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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 dens

• flowerthoughts 6mo ago
  Surely SAMs have improved since 1991? Have the F-15s improved significantly? (I know nothing about military stuff.)
  • roadbuster 6mo 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 6mo ago
      Turns out Iran is good at hiding stuff in caves and driving it out on a truck platform. Who would have known?
      • gherkinnn 6mo ago
        Next you're going to tell me that operating out of your own mountainous terrain has an advantage.
        • asdff 6mo ago
          Would be news to the US military it seems. Mountains, jungles, who would have thought?
          • acdha 6mo ago
            This isn’t unexpected for anyone in the actual military: they’ve planned for this for decades. A couple of friends served in the previous war and they mentioned that this is what their training exercises were like: same enemy, same difficulty.
        • nutjob2 6mo ago
          Possibly true, but at least they don't have the ability to control some critical waterway or something to hold everyone at ransom.
      • praptak 6mo ago
        The Serbs successfully used a similar tactic to down an F-117A, so yeah.
    • thinkcontext 6mo ago
      > F-117 Nighthawk Recall that the Serbs shot down a Nighthawk when they were in a similar situation to Iran. They kept some good AA missiles in reserve and used a system of spotters and just waited for an opportunity. Its likely that similar tactics were used by Iran. Also recall that the Houthis, armed and trained by Iran, gave F35s some close calls over Yemen. https://www.twz.com/air/how-the-houthis-rickety-air-defenses-can-threaten-the-stealthy-f-35 https://www.twz.com/air/how-the-houthis-rickety-air-defenses...
      • ninja3925 6mo ago
        The story is actually quite interesting. The Serbs observed that a nighthawk would routinely fly the same route but their radar couldn’t lock on it unless the missile hatch were open, which they managed to elicit. In short, it took 2 rare events to occur for it to happen.
  • christkv 6mo ago
    A lot of the planes are doing attack runs at altitudes where they are susceptible to man pads I imagine.
  • mr_toad 6mo ago
    Most of the F15 upgrades have been against other aircraft. The F15 is primarily an air superiority fighter, it isn’t designed for attacks or defence against ground forces. The F15E is modified to attack ground targets, but ideally they would be targets without any air defences.
    • ranger207 6mo ago
      The F-15E Strike Eagle variant is definitely designed for attacks and defense against ground forces, but overall air defense is a probability game so it's not too surprising that it eventually happened
      • mr_toad 6mo ago
        Yes, although it’s designed for interdiction, rather than primarily a ground attack aircraft, the difference being that it’s intended to be used against defenceless ground targets (like supply lines), not on the front lines.
• asdff 6mo 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 6mo ago
    With the altitudes they've been flying at, shoulder mounted MANPADs are a viable option.
    • dmix 6mo ago
      US also has A-10s doing gun runs in Iraq too. It makes sense the US is more willing to take risks 1-month into the war given how effective they've been and for Iran to also adapt their manpad teams after they probably failed a ton of times previously. You saw the same pattern where Ukraine and Russia both constantly adapted on the battlefield and the war changed rapidly over the first year.
      • verdverm 6mo ago
        Waiting to see the Shaheds with AA missiles like Russia was using (until their starlink was finally shut off late last year)
      • anigbrowl 6mo ago
        It has two fewer of them as of this afternoon
    • markus_zhang 6mo ago
      If you go over 3000m then manpads are not useful I think.
      • verdverm 6mo ago
        Sure, but there are videos of US war planes strafing, like that near hit clip.
• carefree-bob 6mo 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.
  • butlike 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    • nutjob2 6mo ago
      It'll probably come in the form of permanent $5+/gal gas.
      • praptak 6mo ago
        Oil is still underpriced wrt to its environmental cost. It is good to see at least the political cost being accounted for.
        • nutjob2 6mo ago
          From my point of view, this incredibly stupid war has only positive externalities. The costs of oil are legion and unaccounted.
        • drnick1 6mo ago
          > Oil is still underpriced wrt to its environmental cost. This may well be true, but we still haven't found a better fuel. Sure, we have electric cars, but they are still too expensive for the masses, or impractical, e.g. for apartment dwellers. Besides, oil has countless other uses besides as fuel for vehicles.
• fooey 6mo ago
  The latest reporting is that only 50% of Iran's missile capacity has been destroyed https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/02/politics/iran-missiles-us-military-strikes-trump 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.
