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Kuwaiti F/A-18's Triple Friendly Fire Shootdown Gets Stranger by the Day
- EtienneDeLyon 7mo agoTwo more kills and that pilot will be an ace!
- red-iron-pine 7mo agoan ace from friendly fire is still an ace stares at wingman angrily
- cozzyd 7mo agoProbably testing grok-based targeting system.
- strangattractor 7mo agoGrok stuck in DOGE mode.
- cozzyd 7mo agoDOGEfighting
- steveBK123 7mo ago@grok is this true? /s
- usui 7mo agoWhat did the videos originally link to? It just shows "Sorry, this post is no longer available."
- p_ing 7mo agoThat’s you ad blocker. They’re still up.
- andrewflnr 7mo agoSometimes it'll show that while the embed is still loading.
- krona 7mo agoThe Kuwaiti air force doesn't use F-15E. The F-15E looks quite similar to the Iranian Mig-29 especially from above. I've got no idea how Kuwaiti fast jet pilots are trained but it's not inconceivable that pilot had never seen an F-15E in the flesh before.
- sheikhnbake 7mo agoThat would be a pretty huge GCI failure
- lumost 7mo agoGiven Kuwaiti air force pilots would have dealt with Saudi/US/Iraqi F-15 operators, that seems highly unlikely.
- nradov 7mo agoKuwaiti air force F/A-18 pilots receive most of their training in the USA so most likely they would have seen some F-15 model in flight. That doesn't rule out a case of target misidentification but it's very odd and suspicious.
- inaros 7mo ago>> it's not inconceivable that pilot had never seen an F-15E in the flesh before. This is such a joke I cant even imagine how you can formulate this thought... - Exercise Marauder Shield 26.1 (Nov. 2025) "U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft assigned to the 391st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron takeoff during Exercise Marauder Shield in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, Nov. 8, 2025. A key element of the exercise was the sharpening of combined fighter capabilities between the U.S. and Kuwait Air Forces. This included joint training exercises and hot-pit refueling operations." - CENTCOM Bomber Task Force mission (July 2022) "..During the BTF, two B-52H Stratofortresses, assigned to the U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command, conducted theater integration training and operations with a variety of U.S. Air Force, partner and ally aircraft, including F-15/18, RJ-135, E-3, KC-135/10/46, FGR-4, and A-330..." "The bombers’ flight originated at Royal Air Force (RAF) Fairford, England, and flew over the Eastern Mediterranean, Arabian Peninsula and Red Sea before departing the region. The mission included fighter escorts from the Royal Air Force and the Air Forces of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia...." "...“Communication is critical,” said Wong, who also serves as the Deputy Director of Combat Operations, Combined Air Operations Center. “By enhancing lines of communication, we are able to establish a clear and direct line in real time amongst the Air Operations Centers of all nations participating..."
- DarkmSparks 7mo agoMy theory is Iran is jamming the link16 iff.
- esseph 7mo agoHighly unlikely. Highly.
- DarkmSparks 7mo agoWhy? Specs for link16 jamming have been circulating since before the invasion of ukraine, there is a whole DoD technical report dedicated to trying to update it knocking around somewhere. Iran claim to have used it to bring down US drones in the past.(1) 1. https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1215/Exclusive-Iran-hijacked-US-drone-says-Iranian-engineer https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1215/Exclus...
- Jtsummers 7mo agoThat link is about GPS spoofing, not Link 16 jamming, those are two different radio systems and two different attacks.
- DarkmSparks 7mo agoIts both. They claimed They jammed the control link so the operators couldnt control it, then used gps spoofing to make its "lost communication fly home" protocol land itself in hostile territory.
- esseph 7mo agoIFF system uses coded pulses at 1030mhz and 1090mhz. It's a totally different system from Link16.
- DarkmSparks 7mo agoJamming the transponder would not be enough, it would also need to at least jam the identification/location messages in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TADIL-J https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TADIL-J And also at least the satellite versions. And all of which are part of the S300 systems EW package Iran possess, the Cobra V8 has a touted range of 250km. Also been demonstrated now in Ukraine. See also https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2026/iran-deploys-s-300-air-defense-and-cobra-v8-ew-system-to-protect-tehran-from-u-s-air-strikes https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2026/iran-dep...
