<\/p>\n
Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Find out more at afa.org<\/p>\n
An Air Force F-35A fighter was forced to conduct an emergency landing at a U.S. air base after being struck by ground fire during a combat mission over Iran<\/a> on March 19, people familiar with the matter told Air & Space Forces Magazine.<\/p>\n Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps posted a video the same day purporting to show an F-35 being targeted and struck by an Iranian air defense system. Iran has developed an air defense system that uses passive infrared sensors rather than radar to target aircraft, a solution that previously proved effective in Yemen when employed by Iranian-supported Houthi rebels.\t\t<\/p>\n The stealthy F-35 evades radar, but infrared sensors are passive and home in on heat. <\/p>\n U.S. Central Command spokesman Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins said the incident is being investigated.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are aware of reports that a U.S. F-35 aircraft conducted an emergency landing at a regional U.S. airbase after flying a combat mission over Iran,\u201d Hawkins said. \u201cThe aircraft landed safely, and the pilot is in stable condition.\u201d <\/p>\n The emergency landing was first reported by CNN<\/a>. Hawkins declined to offer further information on the incident. <\/p>\n The IRGC said that it \u201cseverely damaged\u201d the F-35 in its strike, which it said\u00a0it took place at about 2:50 a.m. local time. The Air Force has not described the damage.\t\t<\/p>\n The F-35 is now one of around 20 U.S. Air Force aircraft known to be damaged or destroyed in the nearly three week-old Iran war.<\/p>\n Three F-15E Strike Eagles were shot down by a Kuwaiti fighter in a friendly fire incident March 2, with all crew members recovered safely. On March 12, a KC-135 Stratotanker crashed in western Iraq, killing all six Airmen aboard. Another KC-135 had its tail severely damaged in the same incident but landed safely. In a March 14 social media post, President Donald Trump seemed to confirm<\/a> that at least one KC-135 was damaged on the ground by an Iranian strike on Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n Air & Space Forces Magazine has also confirmed about a dozen MQ-9 Reaper drones have been lost in the conflict, though those losses have not been publicly announced.\n<\/p>\n Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Find out more at afa.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[141,34,212,2174],"class_list":{"0":"post-27181","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-centcom","9":"tag-iran","10":"tag-operation-epic-fury","11":"tag-u-s-central-command"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116257727588042241","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}