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Be aware that this ban on politics can extend to historical events if it's likely that the topic will result in a discussion on politics.
No politics - There are plenty of other places on Reddit to discuss politics. This sub is for content that's interesting as fuck, not for debating policy, ideology, or governance. Be aware that this ban on politics can extend to historical events if it's likely that the topic will result in a discussion on politics.
Reminds me of Czesław Tarkowski, a Polish pilot during the Battle of Britain
He got shot down and bailed out over England, and wound up hanging from a tree by his parachute. The local Home Guard arrived, and seemed inclined to shoot him, thinking he was a German, because he spoke very little English. He responded with one of the few phrases he knew well: "fuck off!"
At this, the Home Guard brightened "it's all right lads, he's one of ours!"
In my experience, the one English phrase everyone knows around the world, whether in South America or Russia, is “fuck you!” There was even a bird in Pakistan that squawked it.
One of my favorite shows is Dark, a German show about time travel and every once in awhile a character says "fuck!". The word seems to be universal, LOL.
Yeah but Home Guard was really poorly disciplined during Battle of Britain, they weren't much more than deputised mob in large parts. It was emergency measure and it took a while to train and equip Home Guard into basic functional units.
mob mentality was at work here. all those vehicles slowly coming in for some massive beat down only for them to all turn away in disappointment lol (especially the guy the board/stick whatever thing)
Pretty much every nation give some form of survival rifle or pistol to their pilots for exactly this event.
I wouldn't say for exactly this event. In this event of quickly being surrounded by a growing mob an enemy pilot's only chance would be to surrender and hope to be left alive to be taken prisoner. A gun doesn't have unlimited ammo and once a pilot shots one person it becomes lot less likely for them to be taken alive.
Apart from obviously being American because she’s a woman pilot, I think it also helped that one of the men that found her spoke perfect English. This guys’ experience seems a bit more hostile because there’s an initial language barrier to work with.
The nice thing is that the word for "American" in Arabic is essentially just the same word with an Arabic accent. You can see that as soon as he says "I'm American" they get the idea instantly.
With the amount of vehicles and people there and how close they are at this point I'm gonna guess he's attempted saying he's American before it got to this..
Do you have any idea of the forces applied to the human body when ejecting from a supersonic jet?
It’s not pretty
Edit: Fighter pilot ejections commonly cause severe injuries due to extreme acceleration (14–20+ Gs) and wind blast, with spinal compression fractures (20–30% of survivors), neck injuries, and broken ribs being the most frequent. Other common injuries include extremity fractures (arms/legs) from flailing in the wind, soft tissue trauma, and, in rare cases, parachute landing injuries.
Did it entirely wrong, current US guidelines on diplomacy state that he should have kept interrupting them asking them if they have even said thank you even once.
I believe this to be true, because my humongous friend who got a commission was disgruntled to hear he had to be a transport pilot. If I recall correctly, he said his size automatically disqualified him from a fighter. I never knew if he was trying to save face but it sounded right.
She does seem short but he’s also uphill from her and have no idea of his height. Also being small would probably be an advantage, I got to sit in the cockpit of an f14 (I think) and I’m not a very big dude and that shit was not a comfortable space even for me.
Pretty sure this is the DOD's fault too. Friendly fire on an aircraft is pretty much impossible...as long air defense knows you are supposed to be there
Unfortunately Patriot batteries have taken down friendly aircraft before like a RAF Tornado and F-18 Hornet. So this isn't the first time air defenses misidentified friendly aircraft.....
And this is an operational error, not an "oopsie we shot the wrong thing." Because they didn't communicate with their allies and do shit the correct way, Kuwait thought they were
Iranian drones and used missiles. So no it is absolutely not the same.
This war probably has more electronic warfare happening than any other war the US (or Kuwait) have ever fought in. The only thing comparable would be the Ukraine war.
Iran was flying SU-24s over the Persian Gulf around the same time, Qatar had shot down two of them. Iran was also flying MiG-29s but those have mostly been around Tehran to my knowledge.
Iran still has aircraft, the US and Israel have been focusing on wiping out the command structure, destroying AA/drone/missile launchers and stopping Iran from mining the strait of Hormuz.
Right? It's almost like... there wasn't appropriate coordination between our countries. If the Iran strike would have gone through appropriate channels and joint task force commanders in Kuwait... instead of coordinating through the bropartment of war, maybe we wouldn't have just shit the bed with three of our F-15s launching while Kuwait is murdering anything in the sky that's moving and has a heat signature.
