An F-15 being shot down in Iran after weeks of strategic bombing of their anti-air defense systems is not a good sign.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04/03/world/iran-war-trump...
> A second Air Force combat plane crashed in the Persian Gulf region on Friday, and the lone pilot was safely rescued, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The A-10 Warthog attack plane went down near the Strait of Hormuz about the same time that an Air Force F-15E was shot down over Iran, the officials said. In that incident, one crew member was rescued and search-and-rescue operators are looking for the second airman. Officials provided scant details about the A-10 crash, including how and where it happened.
there's some additional osint rumor mill that a blackhawk helicopter involved in rescue operations was also shot down but claims that crew been recovered
No such analogous advantage exists in Iran, which is a much larger country, with better air defenses, and no western contractors ready to provide back doors into systems.
And 3 weeks in to the war and the US is flying refueling tankers to refuel Blackhawks in the very area the F-15 was shot down to recover the pilots (1 so far has been received) should be much more informative than it seems to be.
But sure... the KARI system in Iraq.
- De facto language of aviation (i.e. manuals) is English, and the regime had just purged most of the English speakers before the thing started
- They had these advanced ground defense systems and...didn't use the targeting, they were just spraying in the air
I don't know how well the Iranians can use their tools but I bet they're better than that.
Given Iran ought to have far better SAM systems than Iraq 35 years ago, this comparison doesn't seem in any way alarming.
For a more direct comparison, in the first 5 weeks of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia flew approximately 7000 combat sorties and 22 fixed wing aircraft were shot down.
If Iran can do this with AWACS, they can do even more with the hundreds of fighter jets in Israeli and US bases (it's much easier to cover up the destruction of an F-15 or F-35). Once this war ends, I think we'll see that most of the aircraft kills are going to be on the ground.
"Yugoslav air defences were much fewer than what Iraq had deployed during the Gulf War – an estimated 16 SA-3 and 25 SA-6 surface-to-air missile systems, plus numerous anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) and man-portable air defence systems (MANPADS) – but unlike the Iraqis they took steps to preserve their assets. Prior to the conflict's start Yugoslav SAMs were preemptively dispersed away from their garrisons and practiced emission control to decrease NATO's ability to locate them."
So their SAMs likely just got stealth bombed / bombed from a distance.
Why? We don't know exactly what happened but its easy to imagine that Iran held some anti-air systems in reserve for this phase of the war. They aren't trying to defend a target, their goal was likely to stay hidden and wait for an opportunity. They could keep the radar off and use a passive sensor network to notify them when it was in range, then turn the radar on to get a lock for the shot. Or even just IR. Recall, the Houthis gave stealth F35s some near misses over Yemen, no doubt supplied and trained by the Iranians.
https://www.twz.com/air/how-the-houthis-rickety-air-defenses...
This was inevitable and just a question of time. Out of >10k sorties something is going to get hit. I've no idea what range the military planners expected and how we're doing vs. that.
It's absolutely a bad sign. One among many.
was it because F-15 was used as superiority fighter at that time and now they use it as heavy bomber? I assume plenty of bombers likely was shot down in Iraq.
(In 1991, the United States relied on the F-117 Nighthawk to penetrate Baghdad and launch salvos against radar and SAM sites. Simultaneously, Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired against similar communication and defense sites. In this war with Iran, the F-35 and B-2 have been used for stealth missions).
https://cat-uxo.com/explosive-hazards/missiles/358-missile-S...
https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/02/politics/iran-missiles-us-mil...
Doesn't break out anti-air, but Iran absolutely has a lot of teeth left.
What we can tell though is that Iran is still firing missiles (including cluster munitions) at Israel's civilians and at gulf states. So the ground facts are that it can still do that.
We also have to remember that Iran has a large number of different missile systems for different ranges. It's mostly not the same missiles they are firing at the nearby gulf states as they are firing into Israel. Some of the longer range missile systems they have need to be fired from western Iran to make it to Israel. There's a lot of other nuance, solid fuel vs. liquid fuel, mobile vs. fixed launchers etc.
With the price of oil having skyrocketed, and the new revenue that will be coming from the Hormuz tolls, they will also be rebuilding their previous capacity in no time.
2) The initial US degradation of Iraqi capabilities was much much greater in gulf war 1.
3) F15s are not stealth fighters.
4) This is 35 years later.
5) "strategic bombing" of air defenses is mostly accomplished with our cruise missiles. We'll take out any air defenses we find, but you don't fly non-stealth planes over SAM batteries intentionally.
