Iran has carried out what no different air drive has managed to do in over seven many years – assault U.S. floor forces with a fixed-wing fighter jet.
Curiously, Iran did this with almost five-decade-old American fighter jets.
In truth, the final time U.S. floor forces got here beneath assault by an enemy fighter jet was means again in 1953 through the Korean Struggle.
Commenting on the primary profitable strike on U.S. floor forces by enemy fighter jets, retired U.S. Air Pressure Gen. Glen VanHerck mentioned that “That’s embarrassing as an airman to me to say that occurred,” as he famous that this was the primary time in many years U.S. forces had been subjected to an aerial assault of this type.
VanHerck was talking throughout a panel dialogue on counter-drone defenses on the annual House & Missile Protection (SMD) Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, on August 12.
“I wish to speak a bit bit about ahead [forces] and air base protection. Let’s be clear, we obtained our rear-end handed to us from drones and different automobiles, aerospace automobiles, if you’ll, together with three F-5s that took off in Iran and flew low stage and dropped bombs on an airbase,” VanHerck mentioned.
Notably, in June, a number of media reviews had claimed that Iranian F5 fighter jets made a shallow incursion into Kuwait and dropped bombs on the U.S. navy base, a significant staging floor for US navy operations in West Asia.
The assault reportedly got here on March 1, inside 24 hours of the Israeli and U.S. assault on Iran on February 28. NBC News was the primary to report on this assault in an April story, citing nameless U.S. officers.
Nonetheless, the U.S. navy didn’t formally verify it.
Additional, in June, Iranian state media outlet PressTV aired an interview with three Iranian F5 pilots the place they recounted their March 1, 2026, low-altitude bombing mission in opposition to Camp Buehring in Kuwait.
The Commander, whose identification stays hid, informed the interviewer that planning for an assault on Camp Buehring started instantly after they discovered that the US and Israel had launched joint strikes on their nation. “We instantly needed to hold out a retaliatory operation,” the Commander acknowledged, including that Camp Buehring is “a extremely strategic base with one of many highest troop concentrations and capacities.”
At its most capability, the Camp Buehring base can home as much as 14,000 troopers; nevertheless, it’s not clear what number of U.S. troopers had been current on the base through the time of the Iranian assault.
Iran purchased its first F-5s within the mid-Sixties beneath the Shah, with main extra purchases of the improved F-5E/F Tiger II within the early to mid-Nineteen Seventies. Iran acquired over 300 airframes of varied F-5 variants earlier than the 1979 revolution.
The Commander mentioned that they deliberate to fly the mission at an especially low altitude to evade radar detection, and vowed to see it by.
“We flew at very low altitude. At some factors, we handed beneath high-voltage energy strains and flew beneath 50 toes,” he mentioned. That is a very low altitude, on condition that the everyday coaching altitude from flight requirements is about 500 toes, or over 152 meters, because the Commander himself emphasised. “We had been virtually skimming the bottom… We’d even move beneath energy strains,” he added.
Camp Buehring has layered air defenses, together with Patriot missile batteries, a number of shorter-range programs, superior radar protection, and protracted regional surveillance networks. All these programs went on ‘excessive alert’ after the US launched “Operation Epic Fury” on February 28, and Iran retaliated with ballistic missile and drone strikes on American navy bases throughout the West Asian area.
The Commander additional famous that they knew the power had a number of layers of air protection programs. “Though we knew interception and surveillance websites had been energetic, we maintained full radio silence. We entered the waters of some neighboring nations and flew so low that at one level we handed between two ships,” he acknowledged.
“As quickly as we reached the bottom, we carried out a heavy bombing,” the Commander mentioned.
The pilots reported that the strikes induced chaos and confusion, doubtless as a result of the bottom personnel had not anticipated Iranian fighter jets intruding into their airspace.
Due to this fact, amidst all of the pandemonium triggered on the facility, “Three [enemy] F-15 plane… had been mistakenly engaged and destroyed concurrently.”