- brunohaid 7mo agoScott Purdue has a couple of good videos on the incident https://youtube.com/@flywirescottperdue https://youtube.com/@flywirescottperdue A pilot not trained well on visually IDing some of the most common military planes would be quite a training lapse.
- greedo 7mo agoMistaken ID once is conceivable. Twice is not. Three times, with one shot being within visual range, is malice.
- andrewflnr 7mo agoWhat? No. Making the same mistake repeatedly is the most predictable thing in the world. Until he gets confirmation that he's shooting down the wrong side, he thinks he's just racking up a great kill streak of Migs.
- samrus 7mo ago> Another fighter pilot’s analysis, seen in video below, questions whether the Kuwaiti pilot might even have gone rogue against an ally. That actually seems possible based on the evidence, but it is hard to believe. I get the concern, but i would remmeber to attribute it to incompetance rather than malice. And from my understanding, there is no shorten of incompetance among gulf arab militaries
- VoodooJuJu 7mo ago[dead]
- Stevvo 7mo agoArticle explains how quick and easy it is to fire the missiles, with no information to identify friend from foe. Then it jumps to incredulity that it could happen 3 times. I don't know why it's so hard to imagine someone pulling a trigger 3 times.
- sheikhnbake 7mo agoThe first could have been a mistake. It happening three times is crazy because ground control should have been in the pilots ear the entire time trying to de-conflict. I wouldn't be surprised if the Kuwaiti Air Force switches to ground controlled intercept only after this.
- VLM 7mo ago[flagged]
- skibz 7mo agoHow much time elapsed between each aircraft being hit?
- Bratmon 7mo agoI know American pilots think that Kuwait is on their side, but is their any evidence that Kuwaiti pilots think they're on America's side?
- asadm 7mo agoThey have handed over their sovereignty to US forces to help kill their Muslim brethren. You want them to prove some more loyalty tests?
- JasonADrury 7mo agoThe state religion in Kuwait is Sunni Islam. It's much more nuanced than "Muslim brethren", except perhaps less so when Israel is directly involved, as it is today. It's also important to note that these are not democracies. The state frequently does things that people aren't entirely happy with, it's only when the people (or religious leaders!) become sufficiently unhappy that it becomes a problem.
- dfadsadsf 7mo agoDo not mistake leadership and regular people. Afghanistan president Ghani handed over sovereignty to US too but Afghans disagreed. I am confident that there is significant minority in Kuwait wishing for Iran victory. As a datapoint, there were videos from Bahrain with people cheering for Iranian rockets hitting American bases.
- breppp 7mo agoBahrain has a significant Shia population that feels oppressed and identifies with Iran. That's not similar to Kuwait, a country that has a recent history of being taken over by its largest neighbor and saved by the US
- vonneumannstan 7mo agoLol most Kuwaitis including the royal family are Sunni and believe Iranian Shia's to be heretics. So no love lost there at all.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- alberth 7mo ago> This is the latest video to have emerged from the extraordinary incident earlier this week in which a Kuwaiti Air Force F/A-18 Hornet was responsible for shooting down three U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles. Why is the US using such dated planes?
- UltraSane 7mo agoBecause they still work.
- nradov 7mo agoMuch of the F-15E fleet is still in relatively good condition. Most other airframes are even older on average. Over the past couple decades most funding went to more urgent GWOT priorities and almost everything else was under capitalized to the point where older aircraft are literally cracking and falling apart.
- Jtsummers 7mo agoThese aircraft are maintained pretty well. They have explicit refresh cycles where they're taken to depots and pretty much torn apart and then rebuilt. The electronics also get refreshed over time with newer components (not just newer versions of old components or refurbished components, but new electronics and computer systems). It's not like they're still frozen in time at whatever version was initially put out 50 years ago.
- ericmay 7mo agoF-15E Strike Eagles have advanced avionics and can and continue to use advanced missiles. They can serve in multiple roles including target identification, aerial combat, and of course air-to-air interception and ground attack roles. Same thing with the F-18. Eventually of course all of these weapons platforms will be phased out, but for the time being they are still extremely useful, and even more so after the more advanced aircraft and other attack vectors have taken out or limited air defense capabilities or the ability for enemy aircraft to intercept these aircraft. Not that they can't handle their own, anyway.
