Guess who gets the cool jobs in these countries? Typically not the most highly motivated individuals, but the children of influential people who pull strings to make it happen.
Guess how easy it's to fire those people when they don't pay that much attention during training?
I knew a USAF flight instructor who trained foreign "guest" students: Said washing out the trainee was not an option, not even after mistakes like shutting down an engine in flight.
The Sultan bin Salman was the first Arab, first Muslim, and first Royal in space, on the NASA Challenger flight before its fateful flight. He was a fighter pilot for the Saudi Air Force with 1000's of flight hours.
Even the early Roman legions were composed of land owning citizens. Partly because they could afford / knew people they could get equipment from. Also likely because you wanted people in the establishment that you could trust armed and the power that went with it.
I believe the latter was key and democratization of the armed forced was at least one reason the dictators (Julius etc) were able to maintain loyalty of their troops as they eliminated the republic as such. Im not super well read here though.
Higher level, Fukuyamas political order series does a great deep dive into these kinds of topics, really blew my mind, and made many archaic seeming political structures make far more intuitive sense to me afterwards.
In those countries (i.e., middle eastern countries) power and wealth is usually more connected to gov't and the military rather than independent industries. If you are a nepo-baby, your opportunities will tend to be more gov't/military than celebrity or corporate.
A remember a very, very, very high % of flight technology (basically flight school) majors in university being in ROTC. Paying for fuel is additional to tuition and it was extremely expensive. A lot of middle and lower class who wanted to be commercial pilots joined the military to get it paid for. No idea how many became fighter jet pilot, I assume most of them got jobs doing something more boring like troop or materials transport.
I would go so far to say as commercial flight is dominated by very rich people who could afford to do the commercial ratings on their own, or middle/lower class people that became military pilots to pay for it.
What? No way. Yes, a lot of airline pilots were former military, but I know several people who are airline pilots and did not come from "very rich" families.
Flying is not in any way some kind of high-status luxurious job. It can be grueling, with intensive and continuous training, wacky shifts, very strict rules, lots of time away from family, long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. You can lose your career over a minor mistake that snowballed into a incident due to factors out of your control. Minor health issue? Need mental help? Better get those fixed in secret or you probably won't fly again.
In my line of work, a major mistake would bring down an internal website at a big company for a little while. An airline pilot's major mistake would kill himself and a hundred-plus people.
I can't fathom why anyone who is rich would want to be an airline pilot. It's a shit-ton of work, stress, and risk for not much reward. You gotta love to fly in order to stick with it. If the rich want to fly, they just do the training and buy a plane, they don't need to do it for a living!
Very few rich people become commercial pilots. They might get a private pilot license as a hobby but generally pilots are just employees they hire to take them around.
Plenty of working airline pilots come from regular middle-class backgrounds and never served in the military. They take out student loans to pay for training, then work low-paying jobs as flight instructors or something to build up enough flight hours to get hired at a regional airline.
Those who go the ROTC route can totally get a fighter jet assignment if they want it. Once they get selected for a pilot slot, assignment to a particular airframe is primarily based on how they perform in the training pipeline.
I'll spell it out: A lot of air force pilots in these countries end up being rich kids who do it because it's a fun hobby, not motivated soldiers.
Because many of these people see it as a fun hobby, they don't spend much time worrying about potentially being ordered to drop bombs on schools filled with children. It's rather unlikely that their government would order them to do so anyway, compare a list of countries being hit by Iran with a list of countries bombing Iran.
When you say, “these countries,” I imagine you include the United States, where politically connected youngsters like George W. Bush secured and then ignored jet interceptor training during the 1960s?
Not everyone agrees that America is special. You haven't convincingly won a conflict in how long, so we're not really convinced your military is as exceptional as you like to say.
I would include the USA, with the caveat that in the US being sent to the military is often seen as a punishment for rich children where as in the Middle East being sent to the military can be an opportunity to build an independent power base for yourself or your family.
The USA has a volunteer military. Occasionally there are cases where the criminal court system might agree to dismiss a minor charge if the defendant enlists. But that doesn't happen to rich people, or those joining as commissioned officers (pilot track).
Air force pilots are the modern day knights of the sky. Also, up until WW2, which social class you were from determined whether or not you were going to be an officer or canon fodder so rich kids swooping their way into being captains is historically normal.
