Random News and Notes 5 April
Welcome to the Easter edition of Random News and Notes. We start with the elephant in the room. The WSO from the F-15 was rescued yesterday.
Our friend Live Oak brought us the news when it broke late yesterday. There will be more on the op that rescued him in the Epic Fury segment.
Our next story is from Manvel Texas where hundreds of drones displayed an image of Christ on the cross.
The display was part of the free ‘Jesus Jesus Jesus’ festival organized by The Church on MastersRoad, running nine nights with live worship, food vendors, and escalating drone shows up to 10,000 drones. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott praised the spectacle as a celebration of Christ’s sacrifice, while Manvel Mayor Dan Davis hailed it as a city movement.
Artemis is nearly on the far side of the moon. They are scheduled for 6 April lunar fly-by.
The space-shitter still seems to be giving them trouble. They had to rotate the capsule slightly to expose a vent to the sun.
I will admit to being a bit gobsmacked here. I really wouldn’t have expected this from an astronaut.
Epic Fury News.
Todays Epic Fury update is going to be mostly rescue news. The operation to retrieve the WSO was a lot more complex than might have been thought.
The operation in Southern Iran involved hundreds of special forces troops and other military personnel, including members of the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team Six, dozens of fighter and strike aircraft, helicopters, and cyber, space and other intelligence capabilities, officials say.
Senior military officials described the mission to rescue the airman as “one of the most challenging and complex in the history of U.S. Special Operations” given the mountainous terrain, the airman’s injuries and Iranian forces rushing to the location in the mountains of Southern Iran. The WSO evaded Iranian forces for more than 24 hours, at one point hiking up a 7,000ft ridgeline, a senior U.S. military official said. U.S. attack aircraft dropped bombs and opened fire on Iranian convoys to keep them away from the area where the airman was hiding.
As U.S. Special Forces converged on the downed airman, they fired their weapons to keep Iranian forces away from the rescue site, but did not engage in a firefight with the Iranians. In a final twist after the officer was rescued, two C-130s that would carry the commandos and the airmen to safety got stuck at a remote base in Iran. Commanders decided to fly in three new planes to extract all the U.S. military personnel and the rescued airman, and they blew up the two stuck planes and the little birds rather than have them fall into the hands of the IRGC
There were no personnel casualties sustained by the US during the op. Total equipment losses look like this:
-1x F-15E Strike Eagle [shot down by Iran]
– 1x A-10 Warthog [Shot down by Iran, pilot recovered alive].
– 2x HH-60G helicopters [UH-60/struck by Iranian AD/Survived & Landed/Definitely out of service for now]. – 2x HC-130J Combat King-II [destroyed on ground by the U.S. to avoid capture].
– 1x MH-6M Little Bird [came inside the cargo bay of C-130/destroyed by the U.S. to avoid capture]
TL;DR The US flew 60ish km inside of Iran, established a FARP (forward arming and refuelling point), found and recovered the WSO, returned to the FARP, realized the C-130s they came in were stuck, called in a replacement transport, blew up the stuck aircraft and an MH-6 little bird, and flew out.