President Trump has said that the United States has destroyed Iranian military capabilities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asserted that the U.S. military had achieved “total air dominance” in the war with Iran.
Yet the news that Iran had shot down an Air Force F-15E fighter jet on Friday showed that Iran retained the ability to strike back, however degraded.
That ability had been on vivid display in recent weeks as Iran continued to send waves of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf states, destroying American aircraft on the ground in Saudi Arabia, injuring around two dozen troops in the process, and on Friday striking a power and water desalination plant in Kuwait.
Iran has kept much of its arsenal hidden underground in an effort to preserve its capabilities in the face of the recent onslaught, which experts said could have protected at least some systems from the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes. And while underground bunkers and silos can appear at first to be damaged, in reality, Iran has been able to quickly dig out the launchers and fire them again, according to U.S. intelligence reports.
“Iran has been basing its resiliency on underground missile cities and tunnels and bunkers everywhere,” said Federico Borsari, a non-resident fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “It is quite possible that some Iranian air defense assets are still operational and hidden and concealed in many locations across the country.”
Iranian air defense could have used a Third Khordad missile system, which is a medium-range surface-to-air system, to shoot down the fighter jet.
“These are mobile systems,” Mr. Borsari said of Iran’s capabilities. “They are based on a truck which can move and you can conceal those systems.”
The downing of the fighter jet on Friday was the first known instance of an American combat aircraft going down in hostile territory during the current conflict in Iran. Up until now, the United States and Israel had enjoyed largely unfettered access to the skies over Iran.
Military experts caution that air superiority does not mean that there are no threats. “It means the threats are not prohibitive to effective operations,” said a former Air Force officer who could not speak publicly about Iranian capabilities. “In conflict there is risk, including risk of getting shot down, even when we have air superiority.”
The Iranian strategy has not been trying to defeat the United States and Israel in a conventional head-on confrontation, but rather trying to survive and inflict as much damage as possible.
Some Iranian air defense systems can be kept “in storage somewhere, in bunkers or in tunnels, and you can take them out if you know that the threat is present in your area,” Mr. Borsari said.
“They are not necessarily sitting ducks because they can be moved,” he added.
The U.S. military was confident enough in its control of Iran’s skies that it was flying B-52 bombers over the country, despite the fact that the bombers are large and not very fast, more vulnerable to many antiaircraft systems than more agile fighter jets or stealth bombers.
“This is dangerous business and the risks are real,” the former Air Force officer said. “It is not a video game, and the adversary is a thinking adversary in a desperate position.”
Nicholas Kulish is a Times reporter who covers the changing nature of warfare in conflict areas around the world.
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