What does that have to do with anything? They went through training in different times when conflicts were not on their plate. During peace it is a cool job, you know not every air force around the world bombs schools, in fact most don't.
Anybody who ever went through arab countries with eyes opened saw the massive nepotism and corruption at all levels. Army/air force ain't immune to this, in contrary. Do you think ie some general or politician's first son would be treated and pushed up same as common folks?
> Cool job? Being ordered to drop bombs on schools filled with children doesn't seems like a cool job..
That was a launched cruise missile from a ship, targeted by an LLM. Apparently the grounds USED to be a valid military target long ago (a decade? I'm not sure exactly) and now there's a school there.
In almost all countries, military is seen as a "working class" profession, even joining as an officer. I don't think the rich and influential consider it an option for their kids.
Btw fighter pilot is extremely physically taxing. It's not for everyone. Any degree of motion sickness and you're out. Everyone joins the air force wanting to become a fighter pilot but only a small percentage can.
> In almost all countries, military is seen as a "working class" profession
In western countries that's the case. In autocratic countries it is essential to keep control of the army by placing the equivalent of the royal family in charge.
Also, fighter pilots were historically considered as the successors for cavalry and manned by the nobility, in Arab countries this means the ruling elite
The saying it’s true for officers seems to need greater support since historically officers were always nobility or from the leadership class. Today, in countries that are not full democracies, the leadership wants the military controlled by favorable people and that means family members.
> Guess who gets the cool jobs in these countries?
What do you mean by "these countries"? What you lived in "these countries"? What do you know about 'these countries". It sounds like something someone who can't locate Africa on a globe or thinks "arab" is a nationality would say
Presumably he means countries with somewhat higher levels of nepotism in the military than the US.
MENA countries (excepting Israel here) are known to suffer from this significantly, and it is a big factor in their militaries historically underperforming.
It is a valid point to bring this up as possible cause or factor, no need to get all defensive about it.
I'd like to see the youtuber GrowlingSidewinder reproduce the scenario in DCS. The F18 and AIM9 are completely modeled in DCS and about as accurate of a sim as it gets.
I probably shouldn't have come off so confident sounding ( i swear i'm not an LLM ). When my 8th grader gets home, my DCS and military aircraft/weapons consultant, i'll discuss this with him him and comment again.
Most of this is just speculation until the Kuwaiti pilot is identified. If it turns out he is a Shia muslim, then it'll open up a new dimension on this event.
History buffs may remember that the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia was the catalyst that turned OBL into America's foe. He had offered his services to the King to defend KSA against Saddam Hussein (after Saddam swallowed Kuwait), but the King politely refused and speed dialled the USA instead. The rest is history.
there is 0% chance that a fighter pilot in the Kingdom of Kuwait is a Shia.
only people flying in Kuwait are those with connections to the Emir and his people, and they're unambiguously Sunni
I'd be more concerned with the US just pissing off the Sunnis, stuff like
> In January 2026, the United States government suspended immigrant visas for citizens of Kuwait and 74 other countries due to the high dependency of Kuwaiti immigrants on American welfare benefits.[219] Kuwait is the only GCC country on the visa suspension list.[219]
Saying the presence of American troops is the reason Bin Laden was anti-american is ideological flattening of Islamism, a movement from at least the 1920s that sees the entire failure of Islam in modernity as a product of western imperialism (a word that is very abused in their ideas), culture and ideas
I feel like this important context wasn’t mentioned in the article, but my understanding is that the Kuwaitii used the sidewinder because they were targeting drones and that it’s significantly cheaper to use this infrared guided missile vs an expensive radar guided missile against drones.
The issue is that once they shot the heat seaking missile, they aren’t able to select a specific target the way they could with a radar guided missile, so the tool made a lot of sense for what the Kuwaitii pilot was actually doing to the mission planner who may not have realized the proximity to American fighter jets.
The Kuwaiti air force doesn't use F-15E. The F-15E looks quite similar to the Iranian Mig-29 especially from above. I've got no idea how Kuwaiti fast jet pilots are trained but it's not inconceivable that pilot had never seen an F-15E in the flesh before.
>> it's not inconceivable that pilot had never seen an F-15E in the flesh before.
This is such a joke I cant even imagine how you can formulate this thought...
