Military aviators train for this, being alone behind enemy lines (look up SERE school if you’re curious, one of the craziest training courses outside of special forces) and there is a special force just for aviator recovery behind enemy lines, US AirForce Pararescue. Hopefully they’ll get the aviators back quickly, the last thing our country needs is American hostages making this ridiculous war harder to stop.
pram 7 minutes ago [-]
TBH I went through SERE school (aircrew) and I questioned its value, since the training is in eastern Washington/northern Idaho area mountainous woodland environment and all the evasion they showed us relied on that kind of cover and "bushcraft"
And you know, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran are definitely not eastern Washington lol
asdff 34 minutes ago [-]
If they landed anywhere near a town they are probably captured. The kuwait video from the f15 that was hit with friendly fire was crazy. Like 6 suvs worth of locals immediately surrounded this guy and they were threatening to beat him with a galvanized pipe.
lokar 3 hours ago [-]
Do they train for a “no quarter“ conflict where injured or surrendered combatants are killed?
MarkMarine 3 hours ago [-]
No, we actually train to be tortured and held if caught, but everyone knows the risks before you take off. Captured marines or soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’re clear eyed about it.
croes 3 hours ago [-]
And lied to about the reasons of the war.
Now they even lie about it being a war, while they claim they have already won the war, that isn’t a war.
MarkMarine 3 hours ago [-]
Every war since Korea, we’re very used to this.
surgical_fire 2 hours ago [-]
The other wars were woke. This is not a woke war.
I wish I was joking.
ray__ 4 minutes ago [-]
Care to elaborate on this?
bulbar 3 hours ago [-]
... But conducted by the self proclaimed Department of War.
rbanffy 3 hours ago [-]
Hegseth is not in charge of the Iranian military.
lokar 3 hours ago [-]
But he did publicly declare his intention to commit war crimes.
asdff 36 minutes ago [-]
We've already committed several war crimes.
two_handfuls 2 hours ago [-]
In case anyone else doubted this, I will save you the time to look it up. Yup, it's sadly true.
Yep. And war crime seems to have lost all meaning in the US.
But, even if you dismiss the idea of international standards, this is clearly very bad for US soldiers (and sailors, airmen, etc). I wonder if they see that.
3 hours ago [-]
tokai 3 hours ago [-]
Prisoner of war, not hostage.
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.
ks2048 21 seconds ago [-]
Not a Prisoner of War - a Prisoner of a limited military excursion.
MarkMarine 3 hours ago [-]
It’s a “well, actually” and counter to the HN guidelines
bobchadwick 3 hours ago [-]
There's a significant difference between a hostage and a prisoner of war, and in this context that distinction seems highly relevant.
tokai 3 hours ago [-]
Only for someone breaking the guideline of "Assume good faith".
MarkMarine 3 hours ago [-]
I didn’t downvote you, but a terse “well actually it’s prisoner of war” doesn’t really add to the conversation. Imagine doing that in person, you’d annoy everyone around you.
If you explained why it’s distinct and what that might mean for downed crew I think it wouldn’t have been down voted
cromka 23 seconds ago [-]
No they would t annoy everyone around them, that's your subjective projection. I, for one, found it an important distinction that highlights how easy it is to skew a narrative toward more sympathetic. It's similar to those Instagram posts juxtaposing headlines reporting on Palestinian vs Israeli victims.
NickC25 3 hours ago [-]
...but we aren't at war, according to the President and his secretary of Defense (war).
what a fucking mess.
spwa4 3 hours ago [-]
That is assuming Iran holds itself to the Geneva conventions, which ... seems like an extremely risky bet to make.
n2j3 3 hours ago [-]
We are expecting Iran to honour an International Convention when US and Israel have squarely shat on every convention's face, so to speak.
bz_bz_bz 3 hours ago [-]
The person you’re replying to is very explicitly not expecting them to honor the International Convention…
n2j3 2 hours ago [-]
The funny thing is that I am, even if that puts me in the naive minority in this thread.
nemomarx 3 hours ago [-]
Prisoner exchanges are a pretty strong motivator for any group, even hardline ones. If the Taliban was up for exchanges I think the IRGC is pretty likely to want to keep prisoners for that too.
