Iran Studied US Fighter-Jet Flight Patterns; Russia Likely Assisted
The New York Times, citing a US military official, reports that Iranian military commanders studied the flight patterns of US fighter jets and bombers, likely ahead of and throughout the recent war. The US official said the downing of a US F-15E and an A-10 on 3 April, and damage suffered to an F-35 on 19 March, indicated US flight patterns had become “too predictable”. The official added Russia may have supported the Iranian effort as part of a broader Russian effort to help Iran target US and allied assets; Russia also provided Iran with satellite imagery of US bases and modified Shahed drones during the conflict.
the operational precedent: Serbian forces shot down a US Air Force F-117 Nighthawk in 1999 by studying predictable US ingress-and-egress routes and combining that intelligence with low-band radars. The US military, ISW assesses, is “aware of and could diagnose the issue of predictability during the ceasefire” given that a shootdown of an aircraft would presumably trigger an after-action review. The Wall Street Journal reported on 13 May that Iran is using “asymmetric warfare to inflict pain from a weakened position” — a posture that the F-15E, A-10 and F-35 incidents bear out. The Russian assistance dimension is the new diagnostic question: NATO escort planning, if it proceeds in July, would now be operating in an environment where Russian satellite assets are presumed to be supporting Iranian targeting of US aircraft.