March 2 was one of the worst days for the US Air Force in recent history. The USAF lost three F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets in Kuwait within a span of 15 minutes.
The last time the USAF lost three fighter jets in a single day was on January 19, 1991, during Operation Desert Storm. On that date, one F-15 and two F-16C Fighting Falcons were shot down by Iraqi surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) over Iraq.
The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement that the incident was apparently a friendly fire incident from Kuwaiti air defense systems.
“At 11:03 p.m. ET, March 1, three U.S. F-15E Strike Eagles flying in support of Operation Epic Fury went down over Kuwait due to an apparent friendly fire incident. During active combat—that included attacks from Iranian aircraft, ballistic missiles, and drones — the U.S. Air Force fighter jets were mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses,” the CENTCOM said in a statement.
However, the latest report suggests that the three F-15E fighter jets were most likely shot down by an aircraft, a Kuwaiti Air Force F/A-18 Hornet.
“A Kuwaiti F/A-18 fighter jet was the cause of the accidental shootdown of three American F-15s on Sunday, according to three people familiar with initial reports of the incident,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
“One F/A-18 pilot launched three missiles against the U.S. aircraft, according to a U.S. official. All three U.S. aircraft went down, but their pilots ejected safely,” it added.
The report goes on to state that the ‘blue-on-blue’ incident occurred as multiple Iranian drones were penetrating Kuwaiti airspace, as mentioned in the CENTCOM statement as well.
One of these drones impacted a base in Kuwait the previous day that resulted in the death of six Americans.
While the investigation into the incident is still ongoing, multiple pieces of evidence do suggest that the friendly fire incident was the result of a series of air-to-air engagements.
Firstly, three F-15E fighter jets were shot down, but all six crew members survived and are in stable condition.
This suggests that the aircraft was most likely shot by some light missile, not typical heavy surface-to-air (SAM) missiles, which usually kill the pilot. Furthermore, one of the videos of the incident shows an F-15E fighter jet spiralling down in slow motion, with flames from its rear. The aircraft was also missing its vertical tails.
This video clearly suggests a tail-aspect shoot down, which is typical of air-to-air kills.
In fact, all three aircraft suffered modest damage to the airframes centered on the tail section. This is inconsistent with strikes by heavy SAMs, either from a Kuwaiti Patriot or HAWK, as the initial CENTCOM statement suggested, or Iranian S-300VM.
A hit from any of those rather large systems could be expected to tear the aircraft apart. Moreover, the one video we evaluated shows an F-15 flying straight and level before being hit squarely in the tail.
We do not see the fighter jet making any evasive maneuvers or even releasing chaff and flares to dodge the incoming missile. The fighter pilots, in all probability, were not even aware that they had been fired upon.
This suggests that the Kuwaiti Hornet likely employed the passive heat-seeking missiles (AIM-9 Sidewinder).
Further, since the Kuwaiti F/A-18s were in the air, conducting air defense missions, and the USAF F-15 pilots were most likely aware of the presence of the Kuwaiti Hornets, they would not have panicked even when painted by the Hornet radars.
Combat aircraft have radar warning receivers that light up when they’re being painted with a fire control radar, and the pilot could be expected to take strong evasive maneuvers.
However, the knowledge that Kuwaiti Hornets were conducting air defense missions meant that the F-15 pilots would not have read it as a warning signal.
The presence of multiple Iranian drones in the sky likely led the Kuwaiti F/A-18 pilot to make a costly error. The defenders were operating in a tense atmosphere.
Just a day earlier, on March 1, an Iranian drone strike had led to the death of six US military personnel at a US tactical operations center at the Shuaiba port in Kuwait.
Still, notwithstanding the complex and rapidly evolving battlefield picture, the air-to-air friendly-fire incident remains perplexing.
While friendly fire incidents are not unprecedented in modern warfare, they usually involve a surface-to-air kill. The air-to-air kill aspect of the latest incident is not very common, to say the least.
For instance, in December 2024, a friendly fire incident in the Red Sea saw a U.S. Navy Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg fire a Standard Missile-2 (SM-2) that brought down an F/A-18F Super Hornet.
The fighter jet was returning to the supercarrier USS Harry S. Truman when it was shot down by the cruiser. The Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group was under sustained drone attack by the Houthis at the time of the incident.
Similarly, in 2019, during the brief India-Pakistan War (Balakot air strikes), an Indian Mi-17 V5 helicopter was shot down in a ‘friendly fire’ incident. India was facing an air incursion by multiple Pakistani fighter jets at the time.
There have been multiple such incidents in the Russia-Ukraine War.
However, the last air-to-air friendly fire incident happened more than three decades ago in 1994 when two US Air Force F-15 fighters accidentally shot down two US Army Black Hawk helicopters over Northern Iraq, killing all 26 people on board.
The F-15 pilots misidentified the helicopters as Iraqi Mi-24 Hind gunships despite visual identification attempts and failed IFF interrogations. Both Black Hawks were hit by AIM-9 Sidewinder and AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles.
This remains one of the deadliest friendly fire incidents in US military aviation history post-Cold War.
Commenting on the unusual nature of the latest air-to-air friendly-fire incident in Kuwait, a former Air Force fighter pilot told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the incident is “perplexing,” given that allied pilots are trained to follow procedures to prevent such dangerous mistakes.
“If you’re flying air defense missions, the first thing you do is interrogate using your transponder,” the former pilot said. American pilots broadcast an Identification Friend or Foe code that identifies them as friendly to allied forces.
“If you’re beyond visual range, you interrogate the other aircraft to see if they’re squawking a friendly code,” the pilot said. “If you don’t have a friendly identification, then you proceed to a visual identification.”
The fact that all six crew members ejected safely, the former pilot said, “tells me they were shot from the rear quadrant, and probably by a heat-seeking missile without a really large warhead.”
It is not clear if the US planes had their IFF systems on. “It’s pretty hard to mistake an F-15E for an Iranian aircraft, and particularly if they’re not maneuvering in any kind of aggressive fashion,” the former pilot said.
Even if, for some reason, the F-15s were flying without transponders turned on, “that’s not a basis to engage those aircraft,” the former pilot said. “They have to be demonstrating some hostile intent. If they’re just flying, that’s not hostile intent.”
What circumstances led to this costly and rare air-to-air friendly-fire incident will be known only when the investigation is complete.
However, the incident marks the only fighter jet loss on the US and Israeli side in the current war with Iran, and that also marks the loss of three F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets in a single day. A very costly mistake indeed.
- Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
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