US aircraft losses soar as F-35 hit for first time by Iran

A report says at least 16 US military aircraft have been lost since the start of the American-Israeli aggression against Iran, including 10 Reaper strike drones destroyed and a half-dozen other planes badly damaged.

Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the issue, reported that Iranian defenses have so far brought down the uncrewed Reapers, with at least nine being destroyed in the air, and one was hit at an airfield in Jordan by a ballistic missile.

The other two Reapers were reportedly lost to accidents.

The report claimed that the most serious losses were due accidents, including three US F-15s purportedly downed by “friendly fire” in Kuwait, and a KC-135 tanker destroyed during a refueling operation.

That’s while the Islamic Resistance in Iraq last week said that its fighters managed to intercept a strategic ⁠KC-135 aircraft belonging to the US military in the skies over Western Iraq, adding that they downed the aircraft using an "appropriate weapon."

All six crew members on the tanker were killed.

According to Bloomberg, an Iranian missile attack has damaged five other KC-135s while parked at an airfield in Saudi Arabia.

Bloomberg referred to the emergency landing of a US F-35 stealth jet was forced to make at an airbase in West Asia on Thursday, without citing the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) as saying that it has successfully hit the aircraft in Iran’s airspace.

This is the first time the jets have been struck since their introduction about 10 years ago.

First strike on US F-35: Iran hits stealth jet in central airspace

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says it has successfully hit a US Air Force F-35 stealth fighter jet in central Iran

'Collapse of US arrogance'

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf said striking an F‑35 fighter jet shows the “collapse” of the US military’s supposed invincibility and arrogance, calling it the first time such a symbol has been struck and marking a major breakdown of that perceived order.

“Iran operates the infrared-guided 358 surface-to-air missile, which has a small, mobile launcher. They can hit targets at altitudes up to 25,000 feet and, because they have no radars, aircraft will have no warning they are being tracked,” the report said, highlighting that “They were a threat to US planes in last year’s campaign over Yemen.”

The number of aircraft losses is much higher than those recorded during the last large-scale air campaign that the US was involved with, the military intervention in Libya in 2011, where only three combat losses were reported over four months. One of them was a US Navy drone.

The report confirmed that Iran’s air defenses “has remained elusive”, despite the US and Israeli aerial attacks, adding that such active air defenses will thwart any US attempts to forcibly open the Strait of Hormuz:

“The Reaper shootdowns also illustrate one of the difficulties of trying to open the Strait of Hormuz: any active air defenses will greatly complicate those efforts.”

The US operates 225 Reapers, according to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, and several of them were shot down by Yemen last year.

The US and Israel started a fresh round of aerial aggression on Iran on February 28, some eight months after they carried out unprovoked attacks on the country.

Iran began to swiftly retaliate against the strikes by launching barrages of missile and drone attacks on the Israeli-occupied territories as well as on US bases and interests in regional countries.

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