Kuwaiti F/A-18's Triple Friendly Fire Shootdown Gets Stranger by the Day

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush_military_servic...

I would go so far to say as commercial flight is dominated by very rich people who could afford to do the commercial ratings on their own, or middle/lower class people that became military pilots to pay for it.

Btw fighter pilot is extremely physically taxing. It's not for everyone. Any degree of motion sickness and you're out. Everyone joins the air force wanting to become a fighter pilot but only a small percentage can.

What do you mean by "these countries"? What you lived in "these countries"? What do you know about 'these countries". It sounds like something someone who can't locate Africa on a globe or thinks "arab" is a nationality would say

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..."

The secondary thing here I've realized is that the missiles in question must not have been using active homing. If they were then the pilots of the US aircraft would have taken evasive action as soon as their radar warning receiver lit up.

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.

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]

stares at wingman angrily

I wouldn't be surprised if the Kuwaiti Air Force switches to ground controlled intercept only after this.

Slaving heatseekers to radar is the standard way of employing them. I reckon by "having flown around" you're referring to DCS, which is absolutely unrealistic when it comes to engagements.

>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.

MAWS exist and they're employed on a lot of aircraft. I don't believe Strike Eagles have them though. An F-35 would get a missile warning for a heatseeker, it's not science fiction technology for quite a while now.

>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.

You don't get practical experience by playing flight simulators, it's not comparable to how planes are employed as weapons systems.

Countermeasure AN/ALE-47

I don't think they had radar lock, I think they were firing IR missiles. They wouldn't have had much time to respond, and IR missiles are normally much smaller than beyond visual range radar missiles, which would explain how all 6 pilots survived.

Rumor is there was a problem with the IFF identification system sync. If that's true, the Kuwaiti pilot just saw 3 jets coming into their airspace with no IFF working, under a very compressed timeframe with lots of inbound UAS and potentially aircraft.

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.