  • estearum 6mo ago
    Seems to me their strategy is to shut down the Strait as cheaply as possible, force ground operations on known strategic points of interest, then just missile and drone strike Americans in Iranian territory where they have ~no air defense.
    • jmyeet 6mo ago
      There are 4 players in this war and they all have very different goals and "victory" conditions. 1. Israel wants to ruin Iran permanently, to turn it into Somalia 2.0, meaning a quasi-state with no organized, central government. Were they to succeed in this it would be a humantarian disaster the likes of which we haven't seen since probably WW2. Tens of millions of refugees that will probably collapse surrounding countries; 2. The US (IMHO) wanted to placate Israel with a cheap decapitation strike that would force regime change and bring in a US-friendly regime, similar to Venezuela. This was completely unrealistic and they completely underestimated Iran's ability to maintain an offensive capability. We don't even know how much Iran's missile and drone capability has been degraded (to the GP's point). I don't even believe it's been degraded 50% (as GP claimed) abut we have no way of knowing. The entire Iranian military is built to resist a strategic bombing campaign; 3. Iran no longer trusts the US as a good faith actor and negotiator after multiple incidents of acting in bad faith, killing their negotiators and bombing an embassy so their goal is to make the price of this war so high economically that the US never thinks about doing this ever again. And that's a cheap thing to do, as you note. Drones can close the Strait and ne devastating to the economies of the Gulf states; and 4. The Gulf States just want to maintain the pre-war status quo. Saudi Arabia in particular just wanted to contain Iran. They're less vulnerable to the Strait being closed but it's still a problem politically as the US and Israel are bombing other Muslims. The Gulf states are learning the the US security guarantee ain't worth shit but they can't break away from being US client states with their own unpopular regimes probably collapsing without US arms. But in a prolonged conflict some of them may collapse anyway, particularly Bahrain and even Iraq. So Iran just fires a dozen ballistic missiles a day to remind Israel of the war Israel started. An estimated ~50% of missiles get through missile defences now. Otherwise threats and the occasional drone are sufficient to close the Strait and massively disrupt the ME3 airlines. Militarily, Iran can probably keep that up forever. Mobile missile launchers are cheap and drones can be launched from basically any truck. They're also produced and stored in underground basis that are essentially impervious to bombing short of nuclear weapons. Many believed prior to Trump's speech this week that he would either escalate or pull out. Instead he found a secret third, worse option, which is to tell Europe and Asia "you're on your own" (with the Strait closure) after the US launched a war nobody but Israel wanted or supported. That's an interesting strategy because it's going to cause some serious soul-searching in all of these countries about the wisdom of US allegiance.
• markus_zhang 6mo ago
  My concern is that other countries can aid Iran with weapons in a direct and indirect way. There is no guarantee to block the railroads from East and the shipments from North.
  • standardUser 6mo ago
    That's not a concern it's a reality. Iran is not shut-off or blockaded to any meaningful degree. It has tons of unmolested border crossings and Caspian sea access, and maintains full control within it's own borders (minus the parts that have been blown up).
    • simonh 6mo ago
      Also ships are still transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from Iranian ports taking goods in from China, with who knows what on board. They are also exporting more oil now than they were before the war. I mean special military operation, not war. Only congress can declare war.
      • standardUser 6mo ago
        Even the Philippines, a US ally, has struck a deal with Iran for safe passage. Meanwhile, Oman is working with Iran on a toll scheme. There's an emerging chance that no US-flagged vessel crosses the Straight of Hormuz again in our lifetimes (except maybe for a retreating 5th fleet).
        • pjc50 6mo ago
          The Philippines may be a US client state since MacArthur liberated them from Japan, but they need to deal with Iran to keep the lights on. The rationing situation is quite bad in a lot of east Asian countries.
          • sophacles 6mo ago
            > a US client state since MacArthur liberated them from Japan a US client state since MacArthur liberated them from Japan And a US colony/territory for the 43 years before Japan invaded. They were ruled by a US puppet state in a supposed "transition to independence" at the time Japan invaded, however it's unclear how much actual independence they would have had in practice. I mention this because: 1. The way you state it makes it sound like they were somehow independent before the war. 2. It explains why MacArthur was there with the US army to resist the Japanese invasion from the first day it happened (Dec 7, 1941) 3. Its history worth looking into to contextualize just how bad the US has always been at taking over places. Acting as if this is post WW2 (as the media does) is counter-productive to truly understanding the number of really botched invasions the US has done.
