eish wrote: ↑Tue 3 March 2026 1:54 pmA plausible working theory. I much prefer it over an Iranian plane somehow flying around unseen, like some kind of stealth fighter with an invisibility cloak added.
It does, however, leave me a lot of questions around the use of the weapon if we assume it to be a Strela. (Which, like the “armchair warlord's” suggestion, would be passive-thermally tracked and therefore both harder to spot and by default hitting the tail of the aircraft exactly as we saw.)
Who aimed it, and why? And would an official investigation even reveal the truth? Would that be reported to the public accurately?
A small group of Kuwaiti soldiers or even an individual officer less than enthused with Zionism could cause a “mistake” with, perhaps, plausible deniability when opportunity knocks. Pro-Iranian sleeper cells could have weapons of their own. Etc. etc.
It was likely some Kuwaiti Air Force or National Guard air defense units armed with MANPAD weapons. They were probably deployed due to threat of Iranian air units attacking Kuwait and mistook the American F-15s as Iranian jets. Misidentification seems likely as the Iranians have stocks of F-14 Tomcats, F-4 Phantoms and F-5 Tigers held from prior to the Islamic Revolution.
Most of the indigenous Iranian designs made by HESA seem to be based off the F-5 Tiger. They have stocks of French F1 Mirage jets also, which could reasonably be mistaken for an F-15, especially during the fog of war and air raid warnings. Even though Iranian jets have different painting schemes from American warplanes -- instead seeming to take a very similar paint job to French warplanes -- it's not entirely implausible to think it was legitimate friendly fire accident due to fog of war and stress.
post-scriptum: I noticed the same thing about the damage from the video that it was consistent with an IR seeking weapon.
post-post-scriptum: Source for what I'm basing some of my ideas on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_a ... r_Aircraft
