This is one of the most catastrophic airframe losses by the US military in my life time and it speaks directly to the foolishness and incompetence that dominates the approach of the US to the illegal Iran War.

You cannot fail at air defense worse than losing this aircraft, in terms of US military aircraft. This is it, this is pretty much the worst thing the US can blunder losing in terms of airplanes.

While this was probably preventable if the US had been humble and taken lessons from Ukraine’s air defense approach, it also does speak to the basic reality that the shahed style flying bomb strategy works maximally against large fixed wing aircraft that require huge amounts of vulnerable static infrastructure. The world has gotten it completely wrong that drones make helicopters obsolete vs. making fixed wing aircraft look more dubious in warfare.