> A key element of the exercise was the sharpening of combined fighter capabilities between the U.S. and Kuwait Air Forces

Well, the Kuwaitis seem pretty sharp? Three shootdowns is a lot in the modern era. The F-22 program only has two air to air kills in its whole history.

That could explain one accidental shootdown. It cannot conceivably explain three.

> I've realized is that the missiles in question must not have been using active homing

Sorry, but it's totally funny that your nick is literally "Sidewinder".

> I've realized is that the missiles in question must not have been using active homing.

This is covered in the article so it's weird to present it as an original thought.

That is the basis for my theory. Not being on

And

Being on but jammed look the same from the perspective of the one shooting them down.

Also, I wonder how resilient it is to the gps spoofing that been going on. If they managed to trick it into identifying itself as a few hundred miles from where it actually was, then very hard to know where it actually is.

All of which is well within Irans technical capabilities.

Why? Specs for link16 jamming have been circulating since before the invasion of ukraine, there is a whole DoD technical report dedicated to trying to update it knocking around somewhere.

Iran claim to have used it to bring down US drones in the past.(1)

1. https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1215/Exclus...

Given the absolutely deafening silence I would not be surprised if GC told him there were absolutely positively no friendlies in the area at that vector and altitude. Historically, silence always indicates there's something to cover up.

There is also old timer thinking where back in the 50s/60s AIM-9L days it takes a good fraction of a minute for the compressed gas tank to cool the sensor and back in the day they used a rotating 1-D sensor that also took a fraction of a minute to lock on. Very popular hollywood-esque drama "I can't get a lock I can't get a lock" drama.

Unrealistically video game type experience was back as far as the 80s you could spam sidewinders as fast as you can click. LOL they didn't work like that IRL until at least the late 90s.

Note they haven't make missiles like that in 30 years, the 9X and everything newer uses an electric powered cooler that can chill before engagement and stays chilled the entire flight if they want. Its not unclassified but assumed that the missile will not go green on preflight if the electric cooler isn't working on the ground, even the DCS world guys don't know. And they haven't used rotating 1-d sensors since like the 80s, the modern 2-d sensors look like civilian thermal cameras and can "lock on" as fast as a computer algorithm can find the closest object to the center of the sensor that is red-hot, which is probably a couple milliseconds, and apparently based on public test videos the sensor slew rate is at least as fast as human hands pointing a camera. Does anyone make CCD arrays that can go "much faster" refresh than 60 hz for video? I don't think that tech has leaked out except for exotic high speed cameras, and I don't know of any exotic high speed IR cameras, which would be pretty interesting if they existed for engineering purposes. So I bet a AIM-9X takes less than a second to lock on. Which seems to match tons of public unclassified info that modern sidewinders are point and shoot fast as a civilian smartphone or real camera.

So if you're an old timer using 1970s equipment it would take at least 10 to 45 seconds per missile launch which makes for a WTF scenario when 3 friendlies got shot down in a row.

So if you are post Y2K era like we are today, you click lock on lock on boresight mode, click the re lock button on and shoot on each target, the entire engagement took probably about 3 seconds depending on adrenaline level?

There's plenty of public unclassified test video out there and the difference between 90s and 10s IR guided missiles "UI" is pretty dramatic. From near WWI submarine torpedo level of drama and delay to just point and click about that fast. It was a pretty big change tactically.

The state religion in Kuwait is Sunni Islam. It's much more nuanced than "Muslim brethren", except perhaps less so when Israel is directly involved, as it is today.

It's also important to note that these are not democracies. The state frequently does things that people aren't entirely happy with, it's only when the people (or religious leaders!) become sufficiently unhappy that it becomes a problem.

Do not mistake leadership and regular people. Afghanistan president Ghani handed over sovereignty to US too but Afghans disagreed. I am confident that there is significant minority in Kuwait wishing for Iran victory. As a datapoint, there were videos from Bahrain with people cheering for Iranian rockets hitting American bases.

Lol most Kuwaitis including the royal family are Sunni and believe Iranian Shia's to be heretics. So no love lost there at all.

Imagine thinking that you're brothers with someone based solely on what religion you both supposedly believe.

not recently

> In January 2026, the United States government suspended immigrant visas for citizens of Kuwait and 74 other countries due to the high dependency of Kuwaiti immigrants on American welfare benefits.[219] Kuwait is the only GCC country on the visa suspension list.[219]

I'll spell it out: A lot of air force pilots in these countries end up being rich kids who do it because it's a fun hobby, not motivated soldiers.