- Exercise Marauder Shield 26.1 (Nov. 2025)
"U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft assigned to the 391st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron takeoff during Exercise Marauder Shield in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, Nov. 8, 2025. A key element of the exercise was the sharpening of combined fighter capabilities between the U.S. and Kuwait Air Forces. This included joint training exercises and hot-pit refueling operations."
- CENTCOM Bomber Task Force mission (July 2022)
"..During the BTF, two B-52H Stratofortresses, assigned to the U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command, conducted theater integration training and operations with a variety of U.S. Air Force, partner and ally aircraft, including F-15/18, RJ-135, E-3, KC-135/10/46, FGR-4, and A-330..."
"The bombers’ flight originated at Royal Air Force (RAF) Fairford, England, and flew over the Eastern Mediterranean, Arabian Peninsula and Red Sea before departing the region. The mission included fighter escorts from the Royal Air Force and the Air Forces of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia...."
"...“Communication is critical,” said Wong, who also serves as the Deputy Director of Combat Operations, Combined Air Operations Center. “By enhancing lines of communication, we are able to establish a clear and direct line in real time amongst the Air Operations Centers of all nations participating..."
> A key element of the exercise was the sharpening of combined fighter capabilities between the U.S. and Kuwait Air Forces
Well, the Kuwaitis seem pretty sharp? Three shootdowns is a lot in the modern era. The F-22 program only has two air to air kills in its whole history.
Do they? If they shot down 3 friendly aircraft that would be a catastrophically stupid mistake which would imply they are, in fact, not that sharp (or at least this specific unit and chain of command).
> The F-22 program only has two air to air kills in its whole history
A very poor comparison point given that the F-22 has had limited opportunities for engagement. And just a poor comparison overall.
It is very easy to shoot down friendly aircraft because they don't usually shoot back. They fly in nice straight lines because they don't expect to be shot down at any moment by their allies. They don't employ ECM against you. They don't terrain mask. But, maybe you are joking?
None of the other air forces involved shot down three F-15s, so I don't think it's that easy.
If I'm skimming this page [1] well enough (find: "shot down"), there's only 6 F-15s that have been shot down, and only 4 or them were air-to-air. If it's so easy, should be more than one other incident, and that guy only got one.
Kuwaiti air force F/A-18 pilots receive most of their training in the USA so most likely they would have seen some F-15 model in flight. That doesn't rule out a case of target misidentification but it's very odd and suspicious.
I do not know how F-18 controls work but from what I understand lots of jet controls include the equivalent of a "safety" that can be used to prevent the weapon from being launched. Maybe the pilot thought he had it engaged?
The secondary thing here I've realized is that the missiles in question must not have been using active homing. If they were then the pilots of the US aircraft would have taken evasive action as soon as their radar warning receiver lit up.
The IFF system will trigger warning symbology on various cockpit displays but it won't prevent the pilot from employing weapons. At this point we don't know for certain whether IFF was enabled and working correctly on any of the aircraft involved.
> Another fighter pilot’s analysis, seen in video below, questions whether the Kuwaiti pilot might even have gone rogue against an ally. That actually seems possible based on the evidence, but it is hard to believe.
I get the concern, but i would remmeber to attribute it to incompetance rather than malice. And from my understanding, there is no shorten of incompetance among gulf arab militaries
> In January 2026, the United States government suspended immigrant visas for citizens of Kuwait and 74 other countries due to the high dependency of Kuwaiti immigrants on American welfare benefits.[219] Kuwait is the only GCC country on the visa suspension list.[219]
The state religion in Kuwait is Sunni Islam. It's much more nuanced than "Muslim brethren", except perhaps less so when Israel is directly involved, as it is today.
It's also important to note that these are not democracies. The state frequently does things that people aren't entirely happy with, it's only when the people (or religious leaders!) become sufficiently unhappy that it becomes a problem.
Do not mistake leadership and regular people. Afghanistan president Ghani handed over sovereignty to US too but Afghans disagreed. I am confident that there is significant minority in Kuwait wishing for Iran victory. As a datapoint, there were videos from Bahrain with people cheering for Iranian rockets hitting American bases.
Another fighter pilot’s analysis, seen in video below, questions whether the Kuwaiti pilot might even have gone rogue against an ally. That actually seems possible based on the evidence, but it is hard to believe.
The fact that _three_ were shot down using air-to-air missiles is the clincher.