craftkiller 3 hours ago [-]
Does the US have any prisoners to exchange? Wouldn't we need boots-on-the-ground to capture enemy combatants?
nemomarx 39 minutes ago [-]
Israel probably has some prisoners that Iran might want released, is my thinking?
mothballed 3 hours ago [-]
I would note ISIS put out some high res, professionally edited video of burning a (Jordanian?) pilot to death while inside a cage. Quite savage, but the propaganda effect is more profound than about anything else I've seen.
tenthirtyam 3 hours ago [-]
They're going back to the stone age, remember? The Geneva convention wasn't around then AFAICR.
nprz 3 hours ago [-]
What has Iran done to show it would not uphold Geneva conventions?
rbanffy 3 hours ago [-]
Hegseth explicitly ordered to give the enemy “no quarter”.
thinkingtoilet 3 hours ago [-]
The US doesn't hold itself to the conventions, why should the country it started a war of aggression with?
rbanffy 3 hours ago [-]
If you throw away your principles because you are fighting an unprincipled enemy, you are no better than them.
saimiam 3 hours ago [-]
It’s such a shock to the system to realise that “unprincipled enemy” referenced here is the US.
thinkingtoilet 3 hours ago [-]
There is no if. We've already done that. So yes, we are no better than them. So answer the question. Why would Iran follow conventions it's enemy that started a war of aggression is not following?
ofrzeta 3 hours ago [-]
Becaus two wrongs don't make right. If they are smart they will stick to the convention.
tjpnz 3 hours ago [-]
Why wouldn't they?
spwa4 2 hours ago [-]
First: count the responses to my thread of people suggesting Iran cannot/should not be held to the Geneva convention: 4,5 (I'm counting the Hegseth comment as 0.5)
The point is there are a great deal of people, even in the US, who advocate that it is unreasonable to hold people fighting the west in general and US in particular to the Geneva conventions. I don't know where this idea comes from, because morally it is of course indefensible, but there you go.
I would expect the number to be bigger in Iran. I would expect the number among IRGC extremists to be even higher than in Iran in general.
Second: war crimes have 2 interpretations. First as violations of the Rome treaty which require that the state where the warcrimes happen has signed the Rome treaty. Iran hasn't.
The second interpretation of warcrimes is that they are violations of the Geneva conventions, and the reaction would be that the UN security council intervenes. Well, the UNSC has preemptively declared they will not hold Iran to account for warcrimes (to be exact: France, Russia and China have declared they will veto). So at minimum you can say that Iranian warcrimes will not have any "official" consequences.
The world and the UN have decided that warcrimes "don't count". As in there will not be any consequences unless the government of the country where they happened implements those consequences.
Third: Iran has already kidnapped a US civilian (a reporter, Shelly Kittleson) and are holding her hostage. This is already a violation of the Geneva convention. They have also kidnapped hundreds of foreign nationals of other nations and are also holding them for ransom, which is also a violation of human rights, ie. a warcrime.
So those are my three reasons Iran won't hold itself to human rights standards.
surgical_fire 20 minutes ago [-]
Maybe Iran is more civilized than the Barbarians attacking them.
We have to wait and see if Iran is fighting a woke war.
Tadpole9181 3 hours ago [-]
Especially after the double-tap on civilians and first responders the US just did on that bridge. Or the threat for no quarters from the secretary of defense. Or the threats to destroy critical civilian infrastructure for water or power.
empyrrhicist 3 hours ago [-]
Or Hegseth running his mouth about exactly this issue...
roadbuster 2 hours ago [-]
During the entire gulf war (Iraq, 1990-91), only two F-15s were shot down via surface-to-air engagement. At the time, Baghdad was known to have the highest density of SAM protection out of any city in the world.
An F-15 being shot down in Iran after weeks of strategic bombing of their anti-air defense systems is not a good sign.
carefree-bob 32 minutes ago [-]
In the first Iraq war, the KARI system in Iraq, which was built by Thompson-CSF, had its specifications leaked and the US obtained access to back doors and codes that allowed it to bypass and/or disable much of that system. You need to remember that the US and much of the West had friendly relations with Iraq and provided some infrastructure assistance and military support because Iraq invaded Iran.