What's absolutely insane is that the auto targeting system should have registered a friendly f-15 as a friendly f-15. It's our own fucking system, they use patriots or MBDA's spada.. . Was the US not properly transponding? Something is weird.
The IFF system should have recognized the US f-15 if the transponder was on. I suspect the transponder was also off on top of no briefing. With the transponder being off, iff automatically targets the item as an unknown item in the defense zone, that's a high level target...it's gonna shoot it unless it's told not to (with coordination).
Eta: iff is identify friend or foe system. It uses a combination of transponders, radar information, and other proprietary information to identify whether an item is a friend or a foe. Turning a transponder off on a fighter is going to result in a foe identification by our iff systems. It's happened before.
With the amount of EW happening there, I'd imagine the identification would get iffy.
It would seem more likely than 3 F-15s having a malfunction or the pilots making a mistake. Powerful EW in one area where these three jets were would make more sense.
Flying a growler into somebody else's territory without communication is astronomically fucking stupid though, let me just say. That's exactly how you get shot down. 100% asking to be shot down
Someone, somewhere explained that this happened during a period where Iran was launching missiles and drones towards Kuwait and the 3 US F-15s happened to be in the air at the same time. Kuwait just shot everything down that they could.
A small additional piece of information that I heard was that the F15s slowed down quite a bit to intercept the drones, and due to their massively reduced airspeed, looked like drones to the anti-air missiles.
From what I understand, due to the incorporation of drones in war, one of the main ways that radar and anti-air can focus in on drones specifically is by focusing on lower speed targets (especially lower speed targets with relatively low altitude and relatively high radar cross section) which basically allows them to better identify the drones rather than missiles and planes (those are typically much higher speeds and altitudes) as well as ignoring things like a fucking bird
Basically: There was lack of communication between ally forces, F15s got low and slow to intercept incoming Iranian drones, F15s at that point didn't look much different than the drones to anti-aircraft, F15s catch some strays.
Every aircraft has a IFF(Identify Friend or Foe) transponder in them. I remember any time an aircraft would leave they would get a IFF Mode IV check to see if the correct codes were put in.
I'm thinking either the aircraft codes were wrong or more likely the people who shot down the aircraft didnt have updated codes.
All this info is from 2007 so it could very well be different now.
What I’ve read on the news from “military sources” is that no one was given clearance over Kuwaiti and Bahraini airspace, INCLUDING the US. Probably because they were trying to shoot down everything in the air. US fighter jets used the airspace without permission anyway.
FAFO. Advanced military jet technology doesn’t equate to invincibility. It’s the US Command’s own fault for not getting clearance in advance.
Actually (I did a really deep dive on this for a book I was writing) they were equipped with whole packets meant for evasion and escape, including money, compasses, maps, photos for fake IDs and phrase books for the languages of the countries they were going to be flying missions over. Phrase books had three columns - one in the local language, one in English, and one phonetic spelling for the airmen to read from while talking to locals if they met someone who couldn't read. One of the phrases was always "I am an American/English/Canadian/etc Airman" along with things like "where is North" "take me to your leader" and "where can I hide." It also came with papers requesting safe passage for the airmen and a unique code (to be given at the airman's discretion if the civilians were considered friendly) that the civilian could write down (to avoid being caught and executed for treason) and use to claim a "finder's fee" from the airman's government after the war ended. In the Pacific they were called "blood chits" but I don't think that naming was universal.
A good number of the airmen apparently threw out the packets or left them on the ground because they were considered bad luck lol.
I imagine that the pilot above probably has something similar on him, it's just he just got shot down, ejected from a burning fighter jet, and now has dudes with pipes bearing down on him so he's just acting on instinct/adrenaline. Not like they drill pulling out those "making friends with the locals" kits.
The f-15 has been in service since 1976 and while the parachute itself has likely been serviced or replaced it probably looks identical to every other f-15 parachute for the last 50 years. He didn’t just jump out of the plane with a backpack parachute, the parachute is part of the ejection system built into the plane.
I know they've been massively upgraded but it's kind of impressive that a 1970s airframe is able to take the impact of Kuwaiti anti air defence and allow all three of these pilots to eject and survive.
Not really a choice based on location, those colors are very vibrant and really made so the pilot is able to be found by friendly forces easier, especially if they have to ditch over the ocean.