We haven't even started a ground campaign. If one plane is downed per 13000 missions, I think we're doing ok.
It's difficult to compare; but Iran today is not Iraq then. F-15s are now based on a design that's 30 years older. Shoulder launched SAMs have moved on.
I'm not sure what happened here, but in the Gulf War, there was a move to medium altitudes after a dodgy first night and I've seen some footage that, if accurate and if I'm not getting it wrong, suggests there are different tactics going on here.
Tehran is protected by mountain ranges that can provide plenty of cover. And Russia is probably feeding it the real-time radar data from its military bases in Armenia.
The US has decided to step into Russia's shoes in Iran for reasons and I would be shocked if Russia/China aren't also providing similar aid for Iran.
They don't need it though. Our top brass knew this war is stupid twenty years ago.
Without nukes we'll lose this war and badly.
So far we have lost seven airplanes. There's no deep meaning behind one F-15e being shot down (if that's what happened): it's not a stealth aircraft and it's not heavily armored.
We know Iran is driving around bongo trucks with small SAM systems on the back that use passive IRST rather than radar. The missiles themselves have the capability to cruise in the air for some period of time searching for a target before kicking in the engine for a last, fast sprint to the target. Because they are electro-optical (and piloted by a human), even early-warning and flare deployments won't do very much against a skilled operator.
Compare that to Ukraine defending it's skies with NATO (well mostly French IIRC) AWACS feeding early data which is what made MANPADS in Ukraine so effective against Russian attacks.
Not to dispute that but what about the comparison makes it not a good sign? Iran has much more capable radar and missiles now than Iraq did 35 years ago, doesn't it?
That plus likely a miscalculation...pushing into territory that is more contested than believed
A few minutes ago Tasnim posted photos of a separate wreckage that seems to be of an F-16 that was also downed today.
These events should not be confused with the F-35 that CNN reported was hit a few days ago.
- DJT, 11 March
“I think we’ve won"
- DJT, 20 March
“We’ve won this war. The war has been won"
- DJT, 24 March
“We are winning so big"
- DJT, 25 March
What a clown show...
The thing about the First Gulf War was that it was four months of buildup, 45 days achieving air superiority, and about 100 hours of a ground war. It was well planned, and involved a collation of of forces that shared a common purpose and common goal. The allied coalition made sure to get their intelligence correct and worked hard to disassemble the Iraqi defenses before sending the armed forces into real danger.
The current conflict involved Donald Trump thinking that Iran, a nation of 93 million people with a relatively healthy economy (at least at the national and regime level, which can sell a lot of petroleum), was going to put up the same kind of fight that Iraq did, then a nation of 18 million with old tech, or like Venezuela did, a nation of perhaps 30 million today, that has faced extended total economic collapse, hyper inflation, and a mass exodus of something like a quarter of the population over the past 6-10 years. There was virtually no planning, with initial action going off of intelligence of where Khomeini would be and just jumping at that.
We've got an administration run by a narcissist that has surrounded himself with sycophants and bottom feeders. He's pissed off every ally we have, acted prematurely as the aggressor with an assassination strike, and now doesn't have the resources to protect the strategic assets in the region let alone convince Iran that the conflict needs to end in our favor. Just a ridiculous number of unforced errors. A complete embarrassment.
Military technology moves faster than most people think.
75000+ palestinians killed, arguably one of the defining crimes of our age are not worth HN discussion (“politics”) but one F15E shot down in a war of choice is (apparently, “tech”)?
those lives seem to be way less worthy of press judging for the coverage the left want to put in Palestinian people.
it doesn't follow the principle of equal value on lives but a political agenda and mountains of useful trend followers
>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
I guess this gets in as interesting new phenomenon?
That' a cop-out.
And you know, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran are definitely not eastern Washington lol
Source: lived there.
Seems like it's all about vacating the area and busting out the CSEL (or NGSR when materialized) personal SAR comms is the best way out, or it may well turn into a weeks(s) long, nonstop spy-shit ordeal getting out. Perhaps some forethought and packing with knowledge and specific local-appropriate items (and chunk of cash) would help more than MIL-STD Walmart camping aisle prepper bullshit.
Military personnel captured as prisoners of war are not hostages. Unlike embassy personnel held hostage during the 1979 revolution, it's unclear if military POWs have any value to leverage against the US, considering how its leader feels about about "people who get captured" and "they knew what they signed up for". We're only hearing about this so the administration can get ahead of the narrative instead of Iran. Otherwise, it's doing everything it can to hide information about the cost of war in terms of monetary cost and casualties.
