Iranian Air Defences Shoot Down U.S. Navy F-18E/F Super Hornet Fighter: Air Operations Posing Higher Risks Due to Missile Shortages
Middle East , Aircraft and Anti-Aircraft
The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on March 25 shot down a U.S. Navy F-18E/F carrier based fighter, with footage of the incident appearing to show a short range surface-to-air missile attack destroying the aircraft. The aircraft was shot down over Chabahar County and crashed in the Indian Ocean, where the U.S. naval presence has been heavily concentrated. The Corps reported that this was the fourth U.S. and Israeli fighter shot down by indigenous air defence systems since the two countries launched an assault on Iran on February 28, raising the possibility that systems procured from abroad, such as the Russian S-300PMU-2 and Tor-M2, may have been responsible for other shootdowns. Iranian-aligned paramilitary groups in Iraq have claimed responsibility for multiple further shootdowns over Iraqi airspace.
Iranian forces have also claimed successful shootdowns of a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighter in the country's southern airspace on March 22, and of an Israeli Air Force F-16 the previous day. On March 20 the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command announced that it had hit an Israeli F-16 Fighting Falcon in the country's central airspace. This followed the confirmed successful surface-to-air attack on a U.S. Air Force F-35 fifth generation fighter on March 19, which inflicted sufficient damage to cause shrapnel wounds to the pilot. Iranian sources have reported that U.S. Armed Forces and the Israeli Air Force significantly reduced deep penetration strikes over Iranian territory after the strike on the F-35, which is by far the most survivable fighter type in either countries’ fleets. It has been speculated that increasingly extreme shortages of air-launched cruise and ballistic missiles will force U.S. and Israeli fighters to operate within Iranian airspace to strike targets using glide bombs, leaving them at greater risk of being shot down.
Iranian sources have also assessed that the number of U.S. and Israeli unmanned aircraft shot down has reached nearly 200. These have varied widely in their values, from single use attack drones costing under $100,000, to higher value attack and reconnaissance platforms such as the MQ-9 Reaper which costs over $150 million, of which over a dozen have been lost in combat. These much higher losses reflect not only the lower survivability of most unmanned aircraft compared to manned fighters, but also the fact that they have been employed for higher risk deep penetration missions, while manned fighters have been employed with greater caution. The successes achieved by Iran’s air defences have remained relatively limited against manned targets, although the U.S., Israel and their strategic partners’ own defences against Iranian missile attacks have if anything been more underwhelming, allowing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to strike high value targets across the Middle East with impunity.
The F-18E/F has formed the backbone of the U.S. Navy’s fighter fleet for close to two decades, and is an enhanced fourth generation fighter that was initially procured to serve as a stopgap between the Cold War era F-14, F-18C/D, A-6 and A-7 combat jets, and the F-35C fifth generation fighter and F/A-XX long range sixth generation fighter. Major delays to the development of the F-35C resulted in the extension of F-18E/F production by 12 years from 2015, with the Navy now fielding over 700 Super Hornets and their close derivatives the E/A-18G. Other than a small number of aircraft which have been brought up to the much more costly F-18E/F Block 3 standard with a modern electronically scanned array radar and ‘4+ generation’ avionics, the large majority of F-18E/F fighters are considered out of date and poorly suited to high intensity engagements with advanced fighters or air defence systems. The aircraft’s low maintenance needs and operational costs, however, made it appear a suitable workhorse for the fleet in the post-Cold War era.
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