Yemen’s Houthis Claim Saudi F-15 Kill with SAM Over Capital City of Santis

View Comments

• how hard is it to switch off infra-red mode and show the jet burning ? (serious question cause I know jack shit about military equipment)

• The plane is good as the pilot.

  • There are several reasons why Arab armies are mostly ineffective. This article goes a bit into detail and it's very interesting.

    http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_17/articles/deatkine_arabs1.html

    When western forum posters are boasting about military success and fighter kills against Arabs (and their Soviet equipment), when the soldiers and pilots lack basic abilities to understand how to use technology, it is a bit silly. Even if Iraq had F-15s and F/A-18s they would not have performed much better. But it seems at least for the SAA, the Russian influence has changed a bit in regard to endurance and tactics. Before, Arab army units were already withdrawing when they suffered minor losses.

    Quote from the article:
    "It is particularly dangerous to make facile assumptions about abilities in warfare based on past performance, for societies evolve and so does the military subculture with it. The dismal French performance in the 1870 Franco-Prussian war led the German high command to an overly optimistic assessment prior to World War I. Then tenacity and courage of French soldiers in World War I lead everyone from Winston Churchill to the German high command vastly to overestimate the French army’s fighting abilities. Israeli generals underestimated the Egyptian army of 1973 based on Egypt’s hapless performance in the 1967 war."

• Well, a year starting like that already...

• Saudis admitted the loss of F-15 and of Tornado fighter-bomber. Imagine if more modern Buk-M2 and S-300PMU2 were used? F-15s would be sitting ducks. Never mind Buk-M3 and S-400. Heck, F-117 was shot down by Yugoslavia in 1999 with 1970s Soviet system.

  • Russian SAM's work best agasinst passenger planes...in Syria they can't even stop 30 year old Israeli planes from striking hezbollah at will

    • How would that work exactly given putins agreement with netanyahu?? Didn't think of that, did you?

    • You might want to take a look at a map. The Israeli strikes were always in an area near Damascus. The Russian S300 and S400 are far up in the north. How long does it take a Israeli missile to fly 20 km over the Lebanese border to it's target (that's the actual window for an intercept)? How long would it take the missile from Latakia or Tartus to cover the distance?

      And then there's Lebanese territory to cross for the Russian missiles. That would be a violation of another countries airspace. The Israelis obviously don't care about international law and just fly there. And for western MSM it's not worth to mention it (double standards again). But imagine the outrage in western MSM if Russian missiles would cross Lebanese airspace. They already tried that when Russian Kalibr missiles flew through Iranian airspace but then Iran clearly said they were allowed to do so.

      • The air defense assets in Latakia and tartus are there to protect Russian forces only.. contrary to what all the trolls here say. They're not there to start ww3 over Syria.

        • I know. Apart from what you posted, there is another reason not to do that. I wanted to point that out.

      • And there's this thing called radar horizon.

        Even without mountains, due to the curvature of the Earth, all Israelis would need to do to avoid being hit at the distance of 100km is stay below 500m,

        And Latakia is 250 km from Damascus.Radar horizon at that distance is at 3500m. So, they could fly at 3000m and ground based Russian radars couldn't even detect them.

        They do have A-50U AWACS over there, but it's really far fetched that S-400 missile launched from Latakia would successfully hit Israeli plane 250 kilometers away.

        • Thanks for the additional information.

          Apart from AWACS, there are other OTH radar systems but just not in Syria and only suitable as early warning radar.

          Short list:
          NOSTRADAMUS
          PLUTO / PLUTO-II
          ELM-2270
          29B6 aka DOUGA

        • Sure, but that depends on wavelength.
          Here we're dealing with mm and cm wavelength.
          Duga for example, works in shortwave (tens of meters).

          To have any kind of precision with such a long wavelengths, you need enormous antennas. Also, you have close to zero altitude precision.
          Completely useless for anything other than early warning or directing other, more accurate platforms.

  • We also don't know what kind of SEAD was in place.. usually there will be a few jamming aircraft and the threat of Wild Weasels to keep the SAMs at least somewhat quiet.

    Looks like he had enough warning i.e. the flares but I did not see him take evasive action. Not sure if that's due to two missiles coming at him.

  • "Saudis admitted the loss of F-15"
    I don't suppose you have a link because I can find no official confirmation of the F-15 only the Tornado.

  • But hey, let's cancel the F-35 and buy -insert preferred 4th gen aircraft here-.

  • 1960. soviet system*

• Very nice work.

  There's always a great contrast between the Shiite elements in the Middle East, and Sunnis like the Sunnis, especially the Saudis who can't even put up a shed without having a hundred Indonesians to do it for them.

  It certainly makes one wonder about the wisdom of foreign policy that supports the later- especially when the Saudi government planned the 9/11 attacks.

• I smell taqiyya.

• looks like they missed

  • Missiles only need explode near the target and the projectiles inside the warhead will hit it

• Oh Leroy, where are you? Are you going to bash US planes? Of course not, because he is a troll! If this was a Russian plane, he would be having a field day right now.

  • Well AssLicker74, perhaps because it was flown by an Arab pilot, and as I have said before - Arabs can't fly! Seems Holtztransister agrees when he states; " Arab ... pilots lack basic abilities to understand how to use technology." Israel proved this. The US proved this. And the same goes for Iran and their low-skilled pilots (couldn't even beat Saddam's pitiful AF for 8 long years). So if this was indeed a shootdown of an F-15, it don't count against the Eagle's unbroken record of something like 144 kills to 0 losses.

    • Which proved my point below stating, "The plane is good as the pilot"...

    • As stated above, "The plane is good as the pilot"...

    • You got something wrong. Iraq tried to win against Iran with the backing of the west and still failed. That proves that Persians are better fighters.

• Other sources claim the the Houthis themselves claim this F-15 was only damaged but that a Tornado was actually shot down. The video also seems to confirm the F-15 was able to continue.

• How can this be? According to Leroy the Imaginative troll, american aircraft are impervious to Russian missiles!