The hostages here are the so-called "allies" in the Arab world who received no notice of the invasion and were sitting ducks for wide-scale regional retaliation from Iran due to them hosting US bases.
Poor choice of words. Hostage taking is illegal, but any captured US aviators would be prisoners of war, whose detention is entirely legal as long as they're treated humanely.
edit: I'm baffled by the amount of downvotes pointing out the objectively correct terminology can get. Its not a matter of opinion, military personnel captured by the enemy are pow no matter their treatment. A hostage, by definition, has been abducted.
what a fucking mess.
If the US military would like this war to stop they could not fight it, that would be pretty easy I think. Probably not without consequences, but that would show actual courage. Whereas dropping bombs on civilian from afar shows zero.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5150259-u-s-air-force-su...
“He’s not a war hero ... I like people who weren’t captured.”
The SA-67 is essentially a hybrid surface-to-air missile and loitering drone that operates like an airborne mine. It’s a pretty innovative weapon: instead of relying on a fast, highly detectable rocket motor, it uses a small gas turbine and passive infrared seeker to silently loiter in a combat zone and then ambush aircraft without ever triggering their traditional radar warning receivers.
"Iran Secretly Purchased Verba MANPADS From Russia for $589 Million" - https://militarnyi.com/en/news/iran-secretly-purchased-verba...
and they have the Misagh-3 that has an interesting laser system to avoid and ignore decoy flares. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misagh-3
But it seems they are pretty pissed off with the Chinese, since they spent a few hundred million on their defense systems, that turned to be a complete failure. This was also after the HQ-9B failed to adequately protect high-value targets in Pakistan during India Operation Sindoor,
"Chinese HQ-9B again in spotlight after reports of failure of Iranian air defence system amid US-Israel strikes" - https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/chinese-hq...
You're definitely right that passive seekers are playing a huge role here, though. Many people online (and on HN) bought into the air dominance shtick just because major radar sites were taken offline. It was always the road mobile and TELAR vehicles that would be a threat.
Early 2000s RTS games (Starcraft 1, Warcraft 3, CnC franchise) continue to amaze me in how well their seemingly comical "game physics" model the intrinsic dynamics of real world conflicts, almost prophetically.
I do wonder if Iran finds them first, will they treat them better than the US treated survivors of the ship sunk by a US torpedo in the Indiana Ocean?
Not sure if it’s possible to treat enemies better than that. And I doubt the Iranians will treat a US pilot well. Look at how they treat their own citizens.
Mind you, the details of war are not always clear. The US says that the ship was armed, and it also says that they did make an effort to rescue the crew. The US does not explain why it failed to actually rescue anybody, of course.
You don’t have to project your own shortcomings to other people.
If you can't imagine how, that says a lot about you.
https://www.beachesofnormandy.com/didyouknow/Did_you_know_wh...
There was zero threat to that American submarine, they fired on an unarmed ship that the US Navy had just held ceremonial activities with literally days prior. Absolutely disgusting behaviour but we can't expect anything less from the Americans unfortunately.
This is what real sanctions look like. The west broke the deal, attacked like terrorists, and are now being sanctioned.
Who's us?
> This is what real sanctions look like
You mean raising the price of oil and gas for the worlds largest producer of both oil and gas?
> attacked like terrorists
Attacked the country who took 'protection money' and used it to build up enough conventional munitions to make stopping their program prohibitively costly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_shootdowns_an...
Iran: 40, Israel: 18, US: 36, Others: 7
The F117 is a very stealthy plane, given its geometry (flat panels). Yet a 1960s radar with essentially no digital equipment took it out, largely using human intelligence and guerrilla tactics.
Iran has modern digital electronics (to improve the signal to noise ratio, merge different data sources, etc) and modern electronics. They are also master guerrilla fighters and have, great, native missile technology.
Iranian airspace is contested at best. We certainly do not have air superiority over it.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/american-fighter-jet-f15e-downe...
The current F-15 crash incident happened today near the city of Lali, in Iran’s Khuzestan Province.
Iran tweets about taking down an American jet basically daily. By their count we are down 40 f-35s, 4 aircraft carriers and thousands of MQ-9s.
Average comments sentiment when an American is caught while bombing bridges and elementary schools: poor thing hope they treat him well
https://preview.redd.it/f35-i-shot-down-in-iran-v0-0gdyroc4o....