- lenerdenator 7mo ago
- JasonADrury 7mo ago"Fighter jet pilot" is a really cool job. Guess who gets the cool jobs in these countries? Typically not the most highly motivated individuals, but the children of influential people who pull strings to make it happen. Guess how easy it's to fire those people when they don't pay that much attention during training?
- sschueller 7mo agoCool job? Being ordered to drop bombs on schools filled with children doesn't seems like a cool job..
- JasonADrury 7mo agoI'll spell it out: A lot of air force pilots in these countries end up being rich kids who do it because it's a fun hobby, not motivated soldiers. Because many of these people see it as a fun hobby, they don't spend much time worrying about potentially being ordered to drop bombs on schools filled with children. It's rather unlikely that their government would order them to do so anyway, compare a list of countries being hit by Iran with a list of countries bombing Iran.
- singleshot_ 7mo agoWhen you say, “these countries,” I imagine you include the United States, where politically connected youngsters like George W. Bush secured and then ignored jet interceptor training during the 1960s?
- JasonADrury 7mo agoBe that as it may, I think we can agree that the USAF is not the same as the air forces of the Gulf countries.
- baybal2 7mo ago[dead]
- tokai 7mo agoMaybe someone had a juicy bet on a prediction market.
- VLM 7mo agoDCS World to the rescue? There's open source intel on google that Iran has SU-27s. Under combat conditions you have an instant to tell them apart. Clearly, its possible to misidentify them at least one time historically as the F-15s did get shot down. I can assure you from having flown around a lot, if you are wildly outnumbered 3 SU-27 (err, F15) to your 1 F-18 you do not attempt a radar lock you do an IR only attack. The article mentions getting a radar lock first but that is unnecessary for IR guided weapons and in a 3-1 situation will just get you shot down. Waiting for confirmation from the ground means 1 of the 3 will surely notice and you will be shot down. Ironically if it were a flight of 4 F-18 they'd probably not have been as skittish at radar locking a mere 3 aircraft and the IFF (assuming its probably configured and working etc) would have informed them they're friendlies. IFF can only tell you if everything on both sides is working perfectly and powered up, if you don't get a friendly response all you know is it didn't work. Not unlike a network ping command. If ping works you know they're up and accepting pings from you, if ping doesn't work, you don't really know anything for sure. Possibly the primary fault was the Kuwaiti lack of situational awareness. Somehow he's in shoot down range of three other A/C and he's got maybe 3 to 5 seconds to shoot them down or be shot down himself. Somehow there is no discussion on what both A/C were doing. Usually a landing on an airfield would not look like a bombing run but possibly the F15s were doing something "weird" for which they could be blamed. The total censorship of what they were doing points to them being up to something dumb "lets buzz the airfield during active combat would could possibly go wrong" and they get shot down for looking like an attack run. Or a mix up where there's a published ahead of time safe altitude window around 15K but these guys for who knows why were 1000 feet off the ground doing who knows what. Maybe they had a good tactical reason to do it but its damning that nothing is being reported as an excuse. Clearly any passive IR detector thats theorized to exist for years either doesn't exist or doesn't work very well. In theory, a smart enough IR camera should be able to notice something very warm indeed is getting rapidly brighter as it approaches you. In practice, these don't exist, or don't work. "Oh yeah they didn't have those when I was in, but they totally have them now" for the last 30 years. Apparently, not yet in 2026. I find it unfortunate that people who do this for a living can't legally comment, people who do this for a hobby are not asked or actively ignored despite extensive practical experience, and people who mostly have a grift of looking authoritative for legacy media get automatic blind belief despite sometimes spouting total nonsense. This is the typical journalistic response in ALL disaster situations not just military aviation.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- rramadass 7mo agoFrom the article (this is what i believe too); Another fighter pilot’s analysis, seen in video below, questions whether the Kuwaiti pilot might even have gone rogue against an ally. That actually seems possible based on the evidence, but it is hard to believe. The fact that _three_ were shot down using air-to-air missiles is the clincher.
