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PaperclipPerfector  13hr ago (text post)   382 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 22, 2024

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US warplane shot down by friendly fire in Red Sea, pilots eject safely

Two U.S. Navy pilots were shot down on Sunday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the U.S military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of targeting of Yemen's Houthi rebels.

Do you think it was friendly fire or the Houthi leveling up and the pentagon wants to cover it up? Iran do needs wins after Syria.

The US has been laundering casualties for a while now. I’ve noticed that every time there’s a big offensive in Ukraine, two weeks later there’s a helicopter crash off the coast of America that kills half a dozen special forces guys. Or how there was another helicopter crash that killed a bunch of guys from the USS Eisenhower air wing two months after the Houthis totally did not hit it with a missile. Or how a helicopter crash killed some Delta Force guys two weeks after a big Israeli raid to try and rescue hostages in Gaza. Or that general that was mysteriously “found dead” at Twentynine Palms three days after he supposedly got back from Ukraine. Open source intel had indicated that a building housing American advisors in Ukraine had been hit by a missile a week before. Or going back a while, how half the SEAL team that killed Bin Laden died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. Witnesses in Pakistan said that one of the stealth Blackhawks crashed during the Bin Laden raid with many casualties, but the Government maintained that the Blackhawk crash during the raid hadn’t killed anyone. They just happened to all die in a separate helicopter crash in Afghanistan a month later.

Helicopters are very unstable and crash a lot.

I think this is dumb, but in a way which basically can’t be disproven. It just screams “confirmation bias.”

Is there a site somewhere that tracks casualty announcements?

Friendly fire by US forces or other allied forces?

I’m doubting the Houthis shot this plane down, but the friendly fire explanation has a hole in it- namely, who did the navy think they were shooting at?

It’s not like the Houthis have f-18’s.

Couldn't some automatic system erroneously detected it as a drone?

Probably, but there should be safeguards- an IFF system to start with, and probably also a human that needs to sign off on weapons free. And IANA navy sailor, but that human is almost certainly an officer who should know better.

TDLR, someone screwed up big.

The pentagon really isn’t very watertight when it comes to leaks, if it was the Houthis I imagine that they‘d both claim it and that the NYT/WaPost/Reuters/AP/etc would have the leak relatively soon.

That’s just survivorship bias. You never hear about the many many things that don’t get leaked.

Why would they want to cover it up if the Houthis did it? I'd have thought that the US military would be happy to glass Yemen and Iran, but are worried that popular and muggle politician sentiment isn't behind it and they'll be dinged for warmongering - a case of Iran/proxies hurting American national pride and almost killing one of its finest would be just what they need. More likely that they'd cover up such an incident if it were Russia/China/NK, where popular enthusiasm for a military adventure could easily pull ahead of how beneficial the military thinks it would be.

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