I think it's ok to say that it crashed into the ground but the pilot survived.
With 'emergency landing' people assume it was just a rough landing whereas the plane here is completely and utterly broken.
Then again idk the jet exhaust becomes more significant not sure if afterburner or damage
https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1ry6ma2/f35_...
The A-10 flies slower and closer than our fighter jets which means they have more time to assess the situation before taking action.
The fact that Israel has leveled much of the 140 square miles of gaza over the past 3 years and still fails to remove Hamas from power. No chance against 636,372 square miles and 93 million people. Worse odds than Vietnam. There isn't even a defined victory condition.
It's even worse if you consider what rational options the mullahs have. Yes, they are a murderous dictatorship and enemies of US - no question about that. But they did nothing to provoke this particular attack and they still got bombed.
Backing off without first inflicting severe pain is just not an option in this situation. It would be an invitation to get bombed at will.
I'm imagining the air crew going "Huh, there are no clear actual targets to bomb. Hey, Cleetus, command won't be happy about us not bombing anything at all, retarget on that school over there, let's get this over with and go home."
CENTCOM tweeted that no shootdown occurred only for Iran to show the wreckage and one of the ejection seats. CENTCOM said Iran didn't shoot down the F-35, but it apparently crashed in Saudi Arabia and we sent out a Chinook to run search patterns to find it.
CENTCOM claimed a single Kuwait (ghost of Kuwait?) shot down three different F-15s by accident, but those planes were close enough to Iran that they could have been targeted by Iran (which seems more likely than the massive chain of mistakes required for the Kuwaiti shootdown to happen).
CENTCOM also only talks about US planes shot down and excludes Israeli F-15 that have been hit. CENTCOM also doesn't count all the very expensive drones that have been shot down, but their total value is at least a half-billion dollars.
Finally, CENTCOM is straight-up lying about air superiority. They claimed they'd switched to gravity bombs, but people instantly noticed that all the planes going up were using long-range JASSM stand-off missiles so they don't have to actually go very far inside Iran and can keep their planes in a safer section of the country. CENTCOM loaded up a B-52 with JDAMs and took a couple pictures, but all the pictures after that photo-op still show super-expensive JASSM (costing as much as $1.6M each).
If our planes never enter their airspace, there's nothing for them to shoot down. I'd note they've also shot down a couple of JASSM missiles which is interesting itself as the radar cross-section of a JASSM is believed to be pretty close to an F-35.
Iran is currently using bongo trucks with an IRST and a couple missiles that can even loiter in the air if there's no target. Being electro-optically guided means they are passive and the human element makes them a lot less likely to miss due to chaff.
These little trucks can hide ANYWHERE and because they aren't a massive multi-vehicle setup like a Patriot or S-300, they should be able to relocate often and quickly (they might even be able to stay mobile while in operation). This mobility combined, ability to hide as a normal truck, and completely passive sensors make them almost impossible to find and destroy.
Seriously, it's been sitting on this for entire month and now, all of a sudden, rolled out antiaircraft defense? What's going on?
Instead, they will fight this war by absorbing blow after blow, hiding their capabilities and striking back when it is advantageous.
All Iran needs to do to win is:
1) Outlast the US air campaign - note this only requires protecting enough of their defensive capabilities to remain difficult. It does not require shooting down every US aircraft that enters their borders. It does not require shooting down most aircraft that enter their borders.
2) Prevent free shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
That's it. They just need to apply economic pain as domestic and international opposition to the unprovoked attack grows.
You sound like they roll an antiaircraft cannon out of the hangar and immediately successfully down a plane. That's not how that works. The AA was probably there from the beginning, just not successful.
1. Iran was retarded and didn't preemptively strike US staging who had local overmatch and first mover advantage. Nothing to do but weather hits, chip away at regional basing and wait until US+Israel operation tempo goes down. Can't sustain surge sorties forever, especially with regional logistics wrecked. US pilots tired now, on stims, making mistakes.
2. Iran not remain retarded, was hide and bide, waited for US to get complement, gathering data / building tactics to squeeze out surface-air without getting glassed. Regardless, Iranian capability seems much less degraded than claimed. Who knows how many of the 20k+ targets hit was basically just drawing down highend munition inventory, which now forces flying closer on lower end munitions.
