The F-15 crash and subsequent search and rescue missions after two airmen ejected themselves from the aircraft as they took Iranian fire present questions for an administration that has touted the success of the war so far.
The two men were separated after ejecting from the aircraft in southwestern Iran — the pilot was tracked and picked up about six hours after the crash, according to the New York Times. The missing weapons systems officer knew both the U.S. and Iranian militaries were trying to locate him as quickly as they could, and his well-being — and potentially his life — hung in the balance.
The military sent “dozens of aircraft, armed with the most lethal weapons in the World,” to retrieve him once it located the missing airman, President Donald Trump said on Truth Social.
If that weren’t enough, the same day, an A-10 Warthog aircraft was hit by Iranian fire, though the pilot managed to make it to Kuwaiti airspace before ejecting. He was recovered as well.
“We already know that the U.S. military can do complex tactical operations, and they’re amazing at it,” Rosemary Kelanic, an expert with Defense Priorities, told the Washington Examiner. “But the thing that we’ve learned is that Iran is actually able to take our planes out of the sky, and that’s a really disturbing fact.”
Both aircraft getting shot down by Iran on the same day raises questions about its remaining capabilities, about five weeks into the war, even as Trump and other U.S. officials tout the broad successes of the operation.
“The fact that we were able to pull off both of these operations, without a SINGLE American killed, or even wounded, just proves once again, that we have achieved overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies,” the president said in his post announcing the rescue of the airman.
Trump, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have all spoken about the United States’s air superiority over Iranian territory during the war.
“So today, as we speak, we fly over the top of Iran and Tehran, fighters and bombers all day, picking targets as they choose, as our intelligence gets better and better and more refined. Looking up, the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and Iranian regime sees only two things on the side of aircraft: the stars and stripes and the Star of David, the evil regime’s worst nightmare,” Hegseth said on March 13.
Lucky shot?
But Friday’s events raise questions about whether this was a one-off lucky shot for the Iranians or whether they maintain the capabilities to defend their own airspace, and it also underscores questions of whether Russia has aided Iran in targeting U.S. troops, which the Trump administration initially downplayed.
Kelanic said: “That raises all kinds of questions about, is Iran getting better at targeting U.S. planes? Is Iran’s command and control actually better than most people have suggested throughout this conflict? Is Iran getting targeting help from China and Russia? What’s going on here that has allowed them to improve their ability to hit us just suddenly over the weekend? And it’s not clear whether it’s something Iran has been doing, or whether it’s something that the U.S. has been doing, or a combination of both.”
During the rescue mission, two H-6 helicopters took small-arms fire from the ground, wounding the crews in both aircraft and requiring them to land safely in Kuwait, while two MC-130Js, a special-operations aircraft, landed in a makeshift forward-operating base inside Iran, and they got stuck when their nose wheels sank into the ground and couldn’t take off, the Wall Street Journal reported, disputing the president’s claims of zero casualties.
The U.S. military destroyed those aircraft and helicopters to ensure the Iranians couldn’t exploit the technology and weaponry left behind.
Thirteen U.S. service members have been killed in the war so far, seven of whom died in Iranian retaliatory attacks, while hundreds of U.S. troops have been injured in a variety of Middle East and Gulf countries.
TRUMP VOWS TO BLOW UP ‘WHOLE COUNTRY’ OF IRAN IF NO DEAL MADE, ‘VERY LITTLE’ OFF TABLE
The president is set to hold a press conference on Monday afternoon, where he is expected to talk about the rescue mission. He has a self-imposed Tuesday deadline for negotiations, which, if they don’t pan out, would lead to massive U.S. strikes on power plants and other dual-use infrastructure, he said.
“Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F*****’ Strait, you crazy b*******, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!” he wrote on social media.