The first could have been a mistake. It happening three times is crazy because ground control should have been in the pilots ear the entire time trying to de-conflict.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Kuwaiti Air Force switches to ground controlled intercept only after this.
Given the absolutely deafening silence I would not be surprised if GC told him there were absolutely positively no friendlies in the area at that vector and altitude. Historically, silence always indicates there's something to cover up.
There is also old timer thinking where back in the 50s/60s AIM-9L days it takes a good fraction of a minute for the compressed gas tank to cool the sensor and back in the day they used a rotating 1-D sensor that also took a fraction of a minute to lock on. Very popular hollywood-esque drama "I can't get a lock I can't get a lock" drama.
Unrealistically video game type experience was back as far as the 80s you could spam sidewinders as fast as you can click. LOL they didn't work like that IRL until at least the late 90s.
Note they haven't make missiles like that in 30 years, the 9X and everything newer uses an electric powered cooler that can chill before engagement and stays chilled the entire flight if they want. Its not unclassified but assumed that the missile will not go green on preflight if the electric cooler isn't working on the ground, even the DCS world guys don't know. And they haven't used rotating 1-d sensors since like the 80s, the modern 2-d sensors look like civilian thermal cameras and can "lock on" as fast as a computer algorithm can find the closest object to the center of the sensor that is red-hot, which is probably a couple milliseconds, and apparently based on public test videos the sensor slew rate is at least as fast as human hands pointing a camera. Does anyone make CCD arrays that can go "much faster" refresh than 60 hz for video? I don't think that tech has leaked out except for exotic high speed cameras, and I don't know of any exotic high speed IR cameras, which would be pretty interesting if they existed for engineering purposes. So I bet a AIM-9X takes less than a second to lock on. Which seems to match tons of public unclassified info that modern sidewinders are point and shoot fast as a civilian smartphone or real camera.
So if you're an old timer using 1970s equipment it would take at least 10 to 45 seconds per missile launch which makes for a WTF scenario when 3 friendlies got shot down in a row.
So if you are post Y2K era like we are today, you click lock on lock on boresight mode, click the re lock button on and shoot on each target, the entire engagement took probably about 3 seconds depending on adrenaline level?
There's plenty of public unclassified test video out there and the difference between 90s and 10s IR guided missiles "UI" is pretty dramatic. From near WWI submarine torpedo level of drama and delay to just point and click about that fast. It was a pretty big change tactically.
There's open source intel on google that Iran has SU-27s. Under combat conditions you have an instant to tell them apart. Clearly, its possible to misidentify them at least one time historically as the F-15s did get shot down.
I can assure you from having flown around a lot, if you are wildly outnumbered 3 SU-27 (err, F15) to your 1 F-18 you do not attempt a radar lock you do an IR only attack. The article mentions getting a radar lock first but that is unnecessary for IR guided weapons and in a 3-1 situation will just get you shot down.
Waiting for confirmation from the ground means 1 of the 3 will surely notice and you will be shot down.
Ironically if it were a flight of 4 F-18 they'd probably not have been as skittish at radar locking a mere 3 aircraft and the IFF (assuming its probably configured and working etc) would have informed them they're friendlies. IFF can only tell you if everything on both sides is working perfectly and powered up, if you don't get a friendly response all you know is it didn't work. Not unlike a network ping command. If ping works you know they're up and accepting pings from you, if ping doesn't work, you don't really know anything for sure.
Possibly the primary fault was the Kuwaiti lack of situational awareness. Somehow he's in shoot down range of three other A/C and he's got maybe 3 to 5 seconds to shoot them down or be shot down himself.
Somehow there is no discussion on what both A/C were doing. Usually a landing on an airfield would not look like a bombing run but possibly the F15s were doing something "weird" for which they could be blamed. The total censorship of what they were doing points to them being up to something dumb "lets buzz the airfield during active combat would could possibly go wrong" and they get shot down for looking like an attack run. Or a mix up where there's a published ahead of time safe altitude window around 15K but these guys for who knows why were 1000 feet off the ground doing who knows what. Maybe they had a good tactical reason to do it but its damning that nothing is being reported as an excuse.
Clearly any passive IR detector thats theorized to exist for years either doesn't exist or doesn't work very well. In theory, a smart enough IR camera should be able to notice something very warm indeed is getting rapidly brighter as it approaches you. In practice, these don't exist, or don't work. "Oh yeah they didn't have those when I was in, but they totally have them now" for the last 30 years. Apparently, not yet in 2026.
