Iran Claims F-35 Jet Shot Down In A First, US Responds with ‘Flattening’ Tehran’s Military Capabilities
Iran’s claim of striking a US F-35 has added a new dimension to the escalating conflict, even as Washington maintains the stealth fighter landed safely after sustaining possible damage during a combat mission over Iranian airspace. Image courtesy: X.com/@Microinteracti1
Iran has claimed to have inflicted a major casualty on the US, downing a fifth-generation F-35 fighter jet, forcing the aircraft to make an emergency landing at an American air base in West Asia.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps released a video on Thursday (March 19, 2026) purportedly of its missile hitting the F-35 Lightning-II mid-air.
US Central Command spokesperson Captain Tim Hawkins said the F-35 was flying a combat mission over Iran when it was forced to make an emergency landing.
Hawkins said the fifth-generation stealth fighter jet landed safely. The US ordered an investigation into the incident, he added. However, American media reports claimed the fighter aircraft was damaged in the Iranian missile firing.
“The US military’s F-35 strategic fighter jet was hit and seriously damaged in the central Iranian sky at 2:50 a.m. today by the IRGC’s advanced modern aerospace defense system,” the IRGC said.
“The fate of this fighter jet is unknown and is under investigation, and there is a high probability that it crashed,” the IRGC said in a statement on the incident.
If true, this would be the first time ever Iran hit an American fighter jet since the present West Asian war began on February 28, with the US-Israel airstrikes on Tehran killing its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in his office compound.
Both the US and Israel have deployed the F-35 jets over Iranian skies to take out Tehran’s missile locations. Over 19 nations worldwide either already operate or are in the process of inducting the Lockheed Martin-manufactured F-35 combat aircraft.
While the US has lost three fighter aircraft in the war due to friendly fire in Kuwait, it has never been hit by an Iranian missile. During the current war in Iran, a KC-135 Stratotanker mid-air refueller crashed in western Iraq, killing all the crew members.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon said the US military had dropped 5,000 pounds of penetrator weapons on Iran’s underground storage facilities and struck over 7,000 targets as part of its ‘Operation Epic Fury’.
General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a media briefing that the targeted storage facilities and military infrastructure in Iran housed coastal defence cruise missiles, naval ammunition depots, mine storage sites, and afloat assets, including afloat assets, including over 120 naval vessels and 44 minelayers.
“We’re flying further to the East now and penetrating deeper into Iranian airspace to hunt and kill one-way attack garrisons, destroying Iran’s ability to project power outside of its borders,” General Caine, accompanied by US War Secretary Pete Hegseth. said.
Hegseth said the US was “winning decisively” and that Iran’s air defences were “flattened” in the American military operations.
He added that the US airstrikes had caused significant damage to Iranian military infrastructure, and the Iranian Navy’s submarines, numbering 11 once, were no longer operational.
Hegseth claimed Iran’s ability to manufacture new ballistic missiles was severely impacted, with attacks using these projectiles going down by 90% since the start of the conflict on February 28.
The West Asia war has escalated sharply over the last week, with both the US-Israel combine and Iran striking energy facilities all over the region, causing a major disruption in oil and gas supplies to the rest of the world, worsened by the Hormuz Strait blockade by the IRGC since February 28.