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.
flowerthoughts 2 hours ago [-]
Surely SAMs have improved since 1991? Have the F-15s improved significantly? (I know nothing about military stuff.)
roadbuster 48 minutes ago [-]
They certainly have, but the general idea is to first use stealth jets to bomb defensive systems (including radar observability) to conquer the skies, and then you can fly around somewhat freely. While SAM technology has improved, so have America's observability and stealth bombing capabilities. It will be interesting to learn the context and sequence of events which led to an F-15 being shot down by enemy fire.
(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).
asdff 42 minutes ago [-]
Turns out Iran is good at hiding stuff in caves and driving it out on a truck platform. Who would have known?
asdff 43 minutes ago [-]
Iran has systems they can pull out of a cave and deploy in a couple hours or less. We will never get all their anti air out.
verdverm 8 minutes ago [-]
With the altitudes they've been flying at, shoulder mounted MANPADs are a viable option.
pwarner 3 hours ago [-]
I hope the aviators are OK, and also hope whoever they were bombing are also OK.
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?
isubkhankulov 2 hours ago [-]
The crew of the IRIS Dena were warned twice by the US to abandon ship according to a report from one of the sailor’s father. They refused.
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.
asdff 32 minutes ago [-]
If the source below is correct, the commander of the Dena ordered his troops to stay on the ship despite the warnings, there was a bit of a mutiny and the survivors are those who rejected those orders and jumped off.
No, that tweet is from 20 hours ago, and is about a separate incident which happened two days ago over Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.
The current F-15 crash incident happened today near the city of Lali, in Iran’s Khuzestan Province.
dragonwriter 2 hours ago [-]
The US military is in the middle of a top-level political purge; both honesty and competence as an institution will be below normal levels for the forseeable future, and honesty about sensitive operations during wartime is never much even as a baseline.
AnimalMuppet 2 hours ago [-]
All true. So we should expect it, but we still shouldn't normalize it.
peyton 2 hours ago [-]
The US military is civilian-controlled, and we had an election. A “political purge” is generally accepted to be something that happens within a political party to consolidate a dictator’s power. Not a popular election where people vote to put new people in charge, which necessarily means removing the old people in charge.
sco1 1 hours ago [-]
> Not a popular election where people vote to put new people in charge, which necessarily means removing the old people in charge.
More than a year after they took office and in the middle of a war?
surgical_fire 2 hours ago [-]
I am not from the US, so I don't really care about how it does its things.
I definitely don't expect political purges on bureaucracy in my country of residence after elections, and I would consider it an extremely bad sign.
Typically the new party replaces the top levels; this is expected. Director of something, secretary of this and that, minister of something else, etc.
The actual bureacrats doing day to day work typically are not political agents. Getting rid of them for political reasons indicate loss of know-how, tacit knowledge, and competence, in the name of blind loyalty.
Hate to say it and sound so "conspiracy-like", but I no longer can trust what the current US administration is saying. Ever since the path of a hurricane was redrawn with a sharpie, it's been... unusual.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2 hours ago [-]
Your comment is a perfect setup for the cynicism olympics where people rush to say you could never trust the govt.
user_7832 1 hours ago [-]
Regardless of whether it's a "perfect setup" or not, the facts speak for themselves.
Most competent governments don't say things that are outright wrong. They may use double speak, or not comment on a topic. But this government (and unfortunately it's this specific adminstration/president) has acted time and again in a way that both of us know very well.
ifyoubuildit 2 hours ago [-]
Do you have some reasons for hope for the cynics in the crowd?
2OEH8eoCRo0 2 hours ago [-]
Not really. Just that trust ain't binary and the govt is made of people. I don't like this admin but this too shall pass. Cultivate your garden. Electing bad people has consequences.
lazide 2 hours ago [-]
Has there been a time where (after later facts came out) they were wrong?
calculatte 2 hours ago [-]
Or the bootlicker olympics for those who want everyone else to ignore the constant lies because they think bigger, more powerful government is utopian.
readthenotes1 2 hours ago [-]
That has been (rightly) said every year there has been a current US administration.