I find it unfortunate that people who do this for a living can't legally comment, people who do this for a hobby are not asked or actively ignored despite extensive practical experience, and people who mostly have a grift of looking authoritative for legacy media get automatic blind belief despite sometimes spouting total nonsense. This is the typical journalistic response in ALL disaster situations not just military aviation.
>I can assure you from having flown around a lot, if you are wildly outnumbered 3 SU-27 (err, F15) to your 1 F-18 you do not attempt a radar lock you do an IR only attack. The article mentions getting a radar lock first but that is unnecessary for IR guided weapons and in a 3-1 situation will just get you shot down.
Slaving heatseekers to radar is the standard way of employing them. I reckon by "having flown around" you're referring to DCS, which is absolutely unrealistic when it comes to engagements.
>Clearly any passive IR detector thats theorized to exist for years either doesn't exist or doesn't work very well. In theory, a smart enough IR camera should be able to notice something very warm indeed is getting rapidly brighter as it approaches you. In practice, these don't exist, or don't work. "Oh yeah they didn't have those when I was in, but they totally have them now" for the last 30 years. Apparently, not yet in 2026.
MAWS exist and they're employed on a lot of aircraft. I don't believe Strike Eagles have them though. An F-35 would get a missile warning for a heatseeker, it's not science fiction technology for quite a while now.
>I find it unfortunate that people who do this for a living can't legally comment, people who do this for a hobby are not asked or actively ignored despite extensive practical experience, and people who mostly have a grift of looking authoritative for legacy media get automatic blind belief despite sometimes spouting total nonsense.
You don't get practical experience by playing flight simulators, it's not comparable to how planes are employed as weapons systems.
I don't think they had radar lock, I think they were firing IR missiles. They wouldn't have had much time to respond, and IR missiles are normally much smaller than beyond visual range radar missiles, which would explain how all 6 pilots survived.
Rumor is there was a problem with the IFF identification system sync. If that's true, the Kuwaiti pilot just saw 3 jets coming into their airspace with no IFF working, under a very compressed timeframe with lots of inbound UAS and potentially aircraft.
"AN/AAR-57" Yes the small yellow subwoofer looking things that people speculate endlessly about. Supposedly BAE systems marketing released a picture of the whole system LOL, who needs spies if you have a marketing dept, also supposedly just about everything about this is classified. They supposedly come in four packs and there are "many" public pictures of them one under each cockpit rail on the F15 and the other two are unknown location? Or maybe the mythology online that they come in four packs is false and they actually come in two packs which seems more likely. Plausibly they install 4-packs on helicopters not fixed wing.
I could see some logic in not putting cams pointing forward because theoretically the pilot is looking where they're going and not putting one facing back because flight time to impact is so low they can't evade anyway, but a side attack is survivable if detected early enough... Also facing back they're going to be "seeing" their own exhaust most of the time.
The total non-reaction by the pilots in the public videos would indicate that if those planes even had -57s they were not working or not working well enough to matter or not working fast enough to matter.
I would agree some monster sized BVR missile will be easier to detect. In practice does it matter if the missile detector works at short range if the attacker would likely be in guns mode at short enough range anyway?
Being on but jammed look the same from the perspective of the one shooting them down.
Also, I wonder how resilient it is to the gps spoofing that been going on. If they managed to trick it into identifying itself as a few hundred miles from where it actually was, then very hard to know where it actually is.
All of which is well within Irans technical capabilities.
Why? Specs for link16 jamming have been circulating since before the invasion of ukraine, there is a whole DoD technical report dedicated to trying to update it knocking around somewhere.
Iran claim to have used it to bring down US drones in the past.(1)
> This is the latest video to have emerged from the extraordinary incident earlier this week in which a Kuwaiti Air Force F/A-18 Hornet was responsible for shooting down three U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles.
They're not really the same planes, they've been continually upgraded over time. For another example, The B-52 strategic bomber is being used right now and but it was also operational during the Korean war. However, the B-52s flying today are very different than the ones flying back then. Another way to think about it is a computer with an old case but upgraded mb, cpu, and ram.
F-15E Strike Eagles have advanced avionics and can and continue to use advanced missiles. They can serve in multiple roles including target identification, aerial combat, and of course air-to-air interception and ground attack roles.
