The US military said the F-35 was operating over Iran when it was hit and was forced to make an emergency landing<\/p>\n\n\n\n
by Dave DeCamp<\/a> | March 19, 2026 at 5:57 pm ET | Iran<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The US military said on Thursday <\/a>that a US F-35 fighter jet was damaged by suspected Iranian fire while operating over Iran and was forced to make an emergency landing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe aircraft landed safely, and the pilot is in stable condition,\u201d said Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for US Central Command. \u201cThis incident is under investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hawkins\u2019 statement came after Iran said that its forces successfully struck an F-35 and released a video that purported to show the aircraft being hit. \u201cThe fate of the fighter jet is unclear and under investigation, and the likelihood of its crash is very high,\u201d Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Iran releases footage capturing the moment Iranian air defenses locked on and struck an American F-35 fighter jet over central Iran. The extent of the damage to the F-35 is unclear. Both the US and Israeli air forces have F-35s in their fleet, and each aircraft costs around $100 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the US and Israel launched the war against Iran on February 28, the US has lost at least three manned aircraft: three F-15 fighter jets and one KC-135 refueling tanker, which crashed in Iraq, killing all six crewmembers. The US claimed all three F-15s were mistakenly shot down by Kuwait and that the KC-135 crashed due to an accident<\/a>, though the incident happened amid frequent drone and missile attacks on US assets in Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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