Has anyone heard anything about the pilot they rescued?
It’s all very suspiciously quiet. You’d expect them to be showing footage and interviews with the family. I’ve heard nothing.
Not suspicisous, us army personell almost never gives interviews that's for when they retire. something to do with command structure.
The rescue mission was pretty botched apparently. In the process of rescuing the pilot, there were helicopters left behind and it took an enormous effort to get the pilot out and over 750 personnel.
They sent the smaller helicopters from Kuwait but their limited fuel capacity meant limited flight time. Having exceeded the flight times as they failed to locate the pilot in the time they thought they would, they ran out of fuel and had to be abandoned.
The 'injured' pilot walked 5 miles and 7000 feet to the top of a mountain to get a good signal on his phone so he was dehydrated and exhausted by the time they got to him. Apparently.
Don't know what your sources are but they destroyed the two planes and helicopets because they where stuck in the send as heavy machinery and then they send smaller ones to not get stuck again.
I think using 750 personnel to get one pilot out is impressive to be honest, despite their obvious flaws.
It's all a bit incredulous and given this administrations penchant for spin and lies plus the fact that none of this conflict can be classed as successful, one wonders if it was a PR stunt or there was a different motive for the fighter jets being in that area in the first place - near apparent Uranium enrichment facilities [WMD anyone?] and this is a bit of a cover up, a distraction. The speculation is that this was a recce gone wrong and that the Americans thought that they could actually send in some troops and physically take the enriched Uranium. It's all a bit Marvel comics.
In the weeks leading to this crash it seems US warplanes could fly over all over Iran udetterert so maybe they just got overconfident or it was indeed a mission to find something.
[This ^ all from various news sources including a retired air force general interviewed on MS Now].
It's more than possible he was rescued pretty quickly but it's also more than possible that they do not want to put him in front of the press in case he contradicts the story. You would think the ultimate PR was to hold him up like a trophy in front of the world's press.
As usual, it's all a bit equivocal.
Expect for the US in history almost never has done that, holding one up like a trophy is more regime style. I mean granted we can never be sure with the current administration but still.