Same thing with the F-18.
Eventually of course all of these weapons platforms will be phased out, but for the time being they are still extremely useful, and even more so after the more advanced aircraft and other attack vectors have taken out or limited air defense capabilities or the ability for enemy aircraft to intercept these aircraft. Not that they can't handle their own, anyway.
Much of the F-15E fleet is still in relatively good condition. Most other airframes are even older on average. Over the past couple decades most funding went to more urgent GWOT priorities and almost everything else was under capitalized to the point where older aircraft are literally cracking and falling apart.
The F-15 family is kind of best-in-class still. It is an agile jet with a lot of weapons. As for the E variant, we tend to just run them until the airframe ages out.
These aircraft are maintained pretty well. They have explicit refresh cycles where they're taken to depots and pretty much torn apart and then rebuilt. The electronics also get refreshed over time with newer components (not just newer versions of old components or refurbished components, but new electronics and computer systems). It's not like they're still frozen in time at whatever version was initially put out 50 years ago.
The F-15E has received several service upgrades in its lifetime and has served as the base platform for most F-15 variants sold to other nations over the last decade or so. It's far from dated. They make new ones in St. Louis.
"Fighter jet pilot" is a really cool job.
Guess who gets the cool jobs in these countries? Typically not the most highly motivated individuals, but the children of influential people who pull strings to make it happen.
Guess how easy it's to fire those people when they don't pay that much attention during training?
I knew a USAF flight instructor who trained foreign "guest" students: Said washing out the trainee was not an option, not even after mistakes like shutting down an engine in flight.
Why would fighter pilot be as nepo-baby compatible as, dunno, actor/actress? Asking truthfully, I'm not american, not in the military, etc.
Too many nepo babies and too little state owned movie production in the Gulf?
Also flying modern fighter jets is the kind of fun that's typically very hard to buy with money, so you take the opportunity when available.
The Sultan bin Salman was the first Arab, first Muslim, and first Royal in space, on the NASA Challenger flight before its fateful flight. He was a fighter pilot for the Saudi Air Force with 1000's of flight hours.
A fighter pilot is the modern military equivalent of a medieval knight.
Even the early Roman legions were composed of land owning citizens. Partly because they could afford / knew people they could get equipment from. Also likely because you wanted people in the establishment that you could trust armed and the power that went with it.
I believe the latter was key and democratization of the armed forced was at least one reason the dictators (Julius etc) were able to maintain loyalty of their troops as they eliminated the republic as such. Im not super well read here though.
Higher level, Fukuyamas political order series does a great deep dive into these kinds of topics, really blew my mind, and made many archaic seeming political structures make far more intuitive sense to me afterwards.
I’ll have to give those a read. For others, I’ve linked their wiki pages below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Political_Order
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Order_and_Political_...
They wouldn't trust a non-family member with weapons that could decapitate the country's kleptocratic monarchy.
In those countries (i.e., middle eastern countries) power and wealth is usually more connected to gov't and the military rather than independent industries. If you are a nepo-baby, your opportunities will tend to be more gov't/military than celebrity or corporate.
are you talking about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush_military_servic...
A remember a very, very, very high % of flight technology (basically flight school) majors in university being in ROTC. Paying for fuel is additional to tuition and it was extremely expensive. A lot of middle and lower class who wanted to be commercial pilots joined the military to get it paid for. No idea how many became fighter jet pilot, I assume most of them got jobs doing something more boring like troop or materials transport.
I would go so far to say as commercial flight is dominated by very rich people who could afford to do the commercial ratings on their own, or middle/lower class people that became military pilots to pay for it.
What? No way. Yes, a lot of airline pilots were former military, but I know several people who are airline pilots and did not come from "very rich" families.
Flying is not in any way some kind of high-status luxurious job. It can be grueling, with intensive and continuous training, wacky shifts, very strict rules, lots of time away from family, long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. You can lose your career over a minor mistake that snowballed into a incident due to factors out of your control. Minor health issue? Need mental help? Better get those fixed in secret or you probably won't fly again.
In my line of work, a major mistake would bring down an internal website at a big company for a little while. An airline pilot's major mistake would kill himself and a hundred-plus people.
