stationed in Eastern Iraq. Sounds like it would be a helicopter rescue of downed pilots. I don't doubt that they have crews on standby to prevent pilot capture, and it would be easier if the plane made it significantly west before they ditched.

Just a guess, though.

when combat aircraft are on operations.

But this is coming from an Israeli source that is celebrating a rescue operation. Put bluntly, I think this is true. Moreover, I would really start to question what CENTCOM is telling us if they don't explain further. Do you have a link to the denial? I can't find it.

Thanks!

It's important that we get full information.

They posted that denial on Twitter an hour or so ago. It's quite cryptic (it's not exactly a chatty account at the best of times), but categorical:

I dont know how that timescale ties in with the reports you've seen.

If it ends up they're fibbing, they're going to develop a hell of a credibility problem. If it ends up the Israelis are fibbing, well ...

One debunking account I trust is BBC Verify's Shayan Sardarizadeh: https://x.com/Shayan86

He has nothing on this yet, and I haven't found any of the usual MSM sites or OSINT accounts I trust carrying it either as fact or to debunk it, but I'm trying to work at the moment!

If you click through, you'll see Sardarizadeh's been exposing a number of fakes to do with the Iran conflict, usually either AI or video game captures.

But, unlike everything else they've denied, I really don't believe them.

I want to believe that they wouldn't lie about it outright, but I can also see them coming out and saying "We were protecting extraction methods" or something like that. Hegseth pretty much said in the first conference that DoD will tell the media whatever they want whenever they want.

It's extremely troubling if CENTCOM is outright lying about damage and casualties.

But for CENTCOM to put out that statement (and since Trump set the standard, I guess we have to accept Twitter as an official governmental source) out of the blue makes me think they're not lying, but who knows? There are all sorts of rumours flying around online, and to single that particular one out for their attention if they are hiding something would seem odd.

We'll no doubt find out soon enough.

Anyway, episodes like this can be useful in suggesting what sources may or may not be trustworthy in future.

if it absolutely didn't happen.

That's my issue here.

I think they got out over their skis and reported something that they shouldn't have, but I suspect they did so based on good sources.

not for healthcare.

And always will. Health care? Naa. Pro life or something.

sold to the Iranians by Oliver North for Ronald Reagan.

Skip gaily to 8:30 and don't look back if you want to avoid being exposed to Hegseth's utter Colonel Blimp-lite drivel on other subjects any more than absolutely necessary.

In any case, if I'm forced to choose who has less credibility, the IDF-Fanatic Channel 14 or Pete Hegseth, I'm pretty happy with that choice

Only proven in the past unreliable OSINT accounts (that I had blocked, but revealed for this purpose) have reported it, and even they're now hedging.

The other accounts I've seen popping up are relying on indistinct footage of a few airborne incidents with no timestamp, either not showing a plane being shot down at all or one that's identified as a MiG-29, plus there's a still of an unscathed US pilot sitting on a rug on the floor in a large opulent room along with a bunch of furriners sipping tea, which is one of the most laughably blatant examples of AI slop I've seen to date.

Some accounts are trying to make hay of the fact that the CENTCOM account edited a tweet to deny an F-15 had been shot down around Basra, whereas originally it denied an F-15 had crashed there. I think they edited because swarming accounts were going, "Aha! So you're saying the F-15 didn't crash, but you're not denying it was shot down, huh?"

On all the current evidence, I really don't think there's anything to see here.