• fooey 6mo ago
  New reporting that an A-10 ~was also shot down~ has also gone down (unconfirmed if it was shot down) https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04/03/world/iran-war-trump-oil 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
  • gpderetta 6mo ago
    What are A-10s doing there? There isn't yet any ground operation, right?
    • thinkcontext 6mo ago
      They were largely being used for maritime patrol against fast boats. I saw a newsblurb a couple days ago that more were being sent to the region.
    • alfalfasprout 6mo ago
      Well, A-10s are well suited for strafing runs, etc. Presumably they'd be sent in if the area they're entering is presumed safe. That clearly didn't pan out. The reality is avoiding a ground operation was probably the wrong move at this point (ignoring the spicier broader debate of if the whole Iran campaign was the right call or not) It's really hard to truly guarantee surface to air capabilities are gone when you're relying purely on sat images + aerial surveillance (and obviously this carries risk). Iran has fairly portable SAM systems that are public knowledge.
      • ifyoubuildit 6mo ago
• caribou1914 6mo ago
  It seems like the Iraqis were relatively poor operators of their systems. A few days ago I was reading about the Nato bombing of yugoslavia on wikipedia and it had the following entry: "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.
• thinkcontext 6mo ago
  > An F-15 being shot down in Iran after weeks of strategic bombing of their anti-air defense systems is not a good sign. 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-can-threaten-the-stealthy-f-35 https://www.twz.com/air/how-the-houthis-rickety-air-defenses...
  • YZF 6mo ago
    It was pretty much a given that over time some of these airplanes would be shot down. There's no way to get every single MANPAD or even some of the larger anti-aircraft setups. A jet can even be brought down by a canon or a bullet given enough luck. We've had quite a few near misses, there's a video of an Israeli F-16 evading a surface to air missile, there have been the F-35 that was hit but managed to continue and land, there were countless drones shot down. 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.
  • iugtmkbdfil834 6mo ago
    OP left a little to interpretation, but, I think, top of the list starts with 'mission accomplished 2.0' meme followed by increased US casualties ( though I suppose the exact order likely depends on your current disposition ).
  • mcv 6mo ago
    Why would that not be a bad sign? The US declared victory several times, but clearly Iran still has plenty of firepower to shoot down planes, and probably also ships in the Strait. If the US is incapable of preventing Iran from shooting ships and planes, how do they intend to win this? It's absolutely a bad sign. One among many.
• andriy_koval 6mo ago
  > During the entire gulf war (Iraq, 1990-91), only two F-15s were shot down via surface-to-air engagement. 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.
  • ranger207 6mo ago
    Both F-15s lost in the 1st Gulf War were the air-to-ground focused F-15E Strike Eagles. https://rjlee.org/air/ds-aaloss/ https://rjlee.org/air/ds-aaloss/
    • andriy_koval 6mo ago
      per wiki, f-15e was first produced in 1987, so there were very few in service at that time, and most of ground strikes were carried by other aircrafts.
      • ranger207 6mo ago
        Yes, most ground strikes were by other aircraft types, but the F-15E did have a lot of sorties, almost as many as the F-111 or F-4G (although the F-16 had many, many more sorties, but not all of them were air-to-ground) Source is the Gulf War Airpower Survey, page 184 (PDF page 205): https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA273996.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA273996.pdf
    • YZF 6mo ago
      This one is also an F-15E it seems.
• buzzerbetrayed 6mo ago
  Seriously. Makes me glad we attacked when we did. They could have bolstered their anti air defenses even more.
  • hdgvhicv 6mo ago
    Are these bots or do americans really live in this whole other world?
    • machomaster 6mo ago
      Or maybe you didn't understand a clear sarcasm?
      • whynotmaybe 6mo ago
        You're on HN in 2026 here, sarcasm must be clearly identified.
    • spiderice 6mo ago
      [flagged]
• timcobb 6mo ago
  You can't really take out "the whole" air defense system because there will always be folks out with MANPAD-type things, those will score hits on occasion. That's probably what we saw here. I doubt MANPADs were nearly as common in the early 90s as they are today.
