One pilot from the two-seat F-15 has been rescued, but the other remains missing. The A-10 Warthog reportedly managed to reach Kuwaiti airspace, where the lone pilot ejected and escaped.
U.S. officials later confirmed that two U.S. rescue helicopters, including a UH-60 Black Hawk, which undertook the search-and-rescue operations for the jets, were also struck.
The consecutive losses of U.S. aircraft came shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Iranian forces “can’t do a thing about” U.S. planes flying over Tehran.
Scrambling for pilot
This incident is the first known case of a U.S. warplane being downed inside Iranian territory and the fourth F-15 lost since the United States and Israel launched large-scale strikes on Iran on Feb. 28.
Crews were racing to locate the second pilot of the downed jet, which was believed to have crashed in Iran’s southwestern Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, near the border with Iraq, according to local authorities.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was combing an area near where the pilot’s plane came down in southwestern Iran, and the governor of the province said that anyone who captured or killed the pilot would be “specially commended,” reported Iran’s semi-official news agency ISNA.
A television channel in the province advised citizens who encounter downed U.S. pilots to keep them alive and bring them to authorities for a “prize,” reversing earlier instructions that had encouraged harming them, NewsNation reported.
A reward of 10 billion tomans (6,600 U.S. dollars) has been set to find the pilot, reported the Iranian news outlets.
After weeks of relentless U.S. airstrikes, Iranians posted jubilant messages online celebrating the downing of the U.S. aircraft. Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf wrote on X that what had begun as a military campaign had now been transformed into a hunt for their pilots.
Israel’s state-owned Kan TV News reported that Israel is assisting the United States with intelligence in locating the pilot.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the country had delayed planned strikes in the search area, citing Israeli officials. The Israel Defense Forces has not confirmed these reports independently.
“Miscalculation”
IRGC said Friday that the aircraft was hit by advanced air defense systems operated by its aerospace division.
Earlier on Wednesday, Trump said that Iran’s drone and missile capabilities had been “decimated”. While he claimed that the U.S. military had achieved “total air dominance” over the region, military experts suggested that air superiority does not mean that there are no threats.
Iran has bolstered its defenses by constructing extensive underground missile facilities, networks of tunnels, and fortified bunkers across the country, said Federico Borsari, a non-resident fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “It is quite possible that some Iranian air defense assets are still operational and hidden and concealed in many locations across the country.”
The potential that a U.S. pilot remains alive and at large deep inside Iran has heightened the pressure on Washington in a war that has struggled to secure strong backing from the American public, according to opinion polls.
In a phone interview with The Independent, a British online newspaper, Trump said he hopes that’s “not going to happen” if Iranian forces find the missing airman.
Iran has rejected a U.S. proposal for a 48-hour ceasefire, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Friday.
The source added that Washington has stepped up its diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire, particularly after an Iranian strike targeted a U.S. “military forces depot” on Kuwait’s Bubiyan Island.
According to the agency, assessments suggest that the proposal was put forward following an intensification of the crisis in the region and “serious problems” for U.S. forces resulting from their country’s “miscalculation” of Iran’s military capabilities.
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