About the F-15 downed over Iran [View all]

The missing aircrew member.

It now appears that the US aircraft downed over Iran was an F-15 with a crew of two. One was reportedly rescued and a search and rescue (SAR) operation is going on for the other one.

Let’s talk about what happens to the aircrew of a high-performance aircraft like the F-15 when things turn to shit.

THEY DIE. If the aircraft is (1) hit with any kind of fire – missile, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile, machine gun fire, a lucky shot from and AK-47 on the ground; or, (2) something breaks inside the aircraft, either way, it’s all over. Pieces of flesh and body parts may be recovered if the whole thing doesn’t burn to a crisp.

THEY EJECT. The movies make this look exciting and romantic. It’s not. The F-15 typically cruises at 570–650 mph, may slow to around 200 mph to identify a target.

Each crewmember sits in a specially-made-to-fit ejection seat with a rocket on the bottom and a parachute in the top. The guy in the front seat drives the airplane and fires the weapons; the back seater can fly the thing as well as fire the weapons but his main job is to manage the electronics – detect and jam radar, identify targets, and the like.

The canopy is in two pieces because they two crewmembers eject separately – the guy in the back punches out first, then the front seater after a 2 second (?) delay – this prevents them from killing each other by colliding in their ejection seats. There have been incidents where the back seater pulled his ejection handle, it did not work, the front seater went out first, the back seater rode it in. Also vice versa.

To eject: Hunker down in a tight bundle, arms and legs tight to the seat; reach up, pull down an ejection curtain that’s built into the back seat and should protect you from the worst of the blast of air when you pop out; pull the ejection handle between your legs; the rocket in your seat explodes and fires you out of the bird with the speed of a bullet. After a short delay, the chute opens.

A lot of things can happen.

Flail injuries – exactly what they say. Try this – get in a car, someone else driving, get up to 75 mph, roll down the window, stick your head and one arm out into the wind stream. Now, imagine doing that at 300 MPH – arms and legs can be ripped up, flail around, break, pop out of socket.

Chute failure – you can guess what this causes.

THEY MAY SURVIVE EJECTION.

Landing after ejecting is not like the Army’s Golden Knights parachute team landing softly on a football field. This is a guy, scared shitless, possibly injured, maybe not even conscious. The seat is designed for the occupant to land in it safely. That’s what it’s designed for. Real life does not always follow the design.

So now you are on the ground.

Where the fuck am I? Why does my right leg not work? Are those guys running toward me with pitchforks friendly or not?

The seat has in it a BEEPER – a radio transmitter, operating on a fixed emergency frequency, sending out an audible beep-beep-beep. Rescue aircraft can home in on it . . . until the battery runs out.

The guy on the ground has an emergency radio, a beeper that he activates, a few flares, and a pistol.

SAR crews are listening for beepers as well as calling the missing guy’s call sign on the emergency frequency.

Remember the EC-3 electornic control aircraft that the Iranians – with Russian targeting assistance – destroyed on the ground in Saudi Arabia last week? There should be an EC-3 in the air that can pinpoint where the F-15 got into trouble and where it disappeared from radar. That’s probably why one crewmember was rescued.

I’m an optimist but I’m not holding out a lot of hope for the missing guy. Best we can hope for is he will be captured. Unlike Hegseth, I suspect the Iranians will treat him much better than we are treating them.

This is NOT a goddam video game. People get killed doing this shit and when it's over they do not get up, dust themselves off, and get back into the game.