It is not a conspiracy theory if it's true.
And no, it's not "cynicism Olympics", it's observation.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2 hours ago [-]
Right on cue!
serf 2 hours ago [-]
I wouldn't be so pleased with myself over such "You will get wet in a rainstorm." style predictions.
truths from different angles that are at odds with one another produce mistrust and thoughts of conspiracy. We have more of that now than we have ever had, ever. It doesn't take Nostradamus to point to the trend.
tl;dr : Gee, where did this mistrust in the current government come from? I'd point but I don't have that many hands.
vorpalhex 2 hours ago [-]
That tweet is from yesterday.
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.
buildsjets 2 hours ago [-]
And they have not edited it or taken it down... why?
e-khadem 2 hours ago [-]
Because almost all of the people inside Iran have been disconnected for the past 35 days [1]. And believe it or not, they are texting these news live to all mobile phones on a daily basis as well. Some regime supporters believe it, because the want to believe it, they need to believe it. Just in the past 24 hours I have received 5 different messages from different organizations claiming victory and damage to US / Israel assets.
Just for a quick laugh, look at the official (Iranian) president's letter to the American people published yesterday [2]. The font changes between the paragraphs!
> Iran tweets about taking down an American jet basically daily.
Sure. We have two sets of demonstrable liars here. See, for example, the E-3 Sentry that got blown up; it took leaked photos for that to be admitted.
And don't get me started on the several times in the last few months we've "obliterated" Iran's nuclear capacity and missiles and whatnot only to be told it's time to do it again.
e-khadem 2 hours ago [-]
The claim being addressed is a shootdown over Qeshm island, which is the biggest island just west of the strait of Hormuz. The current CSAR operations are happening somewhere in the Khuzestan province. Probably somewhere within the 150 km radius of [1] based on online footage of the C-130 flying over.
[1] 31.941606, 50.311765
cpursley 2 hours ago [-]
"We"
Very cool that you have a side hustle as a US fighter jet pilot!
amelius 4 hours ago [-]
"Flawless victory" is becoming sillier every day.
SubiculumCode 8 minutes ago [-]
Irrespective of whether you think that the war is a good idea, having a plane shot down after 20+ days of war isn't exactly embarrassing. If anything, it shows the opposite: The extreme capability of the U.S. military.
IgorPartola 3 hours ago [-]
It's called Operation Epic Fuckup for a reason.
nathanaldensr 4 hours ago [-]
Yep. It's just a lie.
wesselbindt 4 hours ago [-]
The article says this is the first jet that was shot down by enemy fire this war, but this confuses me. Was the F35 that was downed a while back friendly fire or something? Are F35s not fighter jets?
MarkMarine 3 hours ago [-]
The F35 was able to make an emergency landing in a gulf country. This one actually went down in Iran.
ge96 4 hours ago [-]
I thought the IR video of that showed it made the missile detonate before the missile hit, maybe shrapnel hit the jet
Then again idk the jet exhaust becomes more significant not sure if afterburner or damage
In that video it seems like something shoots at the missile is what I'm saying from the F35
Someone said maybe a form of DIRCM
eqvinox 3 hours ago [-]
You're talking about a single "dash" on the frame before it goes all white. First question, if it were a laser, would be what exactly are you seeing there? A laser from the side is invisible, there'd need to be dust there, or the air would need to have turned into plasma. I don't think either makes that much sense. Second question/problem would be… it would have failed/be malfunctioning because —
— pretty much all AA munition works by exploding in close proximity to the target and showering it in shrapnel. So this might even have "helped" the missle/shell against malfunction in its fuse. And considering that this is designed to work like that, and it's likely not the greatest quality work on the Iranian side, it's also possible that the thing is already exploding and just ejected some piece of intentional shrapnel (or unintentionally itself) early, ahead of the actual detonation.
Or the Iranians edited that "dash" into that one frame, it's not exactly like it's a reputable source and it's in their interest to confuse things. Maybe they want the US to believe that the countermeasures are malfunctioning and helping their attacks, so they turn it off…
ge96 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah I was also thinking the the dash might be the missile itself
The single exhaust plume does become multiple on the F35 suggesting damage
xeromal 1 hours ago [-]
Almost like a seeking flak shell. I had no idea.
