The second crew member of the downed F15 fighter jet on Friday is now safe at a U.S. base in Iraq, after a complex rescue mission, as announced by Donald Trump. Hundreds of Delta special forces, dozens of US warplanes and helicopters, as well as members of cyber and space intelligence, were able to locate the missing crew member.
The The Wall Street Journal reports that the CIA first launched a deception campaign within Iran spreading the idea that US forces had already found him and were transporting him by land for extraction from the country. They then proceeded with the actual mission.
The crew member, a weapons officer colonel, had been evading his Iranian pursuers for two days despite being injured. US attack aircraft dropped bombs and opened fire on Iranian Revolutionary Guard convoys to keep them away from the area where the crew member was hiding. For 48 hours, he was pursued by these militants through the mountains until they were eliminated by MQ-9 Reaper drones, with night vision and thermal capabilities, a significant technological advantage over Iranian forces.
US forces converged on the downed aviator at an old Iranian military installation, the perfect place for extraction, and fired to keep Iranian soldiers away from the area. This aviator was equipped with a distress beacon in a flight suit that malfunctioned and a secure communication device to coordinate with the rescuing forces.
Two transport planes landed on that makeshift runway carrying the commandos who had to extract the crew member from Iran, but both got stuck with their wheels sunk in sandy terrain, so mission leaders decided to fly them out to prevent them from falling into enemy hands and requested three new planes to complete the mission.
A senior US military official described the aviator's rescue mission as one of the most challenging and complex in the history of US special operations. President Donald Trump wrote on his social media Truth: "WE DID IT! Fellow citizens, in the past hours, the United States Armed Forces carried out one of the boldest search and rescue operations in US history, to rescue one of our incredible crew officers, who is also a highly respected colonel, and I am pleased to inform you that he is SAFE AND SOUND".
With this operation, the United States scores a significant victory, as in 48 hours it has managed to rescue three crew members shot down by enemy fire, two in the F15 and another in an A-10 also shot down on Friday. Additionally, it has prevented their capture and the propaganda and negotiation use of these crew members as hostages in the hands of Iran.
Iran claims to have shot down four U.S. aircraft
However, Iranian forces question the success of the operation and claim that four US aircraft were hit. "In additional assessments carried out by experts on the ground, it was determined that two US military C-130 transport planes and two Black Hawk helicopters were destroyed," said Central Headquarters spokesman Jatam al-Anbiya, Colonel Ebrahim Zolfagari, who stated that the US operation to rescue its pilot ended in a "total failure," as reported by the Tasnim agency.
The spokesman described the operation as "planned as a mission (...) of exfiltration at an abandoned airport in southern Isfahan" and indicated that it was repelled through a joint action of the Revolutionary Guard, the Army, the Basij militia, and security forces.
Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Guard stated in a release that the aircraft were destroyed during the operation and described the episode as a "new humiliating defeat" for the United States.