This is one of the most catastrophic airframe losses by the US military in my life time and it speaks directly to the foolishness and incompetence that dominates the approach of the US to the illegal Iran War.
You cannot fail at air defense worse than losing this aircraft, in terms of US military aircraft. This is it, this is pretty much the worst thing the US can blunder losing in terms of airplanes.
While this was probably preventable if the US had been humble and taken lessons from Ukraine’s air defense approach, it also does speak to the basic reality that the shahed style flying bomb strategy works maximally against large fixed wing aircraft that require huge amounts of vulnerable static infrastructure. The world has gotten it completely wrong that drones make helicopters obsolete vs. making fixed wing aircraft look more dubious in warfare.
I disagree that the US military is incompetent, but very much believe the current civilian leadership over the military is both incompetent and not listening to knowledgeable military leadership. This is severely impacting operations in a negative way
The military has had over 4 years of watching Iranian drones wreak havoc in Ukraine, yet seem to be caught with their pants down by … Iranian drones. I’ll agree that the US military is effective in big, blow-up-a-bunch-of-shit, but when looking at how much they spend, the returns on investment are just shameful. I’ll also give you that civilian leadership is incompetent, but that same leadership has been gutting military leadership for a decade. Just a waste.
They’re stumbling from one shitshow to the next for 80 years now so I’m honestly not that surprised.