4 hours ago [-]
malfist 4 hours ago [-]
We have always been at war with Eastasia
hypeatei 4 hours ago [-]
That one was damaged and managed to land safely, iirc. Depends on your definition of "shot down" I guess, but the pilot didn't eject, so...
uticus 4 hours ago [-]
why is this not showing at top of HN search sorted by date?
2. the query string, "F-15" (capitalization is still important)
vkr2020 3 hours ago [-]
apparently, Iran is claiming that the search and rescue helicopter has also been hit by a projectile.
npn 3 hours ago [-]
the last time US wanted some country to reset back to Stone Age the same thing happened. turn out those aircrafts are not undefeatable at all.
SubiculumCode 4 minutes ago [-]
The only ones I'm seeing act like there should be no expectation of losing aircraft in a war are social media figures who always want to bloviate about something.
dmix 3 hours ago [-]
It's pretty normal for planes to go down in a war. They've flown 5000+ sorties, it's a pretty huge accomplishment this is the first one lost over Iran. Especially considering all of the last decade's speculation about how tough attacking Iran would be.
You'll never be able to fully suppress all of their manpads. Even if you destroy the bulk of their air defence network.
C-130s and helicopters flying low over Iran right after they shot down an F-15 in the same spot is wild. Whatever I think of the war idiocy, that's brave.
uticus 5 hours ago [-]
It's breaking news...meaning it may be inaccurate. CENTCOM certainly is saying it's false [0]. But there are enough signs of it being genuine, to be concerning at this stage.
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.
> An F-15 fighter jet pilot has been rescued alive by the U.S. military after their aircraft went down over Iran, a U.S. official said Friday.
> White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump had been briefed on the incident — the latest dramatic development in the war, now more than a month old.
CENTCOM lied.
0x_rs 2 hours ago [-]
The government would never lie: the "damaged" plane was already accounted for, just in the ground, in enemy territory.
netsharc 2 hours ago [-]
The use of "a" instead of "the" pilot suggests more than 1 personnel on the plane, considering F15's carry 2 people (unless it's some magical F15 I haven't heard of), it means there's still 1 guy missing out there.
Or he (I assume) could also have been found dead, and is not being mentioned before his family is notified of the sacrifice Donald Trump made of his life.
If true I can’t imagine it will play well even among Trumps base. When was the last time a US fighter jet was shot down? 1999 during the intervention in the balkans?
Let's hope Iran doesn't follow the "no quarter, no mercy" policy laid out by US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. For the unfamiliar, it means executing survivors and surrendering combatants. Aka war crimes.
2 hours ago [-]
karp773 3 hours ago [-]
Why didn't Iran use its capability to take down enemy jets for an entire month?
asdff 25 minutes ago [-]
Iran doesn't have to shoot down a single jet to win this war. Just move military hardware into caves. Sacrifice civilian infrastructure as the only viable bombing target. Wait it out until American domestic pressure from perceived war crimes ends the war. They can't afford to fight a land war or garrison over the entire country.
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.
subw00f 8 minutes ago [-]
Wow, "perceived war crimes", what an interesting way of saying war crimes.
maxglute 60 minutes ago [-]
Speculation.
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.
karp773 3 hours ago [-]
Downvoters, care to explain?
Seriously, it's been sitting on this for entire month and now, all of a sudden, rolled out antiaircraft defense? What's going on?
DASD 3 hours ago [-]
~15/16 MQ-9 Reapers have been shot down inside Iran. Not jets but still combat(strike and reconnaissance) aircraft.
karp773 3 hours ago [-]
I just looked it up. Those are turboprop (slower) but have a high ceiling of 50k feet. So Iran did have something better than stingers left. Maybe they just got lucky this time.
eqvinox 3 hours ago [-]
I didn't downvote, but your post sounds like you're implying some kind of tomfoolery, deception, or other hidden reasons. There are very likely none, it just takes time to adapt to a specific enemy, probability slowly increases while you get more attempts, and then after some time (t) the first shootdown is "properly" successful. And note how this was preceded by that half-successful shootdown where the plane made an emergency landing. And they shot down drones.
