Iran Offering Reward For U.S. Pilots Shot Down Today If Delivered Live

They were also told to just shoot them if they see them. One pilot has been rescued. Stable condition – one still missing as of 5 minutes ago.

Unlike Vietnam the populace of Iran is mostly educated. OTOH it’s unclear how widely their government’s message will be spread given the attacks which of course include their communications. IF the crew is captured alive it’s a whole new can of worms this administration is incompetent/unfit to deal with.

At the same time IF Trump is desperate for an off ramp enough to slap his meathead SecDef down it could at least lead to actual honest negotiations to end this war. Clearly Iran still has SAMS deployed, even if they are careful about shooting them off. I have to wonder if Hegseth’s purges at the Pentagon has resulted in Air Force leadership that issued dumbass strike orders counter to the way a ground attack mission would be planned and executed. Even if the pilots might want to do a mission profile assuming SAMs might be around a target if the brass says no, do it this way instead it’s not an illegal order and they have to fly as though that particular threat doesn’t exist. If I had to bet that’s what happened here.

We’ve gotten to a stage where we don’t have to use as many of the most expensive precision guides missiles that can be programmed with GPS to amazing accuracy. Cheaper ‘dumb bombs’ that are laser guided started being used a while back. They can actually be dropped from high altitude – the “basket” into which they can be dropped is miles wide. Still, for the “seeker” in the head of the bomb to hit the spot created by the laser someone has to ‘paint the target.’ As in aim the freaking laser at the target on the ground to be hit.

That can be done one of two ways. By aircraft or by someone on the ground with a hand held laser. I’ve little doubt spec ops forces are in Iran doing just that but it’s a bigass country (about the size of Alaska which is almost twice the size of Texas to put it in terms folks here can understand) so probably not in the kinds of numbers to cover all the possible targets.

Aircraft can paint a target with a laser. One way is for one to be circling at a fair amount of altitude and distance and in clear weather this means they can be well away from the target. Aircraft capable of this have laser designators that once locked on rotate to keep focused on the target.

The other way is for either the attacking aircraft to paint the target on the way in and ride the trail of the bomb from a relatively short range until it hits, or have an aircraft working in tandem with the one dropping the bomb(s) do it. (that’s the job of the back seat crew person – to handle all the avionic/electronic stuff) Either way requires being closer than would be ideal in an anti-air missile enviornment. The f-15 has, from the beginning when it was just a fighter had an extraordinary capability. It’s two engines have a weight to power ratio so great that it can produce more thrust than the aircraft weighs. Or, if you will accelerate in speed while going straight up! It’s also highly maneuverable which has made it damned tough to shoot down.

Of course, depending on all the stuff hanging from the pods on the wings be it bombs, missiles, enhance electronics packages etc. speed and maneuverability are affected. AND as I said for a laser guided bomb you have to keep the target painted until the bomb gets there. That takes a certain commitment of time during which the ability to evade anti-aircraft fire or SAMs is reduced. That’s how aircraft get shot down.

If it’s a one aircraft attack it’s a tougher and more dangerous mission. Two targets the gomers know have a shitload of lethal capability it a lot tougher to deal with than one. However it wouldn’t surprise me that in this war with this SecDef and his hand-picked toadies calling the shots that might have been the case here. Especially because of an additional factor I haven’t mentioned yet. BDA which is bomb damage assessment. Film/photos of the strike and whether the target was hit, as well as hanging around for a short time to get visual confirmation of the damage.

A separate BDA mission, especially deep inside hostile territory carries dangers of its own. Since the SR-71 Blackbird which could have gotten amazing pictures from way the hell beyond any anti-air capability Iran (or any country) has was retired from service decades ago whether at mission time or in a separate BDA mission aircraft have to get a lot closer. Ideally getting human eyeballs as well as imagery of the damage to determine whether the target is well and truly destroyed or another strike is needed.

Missions can be planned to reduce the risks both of getting shot down and getting BDA but if some asshat in the upper levels of the chain of command orders those precautions skipped under the assumption Iran no longer could fight back effectively then this is what happens.

The fact is we don’t know how much weaponry Iran still has left. However this is a stark reminder that for all the talk about how we’ve ‘destroyed them’ they have held back. If not as many since the opening week or so of the war they are shooting off stuff every day. Clearly, they had anti-air capability they kept hidden away waiting for the time when we’d rely less on the hugely expensive precision guided munitions (and we’ve not only used up an alarming amount, we are using such weapons faster than we can manufacture new ones!) and start relying more on close-in air to ground attacks.

Some good news as I’ve been writing. Chris Jansing has Leon Panetta on and we have rescued one of the aircrew of the downed plane. Unfortunately there’s no news about the other. Contrary to what you might think when ejecting from a jet that’s going down in practice they at best will be a few hundred yards apart but sometimes the distance is measure in miles. “Link up” is of course part of what they’re trained to do but in difficult terrain, forest or mountains it can be difficult, especially if one or both is injured which can happen in ejections. Even with all the improvements to ejections seats injury, sometimes serious takes place during the actual ejection. Unless they skydive as a hobby landing is another aspect where injuries happen, especially into forests or rocky areas – including and especially mountain terrain.

IF an injured crew is conscious and able to move enough to get out their survival radio they are still a long way from being safely extracted. It turns into a race between enemy captors and our own ability to deploy a rescue operation. It could be the other crew member is dead or so serious injured as to be unable to make contact or even activate a homing beacon. Or they might already have been captured. We just don’t know. I’m sure OUR side won’t say jack unless/until we have that person back in our hands. However if Iran has them, dead or alive they’ll tell us at some point. First they’ll want to determine what they can get in exchange for returning them.