The Houthis have no credibility, so I'm inclined to believe the Navy here.

That depends on whether you trust the Houthis or the US Navy's sheepish apology for shooting at two F-18s (one missed), which will almost certainly have career consequences for somebody.

I trust neither. The Houthis downed a number of enemy aircraft over the years, so I don't discard they were able to do it this time again. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_shootdowns_...

But if you managed do find some evidence of it being friendly fire, besides just taking US Navy word at face value, feel free to share with us.

Yes, they can down aircraft flying over their territory.

But downing an American aircraft right next to its fleet, shortly after takeoff, is not something I would imagine they could do.

Have they ever before? They claimed to have shot down a Saudi F-15 back in 2018, and even that was debunked.

Pretty unusual for a military org to cop to gross incompetence when enemy fires are a plausible explanation.

For the US Navy, admitting a friendly fire shootdown has got to be the most embarrassing thing imaginable. So, yes, I do believe them.

Really? I feel like "Iran shot down a US Navy jet" is more embarrassing than "the US shot down a US Navy jet." Not for the pilots responsible, but for the Navy as a whole. I don't have any insight on this particular story though.

Why would that be embarrassing? No aircraft is invulnerable, especially not conventional (non-stealth) aircraft.

I don’t think there is any general expectation among the American public or military that American aircraft will never be shot down.

The carrier "retreating" is also consistent with a lot of other scenarios, including just having fucked up majorly and needing a safe place to spend some quality time yelling at people.

No, it's pretty clear.

It is as clear as this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown

They claim a lot of things, but whatever air defense they have comes from Iran, and Iran, as we just saw, isn't capable of shooting down IAF F-15s flying over their own airspace. Ansar Allah did not shoot down an American F-18. I don't believe Ansar Allah has any meaningful air defense at all; it would make no strategic sense for them to invest in it, they have no hope of maintaining air superiority against any of their adversaries. Like Hezbollah, which trained them, and which also has no meaningful air defense, their strategy is to be hard to bomb effectively.

The IAF did not fly over Iranian airspace, they launched ballistic missiles from Iraq.

I'm reading conflicting reports, but let's stipulate that; I don't think it makes any difference to the point I'm making. The better, clearer example is Lebanon, which hosts the crown jewel of the IRGC's proxy forces, and which doesn't have even a pretense of modern anti-aircraft defense. What would the point be? These are territories and militaries without meaningful air forces; they have already defaulted away air superiority. Their strategy is for that not to matter.

According to BBC Persian (quoting Israeli sources) and many Israeli media , the IAF flew "hundreds" of sorties over Iranian airspace on that eventful night in October.

The reporting is that they were F35s though, not F15.

Iran's air defence system is based on the older Russian S300, which is incapable of detecting them.

Of course it wasn't that long ago that Iran was flying F14s and had complete air superiority over its neighbours. How the times have changed.

I've seen credible reporting of F-35's, F-15's, and F-16's, all of which are platforms the IAF operates.

Very possible.

We also now know that the Israelis had informed the Iranians just before the attack through diplomatic channels of the impending attack, and that it would only contain specific military objectives.

Is the S300 just that useless? Possible. Did the Iranians decide to not respond and to "take one on the chin" in order to avoid a cycle of ever increasing conflict? Maybe. Had espionage already disabled Iran's air defence system? Also possible. We probably won't know for another 100 years.

Yeah, I don't think the strike on Iran shed as much light on this question as I'd originally thought it might, but it still seems clearly to be the case that air defense is not a big part of the Axis of Resistance strategy. Ansar Allah fought an open war against Saudi Arabia in the mid-late 2010s, during which the Royal Saudi Air Force routinely flew over Houthi-held territory, and so far as I know they've never verifiably shot a flight down.

Again, I think the most useful model here is Lebanon. Hezbollah has a desultory complement of SAM launchers, but no meaningful control over its airspace.

Oh yes that's just absolutely fanciful boasting by the Houthis.

The Houthis were probably not far off from claiming to have shot down the Ingenuity chopper which NASA lost on Mars . In reality they can't shoot down a Cessna 172.

I think they've taken down a couple MQ-9's, at least one of which we acknowledged.

The actual quote is:

> Saree explained that the operation “was carried out using eight cruise missiles and 17 drones, resulting in the downing of an F-18 fighter jet while the destroyers attempted to intercept the Yemeni drones and missiles.”

So I think its possible that it was both a friendly fire incident and that the downing was the restult of the the Yemini attack.

Ward Carroll (former F-14 aviator) gives a complete description of the friendly-fire incident:

Navy Cruiser Shot Down Super Hornet During Carrier Approach (and Nearly Hit Another One)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoYOsX2GpX4