Military Watch:

Two Israeli F-35 Stealth Fighters Shot Down Over Iran, Female Pilot Captured: How Credible Are the Reports?

Middle East , Aircraft and Anti-Aircraft

Military Watch Magazine Editorial Staff

June-14th-2025

---

Israeli Air Force F-35

A spokesman of the Iranian Armed Forces has confirmed the shooting down of two Israeli F-35 fifth generation fighter aircraft during clashes on June 13, with state media subsequently reporting the capture of one female pilot who landed on Iranian soil after ejecting. Although the veracity of these claims remains in question, an assessment of the circumstances of the F-35’s operations, and the capabilities of Iranian air defences, provides context which is invaluable to evaluating the likelihood that such shootdowns were achieved. The F-35 is the only modern fighter currently in the Israeli Air Force’s fleet, with none of the service’s F-15s or F-16s having been produced at or modernised to a ‘4+ generation’ standard, while all continue to rely on mechanically scanned array radars considered effectively obsolete for high intensity engagements. Confirmation that Israeli attacks on Iranian targets used not only air-launched missiles, which can be fired from F-15s and F-16s far beyond Iranian airspace with little risk to the aircraft, but also gravity bombs which these older fighters would struggle to brave Iranian airspace to drop, makes it highly likely that Israeli F-35s flew deep into Iranian airspace to attack their targets. Such operations are unprecedented, with prior Israeli attacks on Iran having consistently been launched from far outside the country’s airspace. 

F-35 Drops GBU-12 Guided Bomb

Although the F-35 retains advanced stealth capabilities, and Iranian air defences have shown signs of considerable limitations in the past, the sheer scale of Iran’s arsenal of air defence assets, the sophisticated capabilities of many of its systems, and the size of its fighter fleet, make it highly possible that F-35s were shot down. With the Israeli Air Force fielding an estimated 40 F-35s, while Iranian forces had considerable foreknowledge of which targets were most likely to be struck by bombing raids, in particular its hardened nuclear facilities. Iran’s Russian-supplied Rezonans-NE long range radar system procured in 2019 is particularly well optimised to alerting air defences to the approaches of low radar cross section targets such as the F-35 over long distances, potentially allowing fighters to be scrambled and ground-based systems to focus their sensors towards the area of the incoming aircraft. Although Iranian fighters rely on radars and weaponry long since considered obsolete, the fact that stealth-configured F-35s have very little capacity to carry air-to-air armaments alongside their gravity bombs could have left them vulnerable to interception. 

Rezonans-NE Radar System

Although Iranian official sources have made multiple highly questionable claims in the past regarding the country’s military successes, and more broadly the successes of the country’s defence sector, the claim that an Israel pilot was captured, and her likely use in future public relations footage, indicates that air defences may have indeed been successful in engaging the threats. Iranian air defence systems have achieved notable and surprising successes in the past, including against stealth aircraft, with the commandeering of a CIA RQ-170 stealth drone in 2011, and the shootdown of an RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drones in 2019, being the most notable examples. Both were much scarcer and higher value aircraft than the F-35. Nevertheless, the loss of just two F-35s during an operation deep into heavily defended airspace involving only a relatively small number of stealth fighters would far from reflect poorly on the capabilities of the American aircraft, with losses more than an order of magnitude greater expended if Israeli F-15s and F-16s had attempted the same mission. Although the F-35 retains tremendous superiority over the Iranian fleet, a combination of cost overruns preventing Israel from affording larger numbers, and production delays which have prevented orders already placed from being met, mean major Israeli F-35 operations will continue to be strained by the limited numbers of fighters available.