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...

> 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

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.

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.

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.

> 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...

> 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.

[flagged]

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-S...

Surely SAMs have improved since 1991? Have the F-15s improved significantly? (I know nothing about military stuff.)

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.

Operation Desert Storm was only 43 days long. Epic Fury is most of the way there.

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-mil...

Doesn't break out anti-air, but Iran absolutely has a lot of teeth left.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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...

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?

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.

That was 35 years ago. That only shows that the plane is pretty old. I assume SAMs evolved since then.

"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

What if air defense technology improved a bit during the last 36 years?

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.

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.

> 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?

"Only the best people..."

I mean, 1990 was 36 years ago and accompanied with a massive land invasion. At what point do these comparisons become meaningless?

[dead]

[dead]

[flagged]

Seriously. Makes me glad we attacked when we did. They could have bolstered their anti air defenses even more.

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.