The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle is, without a doubt, one of the most recognizable and accomplished American jet fighters ever to fly. First developed in the late 1960s before entering service in the early 1970s, the F-15 has now been in action for over 50 years, and despite its age, it continues to be an important combat aircraft not just for the United States Air Force but for a number of militaries around the world.

During its decades of service, the F-15 has racked up over 100 air-to-air kills and has never once been lost in an air-to-air combat battle. It's an impressive record given how many conflicts the plane has seen action in, and while that distinguished record still stands, it will now have an asterisk next to it. Earlier this week, three American F-15E Strike Eagles were reportedly shot down in a friendly fire accident with a Kuwaiti F/A-18 Hornet.

The incident, which happened during the chaotic opening stages of the Operation Epic Fury conflict with Iran, is still being investigated and fortunately did not result in any deaths or serious injuries, with their crews able to safely eject. It nonetheless represents one of the stranger and more significant friendly fire incidents to happen to the U.S. Air Force in recent years and will be studied closely to determine exactly what went wrong.

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These days, when an American military plane is lost, it's usually the result of an accident or malfunction of some sort — including Navy fighter planes falling off of aircraft carriers . These accidents can also include situations where another American or allied weapon inadvertently shoots down a friendly aircraft. Though rare, friendly fire does happen. In late 2024, for example, a U.S. Navy Super Hornet was accidentally shot down by a friendly guided missile cruiser.

"One F/A-18 shoots down three F-15s," however, reads more like a fictional battle from an "Ace Combat" video game, but this one is real. Amateur video footage initially appeared of damaged F-15s falling from the sky over Kuwait, followed by footage of the American pilots who safely ejected from the aircraft. Later, United States Central Command confirmed that three U.S. Air Force F-15Es were mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses, with all six of the crew members from the three planes being safely recovered.

At the moment, few details have been revealed about how exactly the incident unfolded, but the accidental shoot-downs did happen under tense, wartime conditions, with the airspace over Kuwait being penetrated by significant Iranian drone strikes at the time. It's possible that specifics of the story could change once the investigation of complete, but as of now, analysis seems to back up reporting that all three F-15s were mistakenly downed by air-to-air fire from a single F/A-18.

Based on the video footage, analysts have pointed out that damage to the F-15s doesn't appear significant enough to have come from larger ground-based, surface-to-air weapons, and the fact that all three crews were able to eject suggests tail hits from smaller, air-to-air missiles. Whatever the case, the investigation will surely focus on how and why the F-15s were targeted in the first place and whether their IFF systems were working to distinguish them as friendly aircraft on radar.

The three American aircraft downed in the incident were F-15E Strike Eagle variant, which differs from the standard F-15 fighter in several ways to make it capable as a ground attack aircraft. As of March 3, CENTCOM confirmed that over 200 fighter aircraft like the F-15 and F/A-18 have been used in Operation Epic Fury, with larger U.S. Air Force bombers like the B-2 Spirit and B-52 Stratofortress also being deployed against Iranian targets.

While the F-15 Eagle's perfect air-to-air combat record will hold regardless of these accidental shoot-downs, a handful of F-15s have been downed by enemy fire in the past, including during the Iraq conflicts of the '90s and 2000s. These losses, however, were from ground-based weapons rather than enemy aircraft.

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Read the original article on SlashGear.