US media said Iran shot down an American fighter

The fate of the pilot is unknown after a US fighter was shot down in Iran, anonymous US and Israeli officials said today.

News agency Fars News Iran’s military said the country’s military is searching for an American fighter pilot shot down by its air defense. “Military forces have begun a search operation for the American fighter pilot who was hit this morning,” the news agency said.

An Iranian state television channel located in Kohkilouyeh and Boyer-Ahmad provinces on the same day announced that a US fighter pilot had parachuted out of the plane in the country’s southwestern sky.

The TV channel’s host called on people to hand over “enemy pilots” to the police, adding that the government promised to reward anyone who achieves success. Text running under the previous screen urged people to “shoot if you see them”.

The Pentagon and Central Command (CENTCOM), the unit in charge of US military operations in the Middle East, have not responded to requests for comment.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) previously announced that it had used an “advanced naval air defense system” to shoot down an American F-35 fighter in the sky over the central region of the country. The IRGC added that the plane belonged to a squadron stationed at Lakenheath air base in England, emphasizing that it was broken up so the fate of the pilot could not be determined.

News agency Tasnim Iran on the same day released images of debris believed to be from a downed US fighter, including a main wing tip with a night navigation light strip and a vertical tail wing with the insignia of the US Air Forces in Europe (USAFE).

Analysis of military aviation website Aviationist It was then shown that the debris included a main wing tip with night navigation lights, a vertical tail wing with the US Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) insignia, and a digital electronic warfare equipment cluster (DEWS) usually located at the tail tip of the F-15E fighter.

“The red line on the vertical tail is the identification mark of the 494th Fighter Squadron, an F-15E unit stationed at Lakenheath base in the UK and deployed to Jordan for the attack campaign on Iran,” said David Cenciotti, editor-in-chief of Aviationist.

Cenciotti points out that there is no indication that these images have been edited or created with AI. He also rejected the idea that this was the scene where an American F-15E fighter crashed due to being mistakenly shot by Kuwait in early March, because the terrain in the photo did not match any area in Kuwait.

If confirmed, this would be the first US manned aircraft shot down over Iran since the conflict broke out. The US military appears to have lost more than 20 aircraft of all types during the war, including the E-3 Sentry early warning aircraft and the F-35A stealth fighter, mostly due to Iranian fire while parked at the airport.

The F-15E Strike Eagle multi-role fighter was developed by the US in the 1980s, based on the F-15B two-seat fighter design. Each unit had a factory price of about 31 million USD in 1998, equivalent to nearly 62 million USD today, not including weapons.

This variant is supplemented with the ability to attack ground with high precision, instead of being limited to air-to-air capabilities like the original F-15, capable of performing attack missions deep in enemy airspace without depending on electronic warfare aircraft or escort fighters.