The US military said on Thursday that a US F-35 fighter jet was damaged by suspected Iranian fire while operating over Iran and was forced to make an emergency landing.
“The aircraft landed safely, and the pilot is in stable condition,” said Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for US Central Command. “This incident is under investigation.”
Hawkins’ statement came after Iran said that its forces successfully struck an F-35 and released a video that purported to show the aircraft being hit. “The fate of the fighter jet is unclear and under investigation, and the likelihood of its crash is very high,” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement.
The extent of the damage to the F-35 is unclear. Both the US and Israeli air forces have F-35s in their fleet, and each aircraft costs around $100 million.
Since the US and Israel launched the war against Iran on February 28, the US has lost at least three manned aircraft: three F-15 fighter jets and one KC-135 refueling tanker, which crashed in Iraq, killing all six crewmembers. The US claimed all three F-15s were mistakenly shot down by Kuwait and that the KC-135 crashed due to an accident, though the incident happened amid frequent drone and missile attacks on US assets in Iraq.
The US has also lost about 12 MQ-9 Reaper drones, which cost at least $30 million apiece. US officials told The Wall Street Journal that MQ-9s had been lost both on the ground and in the air as Iranian missile and drone attacks have hit US bases across the region, and the drones have been used to launch airstrikes over Iran.
