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Inside an F-15 Mission to Block an Attack on Israel

(Air & Space Forces) Greg Hadley - On April 13, F-15 fighter pilot Maj. Benjamin Coffey and weapons system officer Capt. Lacie Hester anticipated picking up signs of Iranian attack drones and missiles launched at Israel. Coffey said, "We get a radar hit, and another, and another, and another." To be sure the blips were missiles and not cars on the ground, Hester cued the jet's air-to-ground targeting pod to get visual confirmation. "She recognizes there's no roads in that area. It's just open desert," Coffey said. "So all these radar hits that we get, 20 to 30 of them at that initial [sweep], were real, and they were headed west." Those hits represented the leading edge of Iran's first-ever direct attack on Israel and perhaps the largest drone attack in history. USAF fighters helped defeat the attack, downing 80 drones in one of the largest displays of combat airpower in decades. Iran's drones have been a common feature in Russia's war on Ukraine, but the U.S. did not have much experience countering those threats. The fighter squadron deployed to an undisclosed Middle East location in October 2023 and in April was put on alert status. Anticipating that the Iranian attack would likely come at night, the squadron kept at least two jets in the air, plus extra crews on the ground ready to go within 30 minutes. In the air, Coffey and Hester were responsible for multiple "lanes" of airspace that their formation had to defend. Now, they faced an attack on a scale they had never seen before. "This was an attack designed to cause significant damage, to kill, to destroy, and now we are on literally the leading edge of firepower, able to try to do something about that," Coffey said. Confronted with more targets than they could possibly hope to take down by themselves, the aviators started prioritizing the attack drones, directing other U.S. aircraft where to go. It didn't take long for every aircraft in the formation to exhaust their firepower. In the span of about 20 minutes, most of the fighters had fired off all eight of their air-to-air missiles. When more fighters arrived with fresh firepower, those who remained in the area directed them using their own radar, before turning back themselves. Then "ballistic missiles started blowing up overhead, as Israel started shooting them down," said Capt. Matthew Eddins.
2024-11-17 00:00:00
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