THE WASHINGTON POST: Two US warplanes shot down, search ongoing in Iran for one missing crew member

Two US military aircraft were shot down in separate incidents Friday while conducting combat operations against Iran, setting off a frantic search-and-rescue effort that remains ongoing for one missing crew member, US officials said.

The F-15E fighter jet and the A-10 attack plane both were hit by incoming fire, US officials said. One of two crew members aboard the F-15, which crashed inside Iran, was rescued, though their condition was not immediately clear, the officials said.

The A-10 pilot navigated the damaged plane to Kuwaiti airspace before ejecting and was subsequently rescued, they added.

Two US search-and-rescue helicopters also were hit by Iranian fire that injured US personnel on board, though both aircraft have safely returned to their base, the officials said.

The developments, confirmed by three US officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an evolving situation, belied earlier assertions by the Trump administration that US forces had obtained air superiority over Iran and raised immediate questions about how much of the country’s arsenal remained after a month of targeted strikes on the regime’s weapons facilities.

Spokespeople for the Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment.

The search-and-rescue effort for the missing F-15 crew member marked the most perilous moment yet for US troops in the war, putting the missing airman and the rescuers more directly in the line of Iranian fire. It is the first known instance of a crewed American aircraft being brought down inside hostile territory since the conflict began.

Friday’s developments represent a potential political liability for President Donald Trump, who is facing strong pushback from opponents of the Iran war - including among some of his supporters, who elected him to a second term based, in part, on his campaign promises to avoid costly military entanglements.

In a prime-time address this week, the president sought to defend his increasingly unpopular decision to start the conflict while asserting that the operation is “nearing completion.” It was not immediately clear how Friday’s developments could affect that announced timeline.

Iranian television broadcast a statement from local merchants in western Iran offering a reward for recovery of the downed crew members. Another broadcast called on residents to “target” any Americans they found.

IRIB, the state broadcaster, said on social media that “many people” had gone to the crash site and that the Iranian military “called on the people NOT TO LET anyone mistreat the pilot.”

Trump has said little publicly about the situation. In very brief remarks to NBC News, he rejected the idea that Friday’s developments might impede efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict.

A British news site, the Independent, asked him in a phone call what his response would be if the missing crew member were captured or hurt by Iran. “We hope that’s not going to happen,” the president responded, declining to comment further.

Combat search-and-rescue operations are some of the riskiest missions carried out by the US military. Aircrews and recovery personnel are on constant standby for such operations, then they rush into a rapidly evolving and chaotic environment.

While these personnel are backed by combat-capable troops, helicopters and planes used for such missions are vulnerable to enemy fire because they fly lower to the ground and must rely on other armed aircraft to protect them.

“It’s a high-risk mission,” said retired Gen. James Slife, the former commander of US Air Force Special Operations Command, which specializes in infiltration and combat search-and-rescue missions. “The longer somebody is on the ground, the less opportunity you have to safely recover them.”

Teams are launched immediately, usually with incomplete information on what to expect, because of the risks faced by downed pilots and the chance that if they are captured, then they will be exploited by US adversaries, Slife said.

“In addition to the moral obligation we feel to make every effort to recover our isolated personnel, you want to deny the adversary the opportunity to use a captured service member as propaganda,” Slife said.

Video verified by The Washington Post shows a C-130 refueling aircraft flying low in Iran, about 90 miles east from its border with Iraq. The tanker is shown fuelling two HH-60G helicopters, which specialize in combat search and rescue, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“The fact that they are flying so low and slow indicates willingness to take a lot of risk,” Cancian said.

Friday’s incident contradicts Trump’s frequent claims that US aircraft are “roaming” the skies over Iran unimpeded. In his speech Wednesday night, the president said, “They have no antiaircraft equipment. Their radar is 100 percent annihilated. We are unstoppable as a military force.”

Experts said Trump’s soaring rhetoric about US military achievements gave a false picture of the threat Tehran posed to American aircraft.

“From a military perspective, the idea that Iran’s antiaircraft capacity was eliminated made no sense,” said Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank.

“I’m sure we’ve done great damage to radars, long-range missiles, and fixed surface-to-air missiles but something like a MANPAD you can fire from a shoulder is really hard to find,” she said, referring to the acronym for a man-portable air-defence system. “As we’ve seen today, if you fly low enough, antiaircraft artillery or MANPADs present a significant threat.”

Trump has similarly claimed that Iran’s missile stockpiles and launchers have been destroyed, although missile and drone attacks continue - albeit to a lesser degree than earlier in the war - on US installations and allies in the region.

On Thursday, just hours after declaring in his address that the war was “nearing completion,” US aircraft blew up a major bridge near Tehran. Trump said in a social media post that “Our Military …. hasn’t even started destroying what’s left” and promised to begin destruction of electricity power plants.

Later in the day, the IRGC announced that a “large number” of ballistic and cruise missile and “suicide drones” had been launched against US bases in the United Arab Emirates.

To date, 13 American service members have been killed as a result of Operation Epic Fury, the Trump administration’s name for its war on Iran. Seven died as a result of hostile fire. Six were killed in a plane crash in Iraq. Nearly 370 others have been wounded during the conflict, according to publicly released tallies.

Friday’s incident marks the fourth loss of an F-15 since the Iran war began. In early March, Kuwaiti personnel mistakenly shot down three of the jets. All six crew members ejected and were recovered safely. It was the first known loss of an A-10 during the conflict. That development was reported earlier by the New York Times.

John Hudson, Karen DeYoung, Susannah George, Meg Kelly, Dan Lamothe, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Heba Farouk Mahfouz, Samuel Oakford, Aaron Schaffer and Siham Shamalakh contributed to this report.

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