I can't fathom why anyone who is rich would want to be an airline pilot. It's a shit-ton of work, stress, and risk for not much reward. You gotta love to fly in order to stick with it. If the rich want to fly, they just do the training and buy a plane, they don't need to do it for a living!
Very few rich people become commercial pilots. They might get a private pilot license as a hobby but generally pilots are just employees they hire to take them around.
Plenty of working airline pilots come from regular middle-class backgrounds and never served in the military. They take out student loans to pay for training, then work low-paying jobs as flight instructors or something to build up enough flight hours to get hired at a regional airline.
Those who go the ROTC route can totally get a fighter jet assignment if they want it. Once they get selected for a pilot slot, assignment to a particular airframe is primarily based on how they perform in the training pipeline.
Cool job? Being ordered to drop bombs on schools filled with children doesn't seems like a cool job..
I'll spell it out: A lot of air force pilots in these countries end up being rich kids who do it because it's a fun hobby, not motivated soldiers.
Because many of these people see it as a fun hobby, they don't spend much time worrying about potentially being ordered to drop bombs on schools filled with children. It's rather unlikely that their government would order them to do so anyway, compare a list of countries being hit by Iran with a list of countries bombing Iran.
When you say, “these countries,” I imagine you include the United States, where politically connected youngsters like George W. Bush secured and then ignored jet interceptor training during the 1960s?
Be that as it may, I think we can agree that the USAF is not the same as the air forces of the Gulf countries.
Not everyone agrees that America is special. You haven't convincingly won a conflict in how long, so we're not really convinced your military is as exceptional as you like to say.
I'm not American
I would include the USA, with the caveat that in the US being sent to the military is often seen as a punishment for rich children where as in the Middle East being sent to the military can be an opportunity to build an independent power base for yourself or your family.
The USA has a volunteer military. Occasionally there are cases where the criminal court system might agree to dismiss a minor charge if the defendant enlists. But that doesn't happen to rich people, or those joining as commissioned officers (pilot track).
Air force pilots are the modern day knights of the sky. Also, up until WW2, which social class you were from determined whether or not you were going to be an officer or canon fodder so rich kids swooping their way into being captains is historically normal.
Actually during the time when the nobility went to be fighter pilots it was a suicidal role with very low survival rates (ww1)
Pilots are not told they are dropping bombs on a school filled with kids. They are told it is a headquarters or storage or bunker or whatever.
It's a "high status" job. Doing the high status jobs correctly isn't always easy.
What does that have to do with anything? They went through training in different times when conflicts were not on their plate. During peace it is a cool job, you know not every air force around the world bombs schools, in fact most don't.
Anybody who ever went through arab countries with eyes opened saw the massive nepotism and corruption at all levels. Army/air force ain't immune to this, in contrary. Do you think ie some general or politician's first son would be treated and pushed up same as common folks?
> Cool job? Being ordered to drop bombs on schools filled with children doesn't seems like a cool job..
That was a launched cruise missile from a ship, targeted by an LLM. Apparently the grounds USED to be a valid military target long ago (a decade? I'm not sure exactly) and now there's a school there.
Taking out the human factor makes it so much worse.
Building an LLM is one thing but building one specifically to pick targets is another.
For me knowing that my actions may have contributed direcly to the death of anyone is not something I want to live with.
> targeted by an LLM
I don't think it's a known fact at this point.
In almost all countries, military is seen as a "working class" profession, even joining as an officer. I don't think the rich and influential consider it an option for their kids.
Btw fighter pilot is extremely physically taxing. It's not for everyone. Any degree of motion sickness and you're out. Everyone joins the air force wanting to become a fighter pilot but only a small percentage can.
There are exactly zero places in the world where "fighter jet pilot" is seen as a "working class" profession.
And my whole point was that it's often not a profession, but a hobby.
> In almost all countries, military is seen as a "working class" profession
In western countries that's the case. In autocratic countries it is essential to keep control of the army by placing the equivalent of the royal family in charge.
Also, fighter pilots were historically considered as the successors for cavalry and manned by the nobility, in Arab countries this means the ruling elite
The saying it’s true for officers seems to need greater support since historically officers were always nobility or from the leadership class. Today, in countries that are not full democracies, the leadership wants the military controlled by favorable people and that means family members.
> Guess who gets the cool jobs in these countries?
