U.S. fighter jet shot down in Iran

The Iranian military, meanwhile, is conducting a search to locate the plane’s second pilot, according to the Iranian news agency Fars, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iranian state television has even issued an appeal to the public, urging them to go to the scene to help find them. “If you capture the enemy pilot(s) alive and hand them over to the police and armed forces, you will receive a generous reward,” the Iranian police stated in a message read on the air.

According to a police statement read on television, the plane was reportedly targeted while flying over central Iran and was subsequently shot down in the province of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad (southwest). A manhunt has therefore been launched.

Videos posted on social media show the deployment of significant U.S. air assets, including HC-130J search-and-rescue aircraft, Black Hawk attack helicopters accompanied by KC-130 refueling aircraft, A-10 ground-attack aircraft, and MQ-9 drones, reports Le Figaro.

According to a Western fighter pilot interviewed by AFP, the first thing to do in the event of an ejection over hostile territory “is to hide and try to signal your location to your comrades.”

To do this, each pilot wears a combat vest containing a radio-GPS beacon to transmit their position. Procedures for reaching a “preferred zone” in the event of an ejection may have been established.

On Friday morning, Fars reported that the regime’s Revolutionary Guards had succeeded in shooting down an F-35.

However, several aviation experts have asserted, based on images of the wreckage released by the Iranians, that it was an F-15 fighter jet—which belongs to a generation preceding the F-35—and more likely an F-15E Strike Eagle, the modernized version of the Eagle.

Earlier, on Thursday, April 2, the Revolutionary Guards claimed to have shot down another “state-of-the-art enemy fighter jet”—without specifying whether it was an F-35—over the Strait of Hormuz, between the islands of Qashm and Hengam.

No images were released by Iranian media to support this claim. In response, U.S. Centcom (the command center responsible for military operations in the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia) stated on X that “all U.S. fighter jets were accounted for” and that “the Revolutionary Guards had made the same false claim at least six times.”

On March 19, the Iranians had already managed to hit a U.S. F-35 stealth fighter engaged in a combat mission. However, the aircraft managed to make an emergency landing at a U.S. base in the Middle East, despite sustaining damage.

This marked the first successful strike against a U.S. aircraft since the start of the war.

This time, the fighter jet engaged in Iranian airspace was indeed shot down on Friday—a first since the start of the war—although three F-15s had already been destroyed on March 2 by mistake due to “friendly fire” from the Kuwaiti air defense.

According to Centcom, the six crew members ejected from the aircraft unharmed.

The incident comes after another day of rising tensions and ongoing U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran. Meanwhile, Tehran has once again launched missiles at Israel and the Gulf monarchies—allies of the United States—in response to enemy attacks and Donald Trump’s threats to devastate its infrastructure.

The Israeli military did not specify the locations targeted, but military radio reported damage at a train station in Tel Aviv. According to Iranian media, the Revolutionary Guards targeted that city and the southern resort town of Eilat.