Israel shoots down a drone, Iran shoots down an F-16:
An Israeli fighter has been shot down as the country’s air force carried out attacks against Iranian targets in Syria after intercepting a drone. The military said its planes faced massive anti-aircraft fire from Syria that forced two pilots to abandon an F-16 jet that crashed in northern Israel, seriously wounding one and lightly injuring the other.
‘This is a serious Iranian attack on Israeli territory. Iran is dragging the region into an adventure in which it doesn’t know how it will end,’ Israel’s chief military spokesman, Brigadier General Ronen Manelis, said in a statement.
Israeli forces identified an ‘Iranian UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle)’ launched from Syria and intercepted it in Israeli airspace with a combat helicopter, a statement said. They then ‘targeted the Iranian control systems in Syria that sent the UAV into Israeli airspace,’ military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus tweeted. ‘Massive Syrian anti-air fire, one F16 crashed in Israel, pilots safe.’
The Israeli military then carried out what it called a ‘large scale attack’ against Iranian and Syrian targets in Syria.
Given the way in which a Russian plane was shot down earlier this week, it is increasingly apparent that the age of air supremacy, although not over, is approaching its end. Once lasers replace missiles and guns, it’s all but over for aircraft, manned or not.