A friend last seen in Top Gun slows down to 25 mph (across Florida by EV) and Overheard at Oshkosh (“I’ve met 120 of the 30 people who flew in the first Top Gun movie.”), regarding the three F-15s shot down by a Kuwaiti crew in an F/A-18. (Not in quote style for readability)
[in response to how could it have happened] A large percentage of our jet losses in that region have been friendly fire. In fact I think nearly all except during the gulf war.
Tons of reasons it happens from the shooter side. From the aircraft side often the defensive systems may be off, and you are focused on getting in to land/deconflict in the terminal area. You don’t assume your own team is going to light you up.
In the recent destroyer shooting down a U.S. jet. Another jet was targeted and was in mostly disbelief assuming the missile was going after something else. So even if your RWR went off you might just assume it is aimed at something else you don’t see. Since the ships are certainly interrogating air targets with their radars and might shoot SMs, hopefully with a clear lane, while there are friendly planes up still.
[in response to a discussion of why some of the F-15 pilots were injured] Momentum mostly
First the seat fires and in a two seat model the other person will say eject 3 times then pull. You hope in that brief moment you get into the proper ejection position (lower legs back, thighs on seat, back against seat, shoulders square, head neutral and back). If not, anything out of place is going to have a large amount of acceleration very quickly which causes injuries (eg broken femur from the seat accelerating first then hitting your leg that wasn’t on the seat).
Then all of those out of place
Items, arms included have major flail damage risk. If it’s a controlled ejection because of a mechanical issue you can minimize the speed and angle for ejection. In this case not so much most likely. So your arm that may have been hanging off to the side now has the momentum issue and maybe hit something on the way out, and then may be exposed to 300 knots or more wind suddenly.
People commonly get knocked out but wake up in the chute. The rest of the other injuries are mostly from the ejection, the flail injuries, or a bad parachute landing fall.
[in response to a question about how it was possible for the Kuwaits to misidentify three F-15s at fairly close range] Could happen but yea something seems off here.
May have felt panic that 3x mig-29 or whatever he thought it was, was also breathing down their neck. I assume this was also after missiles landed or maybe nearly landed so tensions were already high.
I think this falls in the category of don’t attribute to malice what can be contributed to incompetence. My guess is basic human error/training/skill.
But I also don’t know the details. I assume by now people know most of what needs to be known. Either way that pilot is riding the bench for a while.
Would be interesting to understand if they were declared hostile and if so by who[m!]. The hostile declaration and what the positive ID requirements were would be interesting to know. I assume details will come out.
Loosely related….
Very loosely related (aviation and war)…
The above related to CNN’s coverage of some anti-Islamophobia activists in Manhattan:
C.W. Lemoine said it was an insurgent on the Kuwait side intentionally shooting them down. It was the 1st case of an insurgent managing to get into an enemy air force but another sign of the times. It was not possible for that many F-15’s to get shot down accidentally in a peer conflict.