F-15E jet shot down over Iran • Hacker News Board

Re: F-15E jet shot down over Iran

#91

Post by eqvinox » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:00 PM UTC

karp773 wrote: post #57

karp773 wrote: post #46

Why didn't Iran use its capability to take down enemy jets for an entire month?

Downvoters, care to explain? Seriously, it's been sitting on this for entire month and now, all of a sudden, rolled out antiaircraft defense? What's going on?

I didn't downvote, but your post sounds like you're implying some kind of tomfoolery, deception, or other hidden reasons. There are very likely none, it just takes time to adapt to a specific enemy, probability slowly increases while you get more attempts, and then after some time (t) the first shootdown is "properly" successful. And note how this was preceded by that half-successful shootdown where the plane made an emergency landing. And they shot down drones.

You sound like they roll an antiaircraft cannon out of the hangar and immediately successfully down a plane. That's not how that works. The AA was probably there from the beginning, just not successful.

Re: F-15E jet shot down over Iran

#92

Post by bobchadwick » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:00 PM UTC

MarkMarine wrote: post #77

tokai wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prisoner of war, not hostage. edit: I'm baffled by the amount of downvotes pointing out the objectively correct terminology can get. Its not a matter of opinion, military personnel captured by the enemy are pow no matter their treatment. A hostage, by definition, has been abducted.

It’s a “well, actually” and counter to the HN guidelines

There's a significant difference between a hostage and a prisoner of war, and in this context that distinction seems highly relevant.

Re: F-15E jet shot down over Iran

#93

Post by MarkMarine » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:03 PM UTC

tokai wrote: post #87

MarkMarine wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a “well, actually” and counter to the HN guidelines

Only for someone breaking the guideline of "Assume good faith".

I didn’t downvote you, but a terse “well actually it’s prisoner of war” doesn’t really add to the conversation. Imagine doing that in person, you’d annoy everyone around you. If you explained why it’s distinct and what that might mean for downed crew I think it wouldn’t have been down voted

Re: F-15E jet shot down over Iran

#94

Post by NickC25 » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

tokai wrote: post #27

MarkMarine wrote: post #21

Military aviators train for this, being alone behind enemy lines (look up SERE school if you’re curious, one of the craziest training courses outside of special forces) and there is a special force just for aviator recovery behind enemy lines, US AirForce Pararescue. Hopefully they’ll get the aviators back quickly, the last thing our country needs is American hostages making this ridiculous war harder to stop.

Prisoner of war, not hostage. edit: I'm baffled by the amount of downvotes pointing out the objectively correct terminology can get. Its not a matter of opinion, military personnel captured by the enemy are pow no matter their treatment. A hostage, by definition, has been abducted.

...but we aren't at war, according to the President and his secretary of Defense (war).

what a fucking mess.

Re: F-15E jet shot down over Iran

#95

Post by karp773 » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:06 PM UTC

DASD wrote: post #88

karp773 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvoters, care to explain? Seriously, it's been sitting on this for entire month and now, all of a sudden, rolled out antiaircraft defense? What's going on?

~15/16 MQ-9 Reapers have been shot down inside Iran. Not jets but still combat(strike and reconnaissance) aircraft.

I just looked it up. Those are turboprop (slower) but have a high ceiling of 50k feet. So Iran did have something better than stingers left. Maybe they just got lucky this time.

Re: F-15E jet shot down over Iran

#96

Post by rbanffy » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

Telemakhos wrote: post #33

jeffbee wrote: post #19

[flagged]

When the first-tier hostile leadership structure was eliminated in the first day of the war, and only after a month do the surviving enemies finally manage to damage a plane so severely that it can't return to a friendly base to land, is "quite useless" an adequate and accurate description of the technology used to prosecute that war?

When you decapitate a well organised military, all you achieve is installing a new enemy you know little about you can’t predict their actions and that now know they are fighting for their own survival.

Not the best place to be.

Americans seem to underestimate everyone else.

Re: F-15E jet shot down over Iran

#97

Post by rhcom2 » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:17 PM UTC

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

Re: F-15E jet shot down over Iran

#98

Post by rbanffy » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:17 PM UTC

br121 wrote: post #85

Telemakhos wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the first-tier hostile leadership structure was eliminated in the first day of the war, and only after a month do the surviving enemies finally manage to damage a plane so severely that it can't return to a friendly base to land, is "quite useless" an adequate and accurate description of the technology used to prosecute that war?

It's useful in saving the pilot's life. With less advanced tecnologies, more pilots would have been shoot down. It's useful in targeted attacks, but they have proved themself uneffective (at least for now) as the new leadership is alined with the objective of the replaced one. It's close to useless when it comes to making the war cost-effective, which start being a relevant metric when the conflict start lasting too…

As the Soviet Union made us learn, you don’t need a big military victory to make your enemy spend themselves into defeat.

Re: F-15E jet shot down over Iran

#99

Post by ceejayoz » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:18 PM UTC

uticus wrote: post #5

ceejayoz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C-130s and helicopters flying low over Iran right after they shot down an F-15 in the same spot is wild. Whatever I think of the war idiocy, that's brave.

It's breaking news...meaning it may be inaccurate. CENTCOM certainly is saying it's false [0]. But there are enough signs of it being genuine, to be concerning at this stage. Flying low over Iran at this point is planned, expensive "standoff" munitions were planned to give way to more accurate and less expensive munitions once air superiority was reached - which U.S. has been claiming has happened for a while now. [0…

Update: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/us-fighter-jet-went-ir...

> An F-15 fighter jet pilot has been rescued alive by the U.S. military after their aircraft went down over Iran, a U.S. official said Friday.

> White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump had been briefed on the incident — the latest dramatic development in the war, now more than a month old.

CENTCOM lied.

Re: F-15E jet shot down over Iran

#100

Post by rbanffy » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 4:18 PM UTC

eqvinox wrote: post #62

Telemakhos wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the first-tier hostile leadership structure was eliminated in the first day of the war, and only after a month do the surviving enemies finally manage to damage a plane so severely that it can't return to a friendly base to land, is "quite useless" an adequate and accurate description of the technology used to prosecute that war?

Whether you have specific leadership or not doesn't matter much to (a) having to adapt to the enemy and learn what works, and (b) probability just doing its thing, more chances and so on, and (c) US leadership descending the oceans of stupidity all the way to the Mariana trench.

> US leadership descending the oceans of stupidity all the way to the Mariana trench.

And they voted for this not only once, but twice.