Anyone know of a good source for recent air to air kills by the US military?
Apparently a US F/A-18 shot down a Syrian Su-22 and I’m trying to figure out the last time one of our jets shot down someone else’s (manned) jet.
ETA: prior to this incident, obviously.
Wikipedia as always has some good lists
Incomplete list.
If that list is correct, the last American aerial combat kill of a manned aircraft was this:
Have we really gone 24 years without a single air-to-air kill, until last night? Or is there some incident I’m not thinking of / missed on the list?
2001?
(Well, technically it both wasn’t “shot” down, and it wasn’t by a “jet.”)
^
Sometime in the late 2000’s a defense expert said the last USAF fighter pilot to shoot down an enemy fighter is now a brigadier general. So the list might be correct (or they might want it to look that way.
Addm: Drones and missiles don’t count?
Although, back to being serious, after doing some double checking, it does appear there were a few air-to-air kills against the Serbians in '99. The last ones being on May 4, if I’m reading it right.
Thanks! I had a gut feeling we had probably shot down an enemy aircraft somewhere along the way since the Gulf War & NFZ, but was having trouble finding confirmation.
Yeah obviously relative to “All Aircraft Shot down since World War 2” as the previous poster labelled the link, it’s missing the overwhelmingly majority of them, which were downed in the (more or less) formal wars (Korean, Vietnam, Arab Israeli besides one day in 1973, Indian Pakistan etc) which are excluded.
Relative to the wiki page’s own more modest ‘a list of aircraft shootdowns, dogfights and other incidents during wars since World War II’ yeah it’s still obviously incomplete, lots of missing ones I can think of in ‘Cold War shoot downs’ right off the bat.
I read in a NY Times article, I believe, that the last air-to-air kill by the US was in 1999. I don’t know where, I assume Iraq.
BTW, the Russians have said that as a result all US aircraft west of the Euphrates will be painted by the Russian SAM sites. Russia promises not to fire, but they will track the places. I believe this is a very serious issue-the pilots can’t tell until its too late if the tracking results in a firing. So every pilot will be flying an instant away from combat. Makes for a tense time.
I don’t know all the specifics, but there are both search radars and targeting radars. I assume Russia was talking about the former, not the latter, and that our planes / pilots are capable of distinguishing the two.
You may be right, but I had assumed the opposite. I am sure the search radars are on 24/7-kind of the point when you have a SAM battery deployed. So I assumed that Russia was turning on their targeting radars. Pilots are certainly more qualified than I to explain the details, but from my casual reading over the years, lighting up an aircraft with a targeting radar is considered sufficiently hostile to justify the aircraft firing on the SAM battery. At least in a tense situation. Hopefully the warning from the Russians will prevent anyone from shooting back-but it puts our pilots in a very precarious situation.
Bosnia area conflicts. 1999 is correct.
Isn’t it just saber-rattling?
Retired as a full Colonel. Cesar Rodriguez.
Better then the RAF who have not had a kill since the late 1940’s!
Really surprised to learn that Gulf War 2.0 didn’t result in an air-to-air kill.
Hard to shoot down aircraft that are already buried.
[Quote=Wikipedia]
On the brink of the US led invasion, Saddam Hussein disregarded his air force’s wishes to defend the country’s airspace against coalition aircraft and ordered the bulk of his fighters to be disassembled and buried.
[/quote]
Tense times indeed. Actively acquiring targets is absolutely an escalation and AIUI will result in all sorts of cockpit alarms warning the pilot to take immediate evasive action (someone with more expertise can chime in here). The last time they did this the area became a defacto no-fly zone for manned aircraft. That was under a different administration, of course. I have a sinking feeling that we’re running headfirst into a dance with the bear.
Just to be fair, the RAF had pilots operating in US aircraft in the Korean war and recorded 10 kills.
Plus some of the Sea Harriers in the Falklands conflict had RAF pilots ( 6 out of the 20 kills there).
Yes, but every British air to air kill since the late 40’s has been Royal Navy aircraft.