down our fighters and bombers. Still was able to conduct aerial missions of its own against our ground forces. But the balance of power in the air was significantly in our favor (and the ratio increased as the war progressed).
"Air Supremacy" means your opponent has no ability to EFFECTIVELY resist your aerial operations, or to mount effective air operations of its own. It does not mean you will not lose any aircraft to AAA or MANPADS. An insurgent with a Stinger or a single AAA battery getting off a lucky shot once or twice per month does not change the operational reality of Air Supremacy. To do so, the AAA/MANPAD threat would have to be significant enough to deter us in some significant way from launching air missions.
So what does the report card look like in Epic Fury? In the 35 days of the operation, we have lost 3 aircraft to friendly fire (not over Iran), at least one to accident (not over Iran), and exactly (maybe) 1 aircraft in combat over Iran.......despite flying 12,000 flight missions over Iran. That, friends, is textbook Air Supremacy.
All true.
However it's amazing how many people attempt to ignore the obvious.