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.
shigawire 3 hours ago [-]
Because it obviously doesn't have the capability. Similar to how the US has no capability to "win" from the air only.
karp773 3 hours ago [-]
Maybe it was friendly fire but I did not see that in the news yet.
mothballed 4 hours ago [-]
If the pilots are recovered we probably won't hear about it from either side for hours. Iran will want to get them a mile underground before they send out the B-rolls. If recovered by the US, they will want them out of theater before anyone knows better so they can't be targeted.
rasz 49 minutes ago [-]
One pilot rescued. Only one seat spotted suggesting other one didnt make it.
verdverm 4 hours ago [-]
CNN is reporting this confirmed by three US sources
This is the dumbest, most pointless military conflict in American history. There is nothing plausible to win, but we can conceivably lose everything. A pyric victory is among the most favorable outcomes. We are led by corrupt imbeciles. I can only hope the outcome includes regime change for the U.S.
throw03172019 3 hours ago [-]
I thought we blew up all their missiles and Navy? Back to the stone ages? Did they shoot it down with rocks? (Eye roll)
/s
vkr2020 3 hours ago [-]
Fred Flintstone style!
aaron695 4 hours ago [-]
[dead]
jeffbee 4 hours ago [-]
Large, sophisticated, expensive war assets like fighters and carriers are brilliant against literally cavemen like we've been going around fighting lately, but are quite useless against enemies with even slight technological progress. If this conflict continues we're going to see a lot of US assets in fragments.
unholyguy001 3 hours ago [-]
It’s mind boggling how wrong that statement manages to be in only two sentences. It’s like every word manages to be wrong multiple times
Hats off to you sir
davidcollantes 3 hours ago [-]
OP sentences have issues, but I understood what they meant.
ModernMech 3 hours ago [-]
It reminds me of a Age of Empires campaign I played at a LAN from a long while back, where the game went on for 20 hours and ended in a stalemate between an atomic age player and a very primitive age player. The atomic player had total control of the map, they were carpet bombing the entire thing with nuclear weapons. But they could only create them so fast while the primitive player was running around on horses, just surviving enough to prevent the other player from winning. The only reason the game ended was because I tripped over the power cord to one of the computers.
To me, that's what modern warfare looks like.
webstrand 3 hours ago [-]
Ah, you mean Empire Earth. I loved that game, it had a great soundtrack.
vbarrielle 3 hours ago [-]
Sounds like it indeed. The balance was... interesting, a single tank could not win against a dozen cavemen.
rbanffy 2 hours ago [-]
Weapons are designed with an opponent in mind, and guarded against the expected threat models from that opponent. Everything breaks down when the opponent does not what you want them to.
ModernMech 3 hours ago [-]
Right right Empire Earth! My memory is a little fuzzy it must have been 20 years ago.
3 hours ago [-]
probably_wrong 3 hours ago [-]
I don't remember Age of Empires having an atomic age?
MrChoke 2 hours ago [-]
If I had to guess I think they meant empire earth instead.
eqvinox 3 hours ago [-]
It was probably Rise of Nations or one of the other similar games.
hypeatei 3 hours ago [-]
> If this conflict continues we're going to see a lot of US assets in fragments.
It's only "high tech" to the aforementioned cavemen. To everyone else it's a 707 you can't even get spare tires for any more, equipped with some truly obsolete technology aboard. I mean it has a mechanical waveguide for crying out loud.
paganel 3 hours ago [-]
> equipped with some truly obsolete technology aboard.
So I guess the US won't have any issues replacing it at a cheaper cost (as far as I understood that one cost $500 million, give or take).
jeffbee 3 hours ago [-]
The prototype E-7 cost $2 billion. It's a 737 with some radios.
eqvinox 3 hours ago [-]
"On 22 March 2019, the UK Defence Secretary announced a $1.98 billion contract to purchase five Boeing E-7 Wedgetails"
Prototype price isn't really that meaningful
(Also it's a 767 not a 737, that was the E-3 I think.)
jeffbee 3 hours ago [-]
You must be thinking of a different boondoggle, the E-767, which is the obsolete radar package from the E-3 bolted to a 767. The E-7 is a 737.
eqvinox 3 hours ago [-]
Ah right, it's a bit confusing between the bunch of these.
