This American Fighter Jet Has Never Been Defeated In Air Combat, But It Was Just Shot Down

The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle is, without a doubt, one of the most recognizable and accomplished American jet aircraft ever to fly. First developed in the late 1960s before entering service in the early 1970s, the F-15 has now been in service for over 50 years, and despite its age, it continues to be an important combat aircraft not only for the United States Air Force but for a number of militaries around the world.

During its decades of service, the F-15 has killed more than 100 people in the air and has never once lost an air-to-air battle. It’s an impressive record considering how many conflicts the aircraft has seen action in, and while that outstanding record still stands, it will now have an asterisk next to it. Earlier this week, American F-15E Strike Eagles were reportedly shot down in a friendly fire incident with a Kuwaiti F/A-18 Hornet.

This incident, which happened during the chaos of opening the conflict of Operation Epic Fury with Iran, is still being investigated and fortunately did not cause death or serious injuries, and their crews were able to get out safely. Still, it represents one of the most mysterious and significant fire incidents to occur in the US Air Force in recent years and will be scrutinized closely to determine exactly what went wrong.

These days, when an American military aircraft is lost, it’s usually the result of an accident or malfunction of some sort — including Navy fighter jets crashing into aircraft carriers . These risks could include situations where another US or allied weapon inadvertently shoots down a friendly aircraft. Although rare, friendly fire does happen. In late 2024, for example, a US Navy Super Hornet was accidentally shot down by a friendly guided missile ship.

“One IF/A-18 downed three F-15s,” however, reads more like a fictional battle from the video game “Ace Combat”, but this one is real. A rudimentary video first emerged of damaged F-15s falling from the sky over Kuwait, followed by footage of American pilots safely ejecting from the plane. Later, the United States Central Command confirmed that three US Air Force F-15Es were accidentally shot down by air defenses in Kuwait, and all six crew members of the three planes were found safely.

At the moment, few details have been revealed about how the incident actually happened, but the accidental shooting occurred under tense, wartime conditions, with the airspace over Kuwait affected by Iran’s significant drone strikes at the time. It is possible that specific details of the story may change once the investigation is complete, but as of now, the analysis seems to support the report that all three F-15s were accidentally brought down by air-to-air fire from a single F/A-18.

Based on the video footage, analysts pointed out that the damage to the F-15s does not appear to be significant enough to come from large ground-based, surface-to-air weapons, and the fact that all three crews were able to eject suggests a tail strike from small air-to-air missiles. Either way, the investigation will certainly focus on how and why the F-15s were targeted in the first place and how their IFF systems were working to distinguish them as friendly aircraft from radar.

The three American planes that were downed in the incident were the F-15E Strike Eagle, which differs from the standard F-15 fighter in many ways so that it can be used as a ground attack aircraft. As of March 3, CENTCOM confirmed that more than 200 fighter jets such as the F-15 and F/A-18 have been used in Operation Epic Fury, and heavy bombers of the US Air Force such as the B-2 Spirit and the B-52 Stratofortress have also been deployed against Iranian targets.

While the F-15 Eagle’s overall air-to-air combat record would hold without this accidental shootout, several F-15s have been downed by enemy fire in the past, including during the Iraq conflicts of the ’90s and 2000s. However, these losses were due to ground-based artillery rather than enemy aircraft.