- 1024core 7mo agoMost of this is just speculation until the Kuwaiti pilot is identified. If it turns out he is a Shia muslim, then it'll open up a new dimension on this event. History buffs may remember that the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia was the catalyst that turned OBL into America's foe. He had offered his services to the King to defend KSA against Saddam Hussein (after Saddam swallowed Kuwait), but the King politely refused and speed dialled the USA instead. The rest is history.
- red-iron-pine 7mo agothere is 0% chance that a fighter pilot in the Kingdom of Kuwait is a Shia. only people flying in Kuwait are those with connections to the Emir and his people, and they're unambiguously Sunni I'd be more concerned with the US just pissing off the Sunnis, stuff like > In January 2026, the United States government suspended immigrant visas for citizens of Kuwait and 74 other countries due to the high dependency of Kuwaiti immigrants on American welfare benefits.[219] Kuwait is the only GCC country on the visa suspension list.[219]
- breppp 7mo agoSaying the presence of American troops is the reason Bin Laden was anti-american is ideological flattening of Islamism, a movement from at least the 1920s that sees the entire failure of Islam in modernity as a product of western imperialism (a word that is very abused in their ideas), culture and ideas
- _DeadFred_ 7mo agoOBL stated his reasons including the stationing of American troops in Saudi Arabia.
- breppp 7mo agoThis is an overly US centric view which misses a lot of substance. Bin Laden major start in jihadism was in afghanistan, while there were already US soldiers in his home nation of saudi arabia. for some reason that deployment wasn't deemed important enough to fight. If you read a bit into the ideological influence of bin laden, such his teachers you would know the ideology is heavily based on the Muslim Brotherhood. They do not only see a problem with western imperialism, which he incorrectly deduced the US deployment to be. It also sees a major threat in western culture to Islamic values. The reason why the west needs to be fought in NYC rather than the troops in Arabia is because they felt Islam is under attack culturally. As in, everyone will throw their religion away, families will devolve and immodesty will be rampant. So it is naive to think that if the US would not be involved in the Middle East then it won't be attacked, and it is replicating the pre-ww2 thought which was mildly unsuccessful
- radicalethics 7mo agoWhat are the chances Russian jets were involved and it needed to be hidden?
- chasd00 7mo agoI'd like to see the youtuber GrowlingSidewinder reproduce the scenario in DCS. The F18 and AIM9 are completely modeled in DCS and about as accurate of a sim as it gets. Here's his sim (at least he first few min) of the situation a few days ago but facing SAMs and not F18s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7XpVcUV_vQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7XpVcUV_vQ
- preisschild 7mo ago> The F18 and AIM9 are completely modeled in DCS and about as accurate of a sim as it gets. Sure, but not the weather conditions and visibility. And "as accurate of a sim as it gets" isn't true either. War Thunder has much better missile physics.
- chasd00 7mo agoI probably shouldn't have come off so confident sounding ( i swear i'm not an LLM ). When my 8th grader gets home, my DCS and military aircraft/weapons consultant, i'll discuss this with him him and comment again.
- preisschild 7mo agoI play and like both, but DCS has much to improve upon
- chasd00 7mo agoMy son agreed with your assessment. I stand corrected.
- blitzar 7mo agoTo the Kuwaiti pilot - You are still dangerous, but you can be my wingman any time.
- foxyv 7mo agoIt feels really weird to see C.W. Lemoine showing up in news. I'm used to watching him put random pilots in DCS VR sim pits.
- daft_pink 7mo agoI feel like this important context wasn’t mentioned in the article, but my understanding is that the Kuwaitii used the sidewinder because they were targeting drones and that it’s significantly cheaper to use this infrared guided missile vs an expensive radar guided missile against drones. The issue is that once they shot the heat seaking missile, they aren’t able to select a specific target the way they could with a radar guided missile, so the tool made a lot of sense for what the Kuwaitii pilot was actually doing to the mission planner who may not have realized the proximity to American fighter jets.
- Alan_Writer 7mo ago3 jets down. I cannot imagine the feeling of the responsable of this event, a very confusing one, btw, and somehow funny, ofc.