  • rustyhancock 6mo ago
    True but without radar they have a relatively difficult task of being out there setup and waiting for a fast moving jet to pass within range. 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.
    • timcobb 6mo ago
      Yeah my guess was they were coming in along predictable routes at this point and that's what got them? I saw that the search and rescue mission was in an area close to water. I believe many Stinger hits in Ukraine can be attributed to predictability. And maybe they do have some kind of radars?
    • RealityVoid 6mo ago
      I don't think manpads themselves are connected to the AWACS infrastructure.
      • Saline9515 6mo ago
        It's more that high altitude planes get picked up by the AWACS while low flight is at risk of being shot at by a MANPAD.
    • greedo 6mo ago
      There have been no legitimate reports of NATO providing real time AWACs feeds to Ukraine.
  • hajile 6mo ago
    The videos we've seen match up with what we've seen on the ground. They are all running a custom software we haven't seen elsewhere and don't seem to be traditional MANPADS in any way. 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.
• mugivarra69 6mo ago
  [dead]
• fifilura 6mo ago
  That was 35 years ago. That only shows that the plane is pretty old. I assume SAMs evolved since then.
• nwah1 6mo ago
  Operation Desert Storm was only 43 days long. Epic Fury is most of the way there.
• jari_mustonen 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  • mrits 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    • mdni007 6mo ago
      [flagged]
      • drstewart 6mo ago
        [flagged]
        • UncleMeat 6mo ago
          The Iranian government can suck and it can still be a net negative for the Iranian people to bomb the shit out of their civilian infrastructure and kill and bunch of schoolgirls. The Iranian government sucks. There is zero chance that Trump is capable of leaving this conflict with a stable liberal democracy that protects the rights of the Iranian people in place.
          • RiverStone 6mo ago
            That’s not what Iranians expect or are asking for. Every Iranian I’ve spoken to is thankful that Khamenei is now dead and there is at least a chance of change. They don’t expect Trump to fix their country for them. They want someone to help so their own government isn’t shooting them dead by the thousands in the streets.
    • Saline9515 6mo ago
      Have you considered not providing intel to Irak to allow them to use sarin gas against the Iranians? Or overthrowing their democratic regime that wanted an audit to understand how much of its oil was stolen by US companies? Or designating it as the "Axis of Evil" and sanctioning it after that it helped you invade Afghanistan? Or assassinating their religious leader during negociations? Iran didn't become skeptic about the US overnight. I would advise to do some reading on wikipedia on the topic to make up your mind.
• stinkbeetle 6mo ago
  > An F-15 being shot down in Iran after weeks of strategic bombing of their anti-air defense systems is not a good sign. 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?
  • asadotzler 6mo ago
    The success of the war depends on the approval ratings of the US president which will almost certainly take hits when US military takes hits so the US citizens seeing the US military taking hits at a higher rate than relatively recent wars in the area is a bad sign for "winning" whatever "winning" means here.
    • stinkbeetle 6mo ago
      That doesn't address my question though.
• nielsbot 6mo ago
  I also saw some news saying an F-35 was possibly hit--but I can't find any reasonable-seeming sources to confirm that. Maybe someone here knows more?
  • dnautics 6mo ago
    an F-35 was hit but made it back to base.
    • hajile 6mo ago
      CENTCOM claimed the F-35 made it made it back to base, but right after the hit happened, they sent out a Chinook to run search patterns in the area. Additionally, the pilot was treated for shrapnel wounds. As he's at the front of the plane, it wasn't some "near miss" like that really cool F-18 evasion (where it timed the break exactly and the shrapnel all blew past it). CENTCOM has turned out to be about as honest as the Russian or Ukrainian MoD. They flat-out lied about this shootdown all while sending out search teams. There is some circumstantial evidence that two Blackhawks were damaged trying to run search and rescue operations. There are also stories coming out that they are using bureaucracy to hide massive numbers of casualties.
  • culi 6mo ago
    Iran's semi-official news agency (Tasnim) made the claim. Then a bit later they posted photos of the wreckage. OSINT community pieced together that it was actually wreckage of the F-15E that is the topic of this post. 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.
• cyberax 6mo ago
  Iraq is pretty flat on the routes between the US-allied countries and the major strongholds (Basra, Baghdad). You can't easily conceal rocket launchers there. 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.
• mathgradthrow 6mo ago
  1) The US has run 13,000 missions over Iran in the last month. Thats a lot of targets. 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.