At the end of the day, Iranian mosaic forces are chilling in underground bunkers waiting for US+co to make mistakes. Consider Iraq, a much smaller country by every metric ate 5x more sorties from more carriers and sustained regional air campaign and fell because they hedged on centralized IADs. Granted most Iranian hits are precision munitions (more efficient per sortie), but we simply should not expect Iran doctrine built on distributed survivability to be remotely defeated relative to effort expended.
There was a lot of Iranian AA losses in the opening phase of this war. US went town on anything that looked remotely like AA to secure the sky for themselves, and operated with ever-increasing impunity since.
Between advanced ISR, stealth, ECM and stand-off munitions, US has a lot of tools to make the lives of AA crews into a living hell.
It's unclear what happened here exactly. It might be a "straggler" SAM that wasn't destroyed in the strikes, might be US going too aggressively and putting reduced survivability airframes within an area that wasn't sufficiently cleared, might be an Iranian adaptation not unlike the "SAMbushes" seen in Ukraine.
I don't see it as a sign that Iran is somehow reconstituting its AA capabilities though.
It really isn't. A huge portion of Iran's air defenses are designed for road-mobility and pop-up attacks instead of long-term point defense, encompassing hundreds of launchers total: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Islam...
Military strategists long warned that air campaigns flying over South Iran would have to contend with passively-guided SAMs and MANPADS on their way to Tehran. There are hundreds of road-accessible caves in the Zagros range that cannot be inspected via satellite. They inherently present a risk to overflights unless they are occupied on the ground first; it's common knowledge why Kohgiluyeh and Fars are so dangerous.
Warplanes are disposable. They are built to be shot down. If they aren't, they are not being used intensely enough or are just wrong tools for the job - a warplane that flies a mission and always comes back is like a test that never fails.
As for why America is involved in a conflict between Israel and Iran, it's because we have a Republican administration and a big segment of Republicans (Christian Evangelicals) want the US to ensure Israel as a state survives (also for purely fanatical reasons).
So, when are we bombing Israel to prevent the world being held hostage by nuke-wielding religious fanatics?
and the starting point of all this is the US coup in Iran that eventually lead to the islamists seizing power in Iran.
1982, Israel invades Lebanon. Iran backs Hezbollah, which triggers its first killing of Israelis in 1983.
There would have been reasons to back the creation of Hamas long before 1982 but the revolution in Iran only took place in 1979, so through the decades of Palestinian oppression, massacres and occupation, Iran was aligned, so it started with a support for Lebanese resistance. Then much later the backing of Palestinian resistance, then Yemen via the Houthis.
It is true there has been constant funding, and of an increasing number of proxy groups, but Israel's invasion was the trigger. Backing nations, and paramilitary groups is pretty common: see U.S backing Ukraine regular army, and private mercenaries.
Oil is the last remaining 'strategic commodity' everyone (including China) needs to keep a balance of power.
Many people missing the actual game here.
How is that not casus belli?
It really depends where in the world you are. There are places that will begin rationing in the next few weeks if not sooner.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/9/bangladesh-shuts-uni...
There was also the hostage crisis but that was done by student protestors rather than the Iranian government.
I somewhat understand Israel's agenda and objective, even if evil and selfish depending on the point of view (or selfish, for Netanyahu to avoid legal scrutiny while acting as prime minister).
I don't understand the USA attacking here at all. With rising prices I think Trump should pay compensation to the rest of the world for his decision here. This is now similar to the build-up to Vietnam though - I don't see Trump being able to withdraw, without looking incompetent, so he is now committed to the war, similar to why Putin can not stop his invasion of Ukraine. Two criminals, one thought.
Every military action will have an on-paper "justification". It's kind of irrelevant frankly. But to cut bullshit, it really isn't that complicated.
Venezuela is an extremely oil rich country. Countries in the middle-east region, including Iran are very oil rich.
And that's in large part why US (by this point firmly decaying petrostate propped by petrodollar) is constantly there "meddling" and ensuring all the oil is continuously bought using US dollars.
That is wholly sufficient to explain things.
Every other cartoonish-evil justification "Iran wants to build nukes to bomb US, etc" is largely bullshit (why, for example, Iran doesn't want to nuke.... say Germany or France? hmmm.....)
Just add Saudi Arabia / Iran Sunni-Shia hatred and you've got war.
But this is next level. When it started I thought Iran would be crushed. Ignorant, silly me.
There is every chance the USA will have to stop its attacks before achieving any goals.
An education, thus is, that I could do without.
In New Zealand we will probably run out of diesel soon.
This is so stupid, so sadistic and cruel
You've picked a high bar there.
