US F-15E jet confirmed shot down over Iran as Tehran releases wreckage images

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/03/us-fighter-jet-confirmed-shot-down-over-iran

35•tjwds•2h ago

Comments

rhcom2•1h ago

One crew member rescued, other is still MIA and being actively searched for https://www.axios.com/2026/04/03/iran-us-fighter-shot-down

ceejayoz•1h ago

And CENTCOM's lying about it.

https://x.com/CENTCOM/status/2039805134704660622

vorpalhex•1h 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.

ceejayoz•1h ago

> That tweet is from yesterday.

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.

e-khadem•1h 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

buildsjets•1h ago

And they have not edited it or taken it down... why?

e-khadem•1h 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!

[1] https://mastodon.social/@netblocks/116339631989805542

[2] https://x.com/drpezeshkian/status/2039418009052119190?s=20

cpursley•1h ago

"We"

Very cool that you have a side hustle as a US fighter jet pilot!

user_7832•1h ago

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•1h ago

Your comment is a perfect setup for the cynicism olympics where people rush to say you could never trust the govt.

lazide•1h ago

Has there been a time where (after later facts came out) they were wrong?

calculatte•1h 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.

ifyoubuildit•1h ago

Do you have some reasons for hope for the cynics in the crowd?

2OEH8eoCRo0•1h 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.

readthenotes1•1h 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•1h ago

Right on cue!

serf•1h 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.

dragonwriter•1h 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.

peyton•1h 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.

surgical_fire•1h 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.

sco1•23m 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?

EnergyAmy•6m ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purge

AnimalMuppet•1h ago

All true. So we should expect it, but we still shouldn't normalize it.

tristanj•1h ago

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.

golfer•1h ago

Non-walled article reporting the rescue:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/american-fighter-jet-f15e-downe...

ChrisArchitect•1h ago

[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47626347

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47627182

roadbuster•1h 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.

flowerthoughts•1h ago

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

roadbuster•8m 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•3m 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.