On March 1, CENTCOM acknowledged that three U.S. F-15 fighter jets had been shot down in a suspected case of pleasant hearth.
“Throughout our flip, we noticed them firing missiles at targets within the sky. My back-seat cockpit officer informed me an explosion had occurred within the sky, and we had been confused about the place it was coming from. By mistake, their plane additionally took off, and the three American F-15s that had been coming for a counterattack towards Iran, the Kuwaitis mistook them for targets & shot them down,” one of many pilots mentioned.
With their bombing run full, the Iranian jets performed a deception operation, which allowed them to exit the Kuwaiti airspace and land at a predetermined spot in Iran.
“After the bombing, we carried out a deception maneuver… They had been unable to trace or intercept us,” the pilots recalled.
How Iran was capable of ingress into Kuwait with almost five-decade-old fighter jets, and bomb a significant U.S. navy base, protected by layered air protection property, after which escape unscathed is a critical embarrassment for the US.
The final time US floor forces got here beneath assault by enemy fighter jets was means again in 1953, through the Korean Struggle, and earlier than that, through the Second World Struggle, most notably, throughout Pearl Harbor.
Seven Many years of Unchallenged U.S. Air Superiority
On the evening of April 15, 1953, two United States Military Troopers died on the small Korean island of Chodo. They died at evening of their tent, victims of a North Korean air assault by Po-2 biplanes.
The 2 males had been assigned to a U.S. Military anti-aircraft artillery battery deployed to guard Chodo and neighboring islands from enemy air assaults.
“The deaths of these two troopers in 1953 are a tragic however exceptional milestone in U.S. navy historical past – they’re the final confirmed U.S. floor personnel misplaced to an enemy air assault,” mentioned Charles Nicholls, Pacific Air Forces historian.
“Primarily based on the proof we now have, that is the final occasion wherein US floor forces sustained any deaths from enemy plane,” says John Q. Smith, director of the Air Pressure Historic Research Workplace.
Since 1953, American airmen have continued to evolve and are credited with zero U.S. service member casualties from enemy air assault.
“Although it was sixty years in the past, we gained helpful perception and acknowledged the necessity for air superiority,” mentioned Brig. Gen. Patrick C. Malackowski, Pacific Air Forces director of packages, in 2013. “As we speak, we strategically posture our forces all through the world of duty to beat the huge distances and challenges confronted in PACAF.”
In the course of the Vietnam Struggle, North Vietnamese MiG fighters primarily engaged U.S. plane in air-to-air fight over North Vietnam or close to borders. U.S. bases in South Vietnam had been incessantly attacked by rockets, mortars, and floor sappers, however not by enemy fighter jets conducting bombing or strafing runs.
In the course of the 1991 Gulf Struggle (Operation Desert Storm), no Iraqi fighter jets had been capable of bomb US floor forces.
Equally, through the Afghanistan Struggle and the Iraq Struggle (2003), the US virtually instantly achieved air superiority, and no enemy plane had been capable of bomb US floor forces.
After Iranian Quds Pressure normal Qasim Suleimani was killed in a US air Strike in Baghdad in 2020, Iran attacked US bases within the Center East with missiles, and Houthi rebels in Yemen have additionally attacked US forces with drones; nevertheless, because the Korean Struggle, this was the primary time ever that an enemy fighter jet was capable of bomb U.S. floor forces.
Iran has not solely shattered America’s seven-decade-long proud document of air superiority, however the truth that Tehran was capable of do it with five-decade-old fighter jets will need to have damage U.S. self-image.
- Nitin J Ticku holds a double grasp’s diploma in Journalism and Enterprise Administration from the College of Glasgow. He has over 20 years of world expertise in MARCOM, Journalism, and Digital Advertising and marketing, and has labored & traveled extensively throughout Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Nitin is the Editor of the EurAsian Occasions.
- He might be reached at editor (at) eurasiantimes.com