A massive strip of Forrest green, bright red, or white stands out in almost any environment.
The red white green pattern is part of the deal. White and green are camouflage. Red is an attention getter, danger cue, and a path marker.
That's also your sleeping bag, tent, backpack, clothes, and parka depending on the location.
That tri color parachute has been standard since the 1980s at least.
You're absolutely correct that it mimics the Iranian flag. But, it does other things when you're away from civilization.
All six of the crew members talked their way out of harm, identified themselves as US service members, and have been returned for medical. Tragedy avoided. But repacking all the seats is a tough order.
Spicy for sure. Officially, the F-15 is 104-0 in air-to-air kills, a vast majority of them by Israeli pilots. Only two F-15’s were shot down by enemy fire of any kind, both during Operation Desert Storm due to Iraqi ground fire.
Kuwait uses American anti aircraft systems with IFF (“identify friend or foe”) systems (as those systems have had for over 50-70 years). How the fuck did they manage to shoot down THREE American planes with antiaircraft systems with US IFF? This needs to be explained
The US shot down an Iranian civilian airliner in 1988, and two of its own helicopters in the 1994, and its own jet in 2025.
The bottom line is usually there’s human error. Maybe the plane getting shot down is transmitting incorrect iff information, or maybe the people launching the missile are trigger happy and skip steps to verify the target, or perhaps both.
There was an ongoing Iranian air attack at the same time.
People are blaming Kuwaitis, but from the standpoint of an anti-air radar, a plane is a plane. Or just a flying object.
Of course there are Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) systems to avoid such mistakes, but they are not infaillible, and difficult to coordinate between different armies.
Absolutely. Under normal circumstances, every plane is neatly identified by its transponder.
During a war, it's just confused and chaotic. Anti-air operators don't have a lot of time to decide if they fire or not, with important consequences if they make a mistake, including possible civilian casualties.
Also, I doubt many allies were notified ahead of time that all shit was about to go down. Unfortunate for them as the retaliation of Iran was likely more broad than anticipated. Sorta like fuck everyone, if I'm going down you're going down.
Iran is copying the Russian playbook of saturating the airspace. I saw they launched close to ~400 missile and ~800 drones during their salvo. With that type of chaos and so many different militaries and a crew who has never faced wartime conditions like this, you can see why Pentagon officials were telling Trump that they were not prepared to carry out this strike.
i think it was worse, the F15s were slowing down to engage drones, so they looked like drones on SAM radar, it can be mess sometimes, just a good thing they did not got killed as the F15 gave them warning time to eject
To be fair to those guys, when somebody shoots down a fighter aircraft over your territory with a surface-to-air missile, your first thought might be that it was from the other side.
Just think though, this pilot just got shot out of the sky, his plane disintegrating all around him. Ejecting, then parachuting into god knows where. At least to me, he seems cool as a cucumber, just another day at the office. Pretty damn impressive.
Why didn't patriot or SPADA register the friendly f-15? Did someone manually override that? Articles state it was air defense mistakingly targeting them. But they should not mistake a US f-15 for an Iranian craft unless we did something to the f-15s. It isn't like they're running their own systems. It's Western systems. They should have recognized a friendly f-15. It's possible for the IFF system to fail, and it has before. But if it's continuing to happen idk if we should be using it. Plus, an f-15 can communicate directly with friendly patriot arrays.
Did the us have transponder off? That disables IFF. If they had the transponder off, this isn't Kuwait's fault at all. It's ours. If the 15s transponder is off, to the Patriot, it's and unidentified fast moving object in it's defense zone. It's an auto target.
Edit: please note that I'm not talking about the type of transponding that you may think I'm talking about. Friendly assets. Have a different channel they communicate on. I'm not talking about public radar transponders. We know how these devices work and what frequency they work at, but their encrypted handshake is what makes them secure. The interrogator will send out an interrogation to the device which will respond. Only the proper response will get you designated as a non-foe. You have to be able to decrypt the interrogation, respond properly, and send back the information with the proper key to be decrypted.
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This sub is for content that's interesting as fuck, not for debating policy, ideology, or governance.
Be aware that this ban on politics can extend to historical events if it's likely that the topic will result in a discussion on politics.
No politics - There are plenty of other places on Reddit to discuss politics. This sub is for content that's interesting as fuck, not for debating policy, ideology, or governance. Be aware that this ban on politics can extend to historical events if it's likely that the topic will result in a discussion on politics.
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