  • sheeshkebab 6mo ago
    It’s very likely their initial shock now wore off, and they got resupplied by putin and xi. We might start seeing much more damage going forward. US hasn’t fought a proxy war of this kind in many decades.
    • mathgradthrow 6mo ago
      Putin can barely fight his own war, and how are you proposing that China supply Iran? You can't rebuild capability in a day. Do you want to give odds to your proposition that this is going to turn around in the IRGC's favor?
• nurumaik 6mo ago
  What if air defense technology improved a bit during the last 36 years?
  • Rury 6mo ago
    Not sure, but I'd wager it was shot down using their 358 missile (aka SA-67). The missile can be fired from a rail on a truck and will patrol an airspace for a time until finding a target using an infrared seeker. Since it uses an infrared seeker (combined with it being fairly small), makes it incredibly difficult be detected by radar, while stealth tech is a fairly useless counter measure.
• jjk166 6mo ago
  You can't compare time, you need to compare sorties. There were only 5900 F15 sorties during the gulf war. It's not clear how many of the 8000 combat sorties sorties flown so far in the Iran war are with F15s, but it's almost certainly several thousand. Overall during the gulf war coalition forces suffered 52 fixed wing aircraft lost in combat over approximately 116,000 combat sorties. 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.
  • hajile 6mo ago
    Look at the super-precise strike on the E-3 sentry that we have pictures of. We know at least one other was hit. 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.
    • TiredOfLife 6mo ago
      That E-3 sentry was stationary on the ground.
      • mlyle 6mo ago
        I'm not sure that you read the comment that you replied to.
    • jjk166 6mo ago
      I'm talking about things being shot down. Hitting ground targets is even less of a technical flex.
• Havoc 6mo ago
  It is an aging platform despite the E series upgrades. 1990 is nearly 3 decades ago and SAM has made progress in those 3 decades That plus likely a miscalculation...pushing into territory that is more contested than believed
• helterskelter 6mo ago
  "Let me say, we’ve won" - 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
• george916a 6mo ago
  [dead]
• roncesvalles 6mo ago
  Ridiculous to suggest any equivalence between 1990 Iraq and 2026 Iran, or even the F-15 in 1990 and the one in 2026. Military technology moves faster than most people think.
• omgwtfbyobbq 6mo ago
  I don't think it's that surprising. Look at Ukraine with Western military aid/sig-int. 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.
• ugh123 6mo ago
  "Only the best people..."
• da_chicken 6mo ago
  That's because they primarily sent stealth aircraft and Tomahawks over Baghdad. They also used decoys to draw out SAM missiles, and then F-4s would strike the SAM sites directly, which over time meant that the surviving SAM launchers did not fire when targets made themselves known. However, they did do some non-stealth missions. The most well know was Package Q, which involved dozens of aircraft, and two F-16s were shot down. 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.
• ifwinterco 6mo ago
  They've been flying straight into sites that would normally be heavily defended with 4th gen airframes, it's not that surprising that Iran finally managed to get one
• NorwegianDude 6mo ago
  It's especially bad considering the US had already taken out 100 % of Iran's military capabilities, according to the official statements. What a clown show...
• Cacti 6mo ago
  I mean, 1990 was 36 years ago and accompanied with a massive land invasion. At what point do these comparisons become meaningless?
• cringleyrobert 6mo ago
  [flagged]
• cs02rm0 6mo ago
  The entire Gulf War was only six weeks long. 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.
• nycdatasci 6mo ago
  We have attacked their “legacy” air defense systems. We cannot really degrade their ability to use their anti-aircraft loitering missiles which don’t rely on radar. https://cat-uxo.com/explosive-hazards/missiles/358-missile-SA-67 https://cat-uxo.com/explosive-hazards/missiles/358-missile-S...
• shin_lao 6mo ago
  46 airplanes were shot down during the second Iraqi war, and there has been over 150 total aviation losses (mechanical failure). 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.
  • FrustratedMonky 6mo ago
    I'm not up on news, do we know what shot it down? Everyone loves missiles, but could it have been guns? Was it flying low? Remember when some helicopters were being shot down by RPG's and everyone was like 'whooo, no way, that can't be, they aren't accurate enough".
    • shin_lao 6mo ago
      You are correct, we don't know much. Could also have been a failure.