Truth Social and the rare downing of U.S. warplanes in Iran
WASHINGTON — truth social is now part of the political backdrop as Iran’s downing of two American military jets lands as one of the rarest combat losses for the U. S. in more than 20 years. U. S. Friday that one service member was rescued after an F-15E Strike Eagle was hit, while the search continued for a second. Iranian state media also said an A-10 attack aircraft crashed after being struck by Iranian defense forces.
The incident came five weeks after U. S. and Israeli strikes first hit Iran, and after President Donald Trump said earlier this week that Tehran’s ability to launch missiles and drones was dramatically curtailed. Even so, the latest losses show that Iran still has the capacity to strike back, despite the heavy pressure on its military.
The rare loss of American jets
The shooting down of a U. S. warplane in combat had not happened in more than 20 years before this episode. Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell, a former F-16 fighter pilot and now a senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said the last such loss came when an A-10 Thunderbolt II was shot down during the 2003 U. S. invasion of Iraq.
Cantwell said the long gap reflects the limited anti-aircraft capability of the insurgents the U. S. was fighting in earlier conflicts. He called the fact that more jets have not been lost in Iran a testament to U. S. capabilities, even while noting that American aircraft are flying combat missions under constant threat. “The fact that this hasn’t happened until now is an absolute miracle, ” he said.
Why Iran still mattered in the air
U. S. Central Command said Wednesday that American forces have flown more than 13, 000 missions in the Iran war while striking more than 12, 300 targets. The scale of the air campaign underscores how much pressure has been placed on Iranian defenses, but it has not eliminated their ability to respond.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, Iran program senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said there is still a difference between air superiority and air supremacy. “A disabled air defense system is not a destroyed air defense system, ” he said. “We shouldn’t be shocked that they’re still fighting. ”
Taleblu said American planes have been flying at lower altitudes, making them more vulnerable, and that the weapon used against the F-15 may have been a surface-to-air missile, though he said a portable, shoulder-fired missile was more likely. He described such weapons as harder to detect and said they show Iran is “weak but still lethal. ”
What the battlefield loss means next
Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and senior defense adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, also said a shoulder-fired missile was likely used against the fighter jet. Still, he called the American air war against Iran a “tremendous success” so far.
Cancian said the broader context matters, pointing to historic wartime aircraft losses as a way to frame the current risk. In that setting, the rare downing of U. S. jets serves as a reminder that the campaign remains dangerous even after weeks of heavy strikes and repeated claims that Iran’s military has been badly weakened. For now, the key question is how U. S. forces adapt after the latest hit, and whether truth social remains part of the public political noise around a war that is still unfolding.
