> This happens everywhere, just the other day an American F-18 was shot down by an American destroyer in the Red Sea, and an F-18 carries additional econfliction equipment that an airliner doesn't have.
The Houthis claim the F-18 was downed by them[1], so it's still not clear if this was an actual friendly fire incident. This is consistent with reports the carrier retreated to northern red sea soon after the incident.
That depends on whether you trust the Houthis or the US Navy's sheepish apology for shooting at two F-18s (one missed), which will almost certainly have career consequences for somebody.
Really? I feel like "Iran shot down a US Navy jet" is more embarrassing than "the US shot down a US Navy jet." Not for the pilots responsible, but for the Navy as a whole. I don't have any insight on this particular story though.
They claim a lot of things, but whatever air defense they have comes from Iran, and Iran, as we just saw, isn't capable of shooting down IAF F-15s flying over their own airspace. Ansar Allah did not shoot down an American F-18. I don't believe Ansar Allah has any meaningful air defense at all; it would make no strategic sense for them to invest in it, they have no hope of maintaining air superiority against any of their adversaries. Like Hezbollah, which trained them, and which also has no meaningful air defense, their strategy is to be hard to bomb effectively.
According to BBC Persian (quoting Israeli sources) and many Israeli media , the IAF flew "hundreds" of sorties over Iranian airspace on that eventful night in October.
The reporting is that they were F35s though, not F15.
Iran's air defence system is based on the older Russian S300, which is incapable of detecting them.
Of course it wasn't that long ago that Iran was flying F14s and had complete air superiority over its neighbours. How the times have changed.
We also now know that the Israelis had informed the Iranians just before the attack through diplomatic channels of the impending attack, and that it would only contain specific military objectives.
Is the S300 just that useless? Possible. Did the Iranians decide to not respond and to "take one on the chin" in order to avoid a cycle of ever increasing conflict? Maybe. Had espionage already disabled Iran's air defence system? Also possible. We probably won't know for another 100 years.
Yeah, I don't think the strike on Iran shed as much light on this question as I'd originally thought it might, but it still seems clearly to be the case that air defense is not a big part of the Axis of Resistance strategy. Ansar Allah fought an open war against Saudi Arabia in the mid-late 2010s, during which the Royal Saudi Air Force routinely flew over Houthi-held territory, and so far as I know they've never verifiably shot a flight down.
Again, I think the most useful model here is Lebanon. Hezbollah has a desultory complement of SAM launchers, but no meaningful control over its airspace.
Oh yes that's just absolutely fanciful boasting by the Houthis.
The Houthis were probably not far off from claiming to have shot down the Ingenuity chopper which NASA lost on Mars . In reality they can't shoot down a Cessna 172.
I'm reading conflicting reports, but let's stipulate that; I don't think it makes any difference to the point I'm making. The better, clearer example is Lebanon, which hosts the crown jewel of the IRGC's proxy forces, and which doesn't have even a pretense of modern anti-aircraft defense. What would the point be? These are territories and militaries without meaningful air forces; they have already defaulted away air superiority. Their strategy is for that not to matter.
> Saree explained that the operation “was carried out using eight cruise missiles and 17 drones, resulting in the downing of an F-18 fighter jet while the destroyers attempted to intercept the Yemeni drones and missiles.”
So I think its possible that it was both a friendly fire incident and that the downing was the restult of the the Yemini attack.
The carrier "retreating" is also consistent with a lot of other scenarios, including just having fucked up majorly and needing a safe place to spend some quality time yelling at people.
The Houthis claim the F-18 was downed by them[1], so it's still not clear if this was an actual friendly fire incident. This is consistent with reports the carrier retreated to northern red sea soon after the incident.
[1] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241222-yemens-houthis-cl...