https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/22/us-shoots-down-two-of-its-own-navy-pilots-over-red-sea-in-apparent-friendly-fire-incident
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/22/us-shoots-down-two-of-its-own-navy-pilots-over-red-sea-in-apparent-friendly-fire-incident
actually hilarious that the navy saw a radar signature for a fighter jet whilst off the coast of Yemen and decided "yep that's definitely a hostile target" actual smoothbrain navy.
Don't F-18s have IFF too? Fuck sake lmao
Not only that, but all military aircraft are outfitted with an enhanced version of IFF that includes an encrypted challenge/response that uses a rotating series of codes. IFF codes are loaded as part of preflight checks, so either they ignored it, or somebody really fucked up.
Its because Yemen shot it down. This is how amerika launders its losses.
Even better, the US shot it down because the missile locked onto a Yemeni drone that lured it right into the F-18's exhaust. Fucking incredible.
Either outcome is hilairous
Super Hornet is surprisingly stealthy in certain aspects and apparently has an RCS close to the Russian Su-57. Could be mistaken as a large drone.
All it takes is a malfunctioning IFF and the plane getting lost and not following the pre-planned route. Large scale operations usually have planes following pre-determined ingress and egress corridors - stay within those lanes and you’d be fine, but if you wander outside you could be treated as hostile. This is how AWACS tracks who’s friendly or not, when there are dozens and dozens of assets in the air. And friendly fires like this has happened before.
If an hostile drone pops up in one of those corridors close to friendly aircraft, and it's fired upon, could it be possible for a friendly aircraft to get caught in the crossfire, with either a terminal active radar seeker or terminal infrared heat seeker locking onto the friendly aircraft instead of the hostile drone? I don't think those terminal seekers are connected to IFF, which is why a lot of these missile systems involve using both the semi active radar homing (which is connected to IFF) alongside the active radar or infrared seekers (not connected to IFF) for terminal guidance. That's my hypothesis at the moment, that Ansarallah exploited something there after the F/A-18F took off.
Either that, or someone on the missile cruiser left the CIWS on fully automatic operation by mistake, after being shot at by missiles and drones, and it lit up the F/A-18F right after takeoff. As far as I'm aware, CIWS is not connected to IFF.
Interested to know what you think of this.
IFF is just a transponder. The missile itself cannot determine who is friendly or not, and can absolutely get confused by radar/IR signature.
What we do know is that Israel has exploited this tactic before (on a larger scale) by having their F-16 shadowing a Russian military transport plane and caused it to be shot down by Syrian SAM
All I'm saying is if you have a Yemeni drone following behind an F/A-18F on takeoff or landing, and an infrared heat seeking missile (SM-2 or SM-3) is fired at the drone, the F/A-18F's two jet engines have a much larger heat signature than the drone which makes for a juicy target, and the rest is history (for the F/A-18F).
If you add the quote from Mohammed Ali al-Houthi from earlier this year, it definitely suits the emote:
He even told the US how they would accomplish this, warned them in advance, and then went out and did it. F/A-18F down.
Oh yeah this is definitely 5D chess then lmao
possible. I'm going off the assumption that it was using SARH which would easily differentiate between such targets BUT the SM-3 also has a passive infrared seeker so my theory is moot.
Also, just before posting this Houthis have claimed they shot it down lmao.
If you read the statement , it states: "Shooting down an F-18 aircraft while the destroyers were trying to confront the Yemeni drones and missiles." In that context it reads, to me at least, as if the Yemeni Armed Forces engineered a situation which caused the US to shoot down their own plane. A valid and impressive tactic, a loss is a loss no matter what or who fires the shot.
Agreed. I think the translation to English is probably goofy
I don't believe that amerikkkan ships have IR SAMs, just radar.
SM-2MR Block IIIB and SM-3 have terminal IR guidance. Also terminal active radar homing will just lock onto anything in it's view, the missiles won't have the IFF codes onboard. Only using semi active homing will be missiles be guided using a radar connected to the IFF system.
Seriously L M A O
Houthis, well known for their fighter pilots
Either that or they seriously thought Russia/Iran were gonna just send fighter aircraft at an American cruiser which...L M A O