Nonetheless the price tag was only $400M/ea E-7 for the UK in 2019 (usual later price shenanigans not included)
Telemakhos 3 hours ago [-]
When the first-tier hostile leadership structure was eliminated in the first day of the war, and only after a month do the surviving enemies finally manage to damage a plane so severely that it can't return to a friendly base to land, is "quite useless" an adequate and accurate description of the technology used to prosecute that war?
br121 3 hours ago [-]
It's useful in saving the pilot's life. With less advanced tecnologies, more pilots would have been shoot down. It's useful in targeted attacks, but they have proved themself uneffective (at least for now) as the new leadership is alined with the objective of the replaced one. It's close to useless when it comes to making the war cost-effective, which start being a relevant metric when the conflict start lasting too long. Of course the US has a bigger economy, so all the news about cheaper systems damaging or destroying quite expensive ones may still lead to a US victory, but a costly one for sure
rbanffy 2 hours ago [-]
As the Soviet Union made us learn, you don’t need a big military victory to make your enemy spend themselves into defeat.
rbanffy 2 hours ago [-]
When you decapitate a well organised military, all you achieve is installing a new enemy you know little about you can’t predict their actions and that now know they are fighting for their own survival.
Not the best place to be.
Americans seem to underestimate everyone else.
eqvinox 3 hours ago [-]
Whether you have specific leadership or not doesn't matter much to (a) having to adapt to the enemy and learn what works, and (b) probability just doing its thing, more chances and so on, and (c) US leadership descending the oceans of stupidity all the way to the Mariana trench.
rbanffy 2 hours ago [-]
> US leadership descending the oceans of stupidity all the way to the Mariana trench.
And they voted for this not only once, but twice.
tokai 3 hours ago [-]
A month after the president claims total air superiority over Iran and complete destruction of their anti air capabilities.
Rendered at 18:43:11 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
And you know, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran are definitely not eastern Washington lol
Now they even lie about it being a war, while they claim they have already won the war, that isn’t a war.
I wish I was joking.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/hegseth-no-quarter-interna...
But, even if you dismiss the idea of international standards, this is clearly very bad for US soldiers (and sailors, airmen, etc). I wonder if they see that.
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.
The point is there are a great deal of people, even in the US, who advocate that it is unreasonable to hold people fighting the west in general and US in particular to the Geneva conventions. I don't know where this idea comes from, because morally it is of course indefensible, but there you go.
I would expect the number to be bigger in Iran. I would expect the number among IRGC extremists to be even higher than in Iran in general.
Second: war crimes have 2 interpretations. First as violations of the Rome treaty which require that the state where the warcrimes happen has signed the Rome treaty. Iran hasn't.
The second interpretation of warcrimes is that they are violations of the Geneva conventions, and the reaction would be that the UN security council intervenes. Well, the UNSC has preemptively declared they will not hold Iran to account for warcrimes (to be exact: France, Russia and China have declared they will veto). So at minimum you can say that Iranian warcrimes will not have any "official" consequences.
The world and the UN have decided that warcrimes "don't count". As in there will not be any consequences unless the government of the country where they happened implements those consequences.
Third: Iran has already kidnapped a US civilian (a reporter, Shelly Kittleson) and are holding her hostage. This is already a violation of the Geneva convention. They have also kidnapped hundreds of foreign nationals of other nations and are also holding them for ransom, which is also a violation of human rights, ie. a warcrime.
So those are my three reasons Iran won't hold itself to human rights standards.
We have to wait and see if Iran is fighting a woke war.
An F-15 being shot down in Iran after weeks of strategic bombing of their anti-air defense systems is not a good sign.
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.
(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).
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.
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202603071125
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/american-fighter-jet-f15e-downe...
https://x.com/CENTCOM/status/2039805134704660622
The current F-15 crash incident happened today near the city of Lali, in Iran’s Khuzestan Province.
More than a year after they took office and in the middle of a war?
I definitely don't expect political purges on bureaucracy in my country of residence after elections, and I would consider it an extremely bad sign.
