Earlier, an uninjured pilot who too had bailed out from the same aircraft had been rescued. By the looks of it, getting both airmen out is an amazing operation that, perhaps, equals such rescues during the Bosnia war or the elimination of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in Pakistan in the dead of night in a Special Forces ops. Not only precision but speed is of the essence in such complex operations
In a daring mission deep into enemy land and spotting a distressed airman who had bailed out of a F-15 E Strike Eagle jet, US forces found him and successfully exfiltrated the colonel. The mission comes like a rainbow lighting up the sky in front of a bank of dark clouds as the USA and Iran are threatening to blast each other to hell and beyond in a needless war that has gone on too long already.
This is the latest example of extremely complex missions to locate and extricate military personnel in a kind of operation that will become part of military textbooks even as Hollywood replicates it on celluloid. The night operation was one very few military powers may be able to launch with dozens of aircraft and hundreds of troops in an alien country.
Earlier, an uninjured pilot who too had bailed out from the same aircraft had been rescued. By the looks of it, getting both airmen out is an amazing operation that, perhaps, equals such rescues during the Bosnia war or the elimination of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in Pakistan in the dead of night in a Special Forces ops. Not only precision but speed is of the essence in such complex operations.
It is moot whether the success of the rescue would convince the US President Donald Trump that he should declare total victory and call off the war at once. He might even be inclined to if not for the fact that Iran seems to be coping well within the abyss of warfare and holding its own even as it has shot down close to 20 manned and unmanned flying machines of the US, like aircraft and drones. The US itself has lost six other aircraft, an A-10 attack plane lost in operations, an AWACS and three F-15s lost to what is called ‘friendly fire’.
It is a pity that all the combatants involved, most of all Israel, are defying all the rules of war in shooting at all kinds of civilian infrastructure targets like petrochemical complexes, gas fields and bridges, besides such abhorrent excesses as shelling of health infrastructure buildings and schools. The sooner the madness ends, the better for all, including the rest of the world that will be hoping to see normality return to the choke point Strait of Hormuz.