Because many of these people see it as a fun hobby, they don't spend much time worrying about potentially being ordered to drop bombs on schools filled with children. It's rather unlikely that their government would order them to do so anyway, compare a list of countries being hit by Iran with a list of countries bombing Iran.

What does that have to do with anything? They went through training in different times when conflicts were not on their plate. During peace it is a cool job, you know not every air force around the world bombs schools, in fact most don't.

Anybody who ever went through arab countries with eyes opened saw the massive nepotism and corruption at all levels. Army/air force ain't immune to this, in contrary. Do you think ie some general or politician's first son would be treated and pushed up same as common folks?

> Cool job? Being ordered to drop bombs on schools filled with children doesn't seems like a cool job..

That was a launched cruise missile from a ship, targeted by an LLM. Apparently the grounds USED to be a valid military target long ago (a decade? I'm not sure exactly) and now there's a school there.

It's a "high status" job. Doing the high status jobs correctly isn't always easy.

Pilots are not told they are dropping bombs on a school filled with kids. They are told it is a headquarters or storage or bunker or whatever.

Too many nepo babies and too little state owned movie production in the Gulf?

Also flying modern fighter jets is the kind of fun that's typically very hard to buy with money, so you take the opportunity when available.

In those countries (i.e., middle eastern countries) power and wealth is usually more connected to gov't and the military rather than independent industries. If you are a nepo-baby, your opportunities will tend to be more gov't/military than celebrity or corporate.

A fighter pilot is the modern military equivalent of a medieval knight.

They wouldn't trust a non-family member with weapons that could decapitate the country's kleptocratic monarchy.

Very few rich people become commercial pilots. They might get a private pilot license as a hobby but generally pilots are just employees they hire to take them around.

Plenty of working airline pilots come from regular middle-class backgrounds and never served in the military. They take out student loans to pay for training, then work low-paying jobs as flight instructors or something to build up enough flight hours to get hired at a regional airline.

Those who go the ROTC route can totally get a fighter jet assignment if they want it. Once they get selected for a pilot slot, assignment to a particular airframe is primarily based on how they perform in the training pipeline.

I've lived and worked in the Gulf for half my life, I think I know what "these countries" are like.

Presumably he means countries with somewhat higher levels of nepotism in the military than the US.

MENA countries (excepting Israel here) are known to suffer from this significantly, and it is a big factor in their militaries historically underperforming.

It is a valid point to bring this up as possible cause or factor, no need to get all defensive about it.

The saying it’s true for officers seems to need greater support since historically officers were always nobility or from the leadership class. Today, in countries that are not full democracies, the leadership wants the military controlled by favorable people and that means family members.

> In almost all countries, military is seen as a "working class" profession

In western countries that's the case. In autocratic countries it is essential to keep control of the army by placing the equivalent of the royal family in charge.

Also, fighter pilots were historically considered as the successors for cavalry and manned by the nobility, in Arab countries this means the ruling elite

There are exactly zero places in the world where "fighter jet pilot" is seen as a "working class" profession.

And my whole point was that it's often not a profession, but a hobby.

"AN/AAR-57" Yes the small yellow subwoofer looking things that people speculate endlessly about. Supposedly BAE systems marketing released a picture of the whole system LOL, who needs spies if you have a marketing dept, also supposedly just about everything about this is classified. They supposedly come in four packs and there are "many" public pictures of them one under each cockpit rail on the F15 and the other two are unknown location? Or maybe the mythology online that they come in four packs is false and they actually come in two packs which seems more likely. Plausibly they install 4-packs on helicopters not fixed wing.

I could see some logic in not putting cams pointing forward because theoretically the pilot is looking where they're going and not putting one facing back because flight time to impact is so low they can't evade anyway, but a side attack is survivable if detected early enough... Also facing back they're going to be "seeing" their own exhaust most of the time.

The total non-reaction by the pilots in the public videos would indicate that if those planes even had -57s they were not working or not working well enough to matter or not working fast enough to matter.

I would agree some monster sized BVR missile will be easier to detect. In practice does it matter if the missile detector works at short range if the attacker would likely be in guns mode at short enough range anyway?