Typically the new party replaces the top levels; this is expected. Director of something, secretary of this and that, minister of something else, etc.
The actual bureacrats doing day to day work typically are not political agents. Getting rid of them for political reasons indicate loss of know-how, tacit knowledge, and competence, in the name of blind loyalty.
Most competent governments don't say things that are outright wrong. They may use double speak, or not comment on a topic. But this government (and unfortunately it's this specific adminstration/president) has acted time and again in a way that both of us know very well.
It is not a conspiracy theory if it's true.
And no, it's not "cynicism Olympics", it's observation.
truths from different angles that are at odds with one another produce mistrust and thoughts of conspiracy. We have more of that now than we have ever had, ever. It doesn't take Nostradamus to point to the trend.
tl;dr : Gee, where did this mistrust in the current government come from? I'd point but I don't have that many hands.
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.
Just for a quick laugh, look at the official (Iranian) president's letter to the American people published yesterday [2]. The font changes between the paragraphs!
[1] https://mastodon.social/@netblocks/116339631989805542
[2] https://x.com/drpezeshkian/status/2039418009052119190?s=20
That's when the shootdown happened, yes.
> Iran tweets about taking down an American jet basically daily.
Sure. We have two sets of demonstrable liars here. See, for example, the E-3 Sentry that got blown up; it took leaked photos for that to be admitted.
And don't get me started on the several times in the last few months we've "obliterated" Iran's nuclear capacity and missiles and whatnot only to be told it's time to do it again.
[1] 31.941606, 50.311765
Very cool that you have a side hustle as a US fighter jet pilot!
Then again idk the jet exhaust becomes more significant not sure if afterburner or damage
https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1ry6ma2/f35_...
Someone said maybe a form of DIRCM
— pretty much all AA munition works by exploding in close proximity to the target and showering it in shrapnel. So this might even have "helped" the missle/shell against malfunction in its fuse. And considering that this is designed to work like that, and it's likely not the greatest quality work on the Iranian side, it's also possible that the thing is already exploding and just ejected some piece of intentional shrapnel (or unintentionally itself) early, ahead of the actual detonation.
Or the Iranians edited that "dash" into that one frame, it's not exactly like it's a reputable source and it's in their interest to confuse things. Maybe they want the US to believe that the countermeasures are malfunctioning and helping their attacks, so they turn it off…
The single exhaust plume does become multiple on the F35 suggesting damage
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
2. the query string, "F-15" (capitalization is still important)
You'll never be able to fully suppress all of their manpads. Even if you destroy the bulk of their air defence network.
"U.S. Conducting Rescue Operation After Jet Went Down Over Iran"
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.
[0] https://x.com/CENTCOM/status/2039805134704660622
Any time this administration cries "fake news" is probably a tell.
> Flying low over Iran at this point is planned…
But with C-130s and helos, in an area that just shot down a F-15? That's risky. One of the videos shows the C-130 deploying flares.
> An F-15 fighter jet pilot has been rescued alive by the U.S. military after their aircraft went down over Iran, a U.S. official said Friday.
> White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump had been briefed on the incident — the latest dramatic development in the war, now more than a month old.
CENTCOM lied.
Or he (I assume) could also have been found dead, and is not being mentioned before his family is notified of the sacrifice Donald Trump made of his life.
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.
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.
Seriously, it's been sitting on this for entire month and now, all of a sudden, rolled out antiaircraft defense? What's going on?
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.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/03/politics/us-fighter-jet-iran
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47627182
Hats off to you sir
To me, that's what modern warfare looks like.
Yep, Iran recently destroyed a high tech radar plane ("AWACS") at a base in Saudi Arabia: https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/iran-war-attack-us-base-s...
So I guess the US won't have any issues replacing it at a cheaper cost (as far as I understood that one cost $500 million, give or take).
Prototype price isn't really that meaningful
(Also it's a 767 not a 737, that was the E-3 I think.)
Nonetheless the price tag was only $400M/ea E-7 for the UK in 2019 (usual later price shenanigans not included)
Not the best place to be.
Americans seem to underestimate everyone else.
And they voted for this not only once, but twice.