“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)
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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Maybe. Although the US government lying about literally everything is standard operating procedure so we cant be sure either way. Getting our news from a magic 8 ball toy would be more accurate than US government statements.
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.
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.
Thanks for the reply. With this administration, its easy to assume the truth about anything is being bent.
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The article is a bit untrustworthy as it keeps switching between Hornet and Super Hornet, even though they're different planes, and an expert would know that.
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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.
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.
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No location, no reference to the "other" shoot downs. Feels like someone's twitter account level of journalism
That's exactly what it is. They didn't even shoot down previous ones, that was a different country altogether.
A different country according to the Trump Administration.
But.... The Trump administration wouldn't lie, right???
"That's what I said yesterday" "No, you said that we went because of Israel" "you weren't there yesterday" "umm... I was the one who asked the question"
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How much do those cost again? And we still can't give medical care?
About $31 million each, or $65 million adjusted for inflation.
Although, we don’t make them anymore and the replacement F-15EX models are closer to $95 million.
Ten dollars?
Shoots down US another F-15.
Ok.
Make sense, it does now.
"Somebody set up us the ~~bomb~~ SAM."
First F-15: "it was friendly fire". Second F-15: "shoots down another F-15".
Great title, BTW: it shows again that 'US' is somewhere it definitely shouldn't be.
We cannot even take care of our own citizens, we should not be wasting money on senseless aggression across the globe.
we should not be wasting money
Every time I hear someone complain about how much money this is costing, I picture that bloody backpack from the girl's school we bombed.
The American value of human life must be net-negative at this point.
EPA already accounts as the value of Americans life as 0, it's understandable that the military accounts for non Americans as negative value
There was more news coverage of Nancy Guthrie than there was of that school
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It's a lot of work to distract people from the president raping children.
It's not just to distract from the president raping children, it's also because Israel has the pictures and videos of the president raping children
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I'm surprised how we're not seeing Chinese AA systems randomly show up across Iran.
Not officially supplied by China, of course - sold to some neighbour, and mysteriously and "illegally" moved to Iran, along with some Chinese passer-by to monitor the systems performance against real American combat aircraft.
Especially against the F-35s, I assume they'd want to collect data.
There famously have been and there has been ample news about them. Right now they are getting mocked because they could not stand up to the latest and greatest in the US military arsenal, but they also had to knock them out first and employ suitable modern stealth and electromagnetic warfare to take them down first. China is very much training up on that data, specially with the possibility of weakened US forces unable to address possible future attempts at Taiwan.
At this rate they might be able to soon convince Taiwan to join them out of their free will to protect against American aggression.
You misspelled Russian AA systems. And no, they're all tied in Ukraine
Since the claim originates from an Iranian news agency and there are currently no photos of wreckage, I would wait for additional confirmation, but the publisher of the news is Yemeni (they are allied with Iran) so they would likely not wait.
This is certainly possible, everything that flies can be shot down and F-15 is not the hardest of them, as some guy in Kuwait accidentally proved when dots on his radar got too confusing.
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So much for the undefeated fighter
Afaik it hasn't been downed by another aircraft. I think that's where the moniker comes from.
True, but that Kuwaiti F-18 got 60% of the way to ace, and that was friendly fire
Easier to fox 2 when the frienemy isn't expecting a sidewinder up the exhaust haha!
4 lost fighter jets now. What a shishow.
Can we add on the ones that are visiting Poseidon while we are at it?
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We know where all of them are. Some just need repairs. Losses: zero.
/s
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