Iran may have used cheap drones to target US F-15 fighter jet: Report

A new assessment by United States (US) military officials indicates that Iran may have used a swarm of drones as an airborne sensor network to help bring down a US F-15E Strike Eagle, showing how distributed sensors and missile systems can work together to challenge an adversary.

The new account, reported by The War Zone (TWZ), suggests Iran used multiple drones to track the F-15E Strike Eagle during its April 3 combat loss over southern Iran. A senior US military official, as quoted in The New York Times, said the drones supplied Iranian commanders with the fighter’s GPS location, speed, and direction. 

According to TWZ, the Pentagon concluded that the drones fed “critical pieces of information to Iranian commanders that helped them target the F-15E”. The information was then passed to a missile team, allowing an inexpensive weapon to engage a highly capable manned combat aircraft.

The exact chain of events, however, remains uncertain. The reports should be treated with caveats, and it is not yet clear what sensors the drones carried, how they tracked the fighter, or how the targeting information was transmitted, TWZ reported. 

However, the network between the drones and striking missile units has shown an example of cooperative engagement — where separate sensors and weapons work together rather than relying on a single air-defence system to detect, track and destroy a target.

Such a network could become particularly useful after conventional air-defence infrastructure has been degraded. Iran's expensive radars, sensors and command posts have reportedly suffered extensive US and Israeli attacks during the conflict.

The drones could also carry sensors capable of detecting an aircraft’s radar or other radio-frequency emissions. The reported engagement also sheds light on the mysterious “jellyfish-like” drone formation seen by the F-15E pilot shortly before the aircraft went down. 

According to a report by CNN, the pilot described “multiple drones interconnected and moving as one”, with smaller drones beneath larger ones. It described the sighting as a “minefield of drones”.

The use of drones for coordinated strikes was also seen in Ukrainian efforts against Russia in the current war. Earlier, Ukraine demonstrated how inexpensive drones can perform reconnaissance, track targets, identify air-defence positions and help target valuable systems. 

It has shown the value of combining cheap sensors, communications, decoys and shooters into layered networks rather than depending entirely on expensive conventional systems.