According to reports, the American F-15E pilot, who was shot down over Iran on April 3, was also among the three American pilots who were shot down by a friendly Kuwaiti fighter a month before that. This story was first reported by Highside co-founder and noted defense journalist Sean Naylor, who cites several unnamed current and former Air Force officials.
The U.S. military has not confirmed Naylor’s report yet.
On April 3, a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle out of the 494th Fighter Squadron, flying under the callsign Dude 44, was shot down over Iran by what may have been an infrared-guided shoulder-fired missile. In fact, NBC recently reported that the MANPAD, or man-portable air defense system, employed in this shoot down may have been supplied to Iran by China.
The pilot of the Strike Eagle was rescued the same day, though the jet’s Weapons Systems Officer was ultimately rescued under cover of darkness by special operators on April 5. According to Naylor’s sources, that Weapon Systems Officer was injured after his ejection because his parachute failed to open fully, making his two-day ordeal on the run from Iranian forces that much more harrowing.
The Strike Eagle pilot had already been shot down by friendly fire just weeks earlier, according to Naylor, when a Kuwaiti F/A-18 Hornet shot down three American Strike Eagles in rapid succession while the jets were defending Kuwaiti airspace against inbound Iranian Shahed-style attack drones.
Based on the available information, there’s no reason to suspect either of these incidents was the Strike Eagle pilot’s fault.
The friendly fire incident in March was the Kuwaiti pilot’s fault, regardless of his intentions.
Based on footage that allegedly shows one of the Strike Eagles falling out of the sky and the circumstances of the engagement, it seems likely that the Kuwaiti Hornet hit all three Strike Eagles with some variation of the AIM-9 Sidewinder infrared-guided air-to-air missile. This has not been confirmed by any official sources, however.
At that point in Operation Epic Fury, the Kuwaiti military had reportedly intercepted 394 inbound Shahed-style attack drones, which equates to shooting down more than 65 targets per day, every day, for a week straight. That’s a much more hectic combat environment than any Kuwaiti pilot is likely to have seen at any point in their career.
Kuwaiti officials claimed this friendly fire incident occurred shortly after multiple Iranian drones had crossed the border into Kuwaiti airspace, where the Hornet and Strike Eagles were all operating in relatively close quarters to intercept them.
Kuwait’s Hornets carry the AN/APX-111 Combined Interrogator/Transponder to discriminate between friendly and enemy contacts, commonly called an IFF or Identification Friend or Foe system. This system is integrated with the fighter’s AN/APG-65 pulse-doppler radar, so when the radar array detects a contact, the AN/APX-111 transmits a coded signal directly to it. If it’s friendly, that target aircraft’s IFF transponder will receive the encrypted signal and reply with its own for the Hornet to decode and confirm the aircraft is friendly.
However, Sidewinder missiles are not radar-guided weapons and carry only passive sensors, therefore, they can’t distinguish between friend or foe. And while the fighter’s onboard radar is capable of queuing the Sidewinder onto a target after it has used the IFF to determine it’s not friendly that’s not the only way Sidewinders can be employed. You can also use them effectively as point-and-shoot weapons, relying on the missile’s onboard seeker alone.
So, the Kuwaiti pilot was likely aware of the presence of the Strike Eagles, just as the Strike Eagles were all but certainly aware of the presence of the Hornet. But when targets started closing in from the same basic direction as those friendly fighters, the Kuwaiti pilot may have failed to recognize the likelihood that his infrared-guided weapons would go after the closer fighters, rather than the drones closing from farther away. This is strictly a hypothetical scenario, but certainly not outside the realm of reason.
The only notice the Strike Eagle crews would have gotten may have come from the AN/AAR-57A(V) Common Missile Warning System (CMWS), which would have detected the infrared spike of a missile launch and tracked its trajectory optically toward the fighters.
This advanced warning, combined with the Sidewinder’s roughly 21-pound warhead, would explain why all six crew members of the American Strike Eagles were able to safely eject.
Getting back into the cockpit that quickly after an ejection is something of a feat in itself. During ejection, air crews can experience upwards of 18 Gs as their rocket-propelled seat fires to clear the aircraft, which has been known to cause spinal fractures, with some pilots reporting losing upwards of an inch in height after being forced to punch out.
As for the shoot-down over Iran, one could argue that flying low enough to be within MANPAD striking distance shouldn’t be necessary for modern combat aircraft, but we don’t know the nature of the mission being flown or what circumstances could have prompted intentionally assuming that increased risk.
There could be several reasons a fighter might opt to fly at these lower altitudes in combat, like getting a better angle of observation for onboard sensor pods that could be obscured by cloud cover or dust, or conducting a battle damage assessment on recent strikes with his good old-fashioned Mk. 1 eyeball.
MANPADs represent a unique threat to tactical aircraft like the Strike Eagle.
Unlike radar-guided missiles, which broadcast detectable radar waves that can alert a pilot that they’re being targeted, infrared-guided missiles don’t broadcast anything and instead, just track the heat signature of their target. This dramatically limits the range and altitude of these weapons, but because of their small size, they can be hidden away just about anywhere until an aircraft appears on the horizon. While long-range surface-to-air missile systems can be hunted down and wiped out from the air, the only real way to prevent these shoulder-fired threats from popping up is to have infantry troops on the ground to search for and root these systems out.
Other American aircraft were also struck by short-range missiles while flying at low altitudes during Operation Epic Fury. So, broaching that MANPAD targeting envelope was certainly not isolated to this one pilot, and may even have been dictated by mission requirements.
Being shot down twice in the same conflict puts this pilot in very rare company. We have only been able to identify two American pilots who can claim the same; both of these pilots operated in Vietnam.
First, Air Force Brig. Gen. James Robinson Risner was also shot down twice over Vietnam, while being credited with an impressive eight air-to-air kills throughout his career. In March 1965, his F-105 Thunderchief was struck by Vietnamese ground fire, forcing him to maneuver out over the Gulf of Tonkin, where he ejected about a mile offshore and was rescued shortly thereafter. Less than six months later, in August of 1965, Risner was shot down again while hunting for enemy air defense systems. That time, he was captured by enemy forces and held as a prisoner of war for seven years.
Then, U.S. Air Force Captain Guy Gruters was reportedly shot down in his F-100F Super Sabre off the coast of North Vietnam in November 1967. He and his co-pilot were rescued under heavy fire, and he returned to service, only to be shot down again the following month, where he was captured and held as a prisoner of war for five years.
Feature Image: A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fires flares over the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, July 17, 2025. The F-15E is deployed within the CENTCOM AOR to help defend U.S. interests, promote regional security, and deter aggression in the region. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Natalie Jones)
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