"U.S. Conducting Rescue Operation After Jet Went Down Over Iran"
I feel that the current war is by far the most closest to showing to people that this war is waged by the rich. Because they are the primary ones to benefit right now (if we ignore Netanyahu, but Netanyahu's war goals "make sense", e. g. this is done for expansion and/or control; Trump's involvement makes no real sense, except for benefitting some with insider trading and making other cronies rich).
Oh, I thought it was to stop the Iranians having nuclear weapons "in the next few weeks".
Flying low over Iran at this point is planned, expensive "standoff" munitions were planned to give way to more accurate and less expensive munitions once air superiority was reached - which U.S. has been claiming has happened for a while now.
https://www.axios.com/2026/04/05/iran-f15-crew-member-rescue...
> Approval of Trump among Republicans has slipped to a second-term low of 84%, down from 92% last March. At the same time, an all-time high 16% of Republicans disapprove. This shift can be attributed, at least in part, to declining support among non-MAGA Republicans, as approval dropped 11 points in the last year among this group (70% in March 2025 to 59% today). Virtually all MAGA Republicans continue to approve of Trump, with 98% approving a year ago and 97% now.
> https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-voters-oppose...
The war machine is already rewriting this as Iranian hostility.
The base is incapable of seeing this as a failure of their cult leader.
Instead they'll see it as the very rationale and justification of the war.
If they were ambivalent about it before, now they'll scream bloody murder for even more off-the-leash barbarism from the US and Israel.
I am not going to lie, I am beyond disgusted at the United States.
And the "it's Trump" card doesn't work, Americans defend this travesty of an old non functioning constitution.
It turns out, long after Rome had become an Empire and was only a Republic in name only, most Senators still thought of it as a Republic and that this extraordinary state of affairs with the Senate just being a glorified rubber stamp body would soon come to an end and that, they will very soon restore the Senate to its former rightful place, just as soon as this current very limited crises was over.
As it turns out, they were never able to do that again.
It’s so interesting to me that nearly all of the Founding Fathers had read Tacitus and were keenly aware of this and explicitly tried to design a system to prevent that from happening. To their credit, their system lasted a good while.
If we accept your thesis that the US republic is over, it only lasted around half as long as the Roman republic you are saying the "Founding Fathers" were trying to improve upon.
It is about republican congressmen actively supporting all of this.
That's why their main complaints have been procedural: "Why didn't you come to us first with your plans?". And why they slow-walked the vote on a war powers act.
The war has record low approval ratings, even among Trump's base.
Protecting pedos on such a scale?
However, if the direction of the country is being seriously altered via blackmail, IMO that is many orders of magnitude worse than anything they could have done. Like we are currently bombing yet another middle eastern country for no clear reason.
I would personally be open to some kind of Epstein jubilee where we absolve everyone involved in order to nullify the blackmail.
Like it's not great, it's terrible for the victims and for justice, but at the moment we are getting terrible from both ends, could we at least reduce it to one end?
What a waste of life and energy.
You'll never be able to fully suppress all of their manpads. Even if you destroy the bulk of their air defence network.
- 3x F-15 friendly fire
- 2x KC-130 refuel mid air collision (1 loss, 1 damaged)
- 1x F-35 damaged
- 1x AEWACs base strike
- 3x KC-130 base strike (same)
- 1x F-15 (this one)
2-3 a week is not great for the greatest military, more than half attributable to Iran.
With 300+ US casualties, that's ~10/day, a fatality every ~2 days. No boots on the ground (that we know of, sure there are some elite ops in the country)
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Not expecting a reply.
Read the section titled 'The Gamble' if you want that opinion, but the tl;dr is that our 2025 strike against Iran ceded our ability to claim dis-involvement in Israeli strikes, and so Israel was able to draw us into this war whether we wanted to or not.
The constitution is old and not democratic.
Russia, Turkey, Phillipines, Belarus, Nicaragua, etc, etc.
Presidential republics are a disaster waiting the right people to break them.
Acceptable win ratio for the U.S. (whom many of you despise).
No. Many people despise the trump administration, not the US.
Much more relevant to the current conflict is that it invalidates the claim that Iran's air defense capabilities are gone.
The US could probably steamroll Russia in a week, because both countries will try to deploy the latest tech they have, and the US blows Russia out of the water. But in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia ... etc, their stealth jets and raptors stand no chance with weapons so old that those new systems didn't even account for.
I did not know Donald posts in here