What do you mean by "these countries"? What you lived in "these countries"? What do you know about 'these countries". It sounds like something someone who can't locate Africa on a globe or thinks "arab" is a nationality would say
Presumably he means countries with somewhat higher levels of nepotism in the military than the US.
MENA countries (excepting Israel here) are known to suffer from this significantly, and it is a big factor in their militaries historically underperforming.
It is a valid point to bring this up as possible cause or factor, no need to get all defensive about it.
I've lived and worked in the Gulf for half my life, I think I know what "these countries" are like.
Scott Purdue has a couple of good videos on the incident https://youtube.com/@flywirescottperdue
A pilot not trained well on visually IDing some of the most common military planes would be quite a training lapse.
Mistaken ID once is conceivable. Twice is not. Three times, with one shot being within visual range, is malice.
I'd like to see the youtuber GrowlingSidewinder reproduce the scenario in DCS. The F18 and AIM9 are completely modeled in DCS and about as accurate of a sim as it gets.
Here's his sim (at least he first few min) of the situation a few days ago but facing SAMs and not F18s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7XpVcUV_vQ
> The F18 and AIM9 are completely modeled in DCS and about as accurate of a sim as it gets.
Sure, but not the weather conditions and visibility.
And "as accurate of a sim as it gets" isn't true either. War Thunder has much better missile physics.
I probably shouldn't have come off so confident sounding ( i swear i'm not an LLM ). When my 8th grader gets home, my DCS and military aircraft/weapons consultant, i'll discuss this with him him and comment again.
Most of this is just speculation until the Kuwaiti pilot is identified. If it turns out he is a Shia muslim, then it'll open up a new dimension on this event.
History buffs may remember that the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia was the catalyst that turned OBL into America's foe. He had offered his services to the King to defend KSA against Saddam Hussein (after Saddam swallowed Kuwait), but the King politely refused and speed dialled the USA instead. The rest is history.
there is 0% chance that a fighter pilot in the Kingdom of Kuwait is a Shia.
only people flying in Kuwait are those with connections to the Emir and his people, and they're unambiguously Sunni
I'd be more concerned with the US just pissing off the Sunnis, stuff like
> In January 2026, the United States government suspended immigrant visas for citizens of Kuwait and 74 other countries due to the high dependency of Kuwaiti immigrants on American welfare benefits.[219] Kuwait is the only GCC country on the visa suspension list.[219]
Saying the presence of American troops is the reason Bin Laden was anti-american is ideological flattening of Islamism, a movement from at least the 1920s that sees the entire failure of Islam in modernity as a product of western imperialism (a word that is very abused in their ideas), culture and ideas
OBL stated his reasons including the stationing of American troops in Saudi Arabia.
I feel like this important context wasn’t mentioned in the article, but my understanding is that the Kuwaitii used the sidewinder because they were targeting drones and that it’s significantly cheaper to use this infrared guided missile vs an expensive radar guided missile against drones.
The issue is that once they shot the heat seaking missile, they aren’t able to select a specific target the way they could with a radar guided missile, so the tool made a lot of sense for what the Kuwaitii pilot was actually doing to the mission planner who may not have realized the proximity to American fighter jets.
What did the videos originally link to? It just shows "Sorry, this post is no longer available."
That’s you ad blocker. They’re still up.
Sometimes it'll show that while the embed is still loading.
It feels really weird to see C.W. Lemoine showing up in news. I'm used to watching him put random pilots in DCS VR sim pits.
The Kuwaiti air force doesn't use F-15E. The F-15E looks quite similar to the Iranian Mig-29 especially from above. I've got no idea how Kuwaiti fast jet pilots are trained but it's not inconceivable that pilot had never seen an F-15E in the flesh before.
>> it's not inconceivable that pilot had never seen an F-15E in the flesh before.
This is such a joke I cant even imagine how you can formulate this thought...
- Exercise Marauder Shield 26.1 (Nov. 2025) "U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft assigned to the 391st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron takeoff during Exercise Marauder Shield in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, Nov. 8, 2025. A key element of the exercise was the sharpening of combined fighter capabilities between the U.S. and Kuwait Air Forces. This included joint training exercises and hot-pit refueling operations."
- CENTCOM Bomber Task Force mission (July 2022)
"..During the BTF, two B-52H Stratofortresses, assigned to the U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command, conducted theater integration training and operations with a variety of U.S. Air Force, partner and ally aircraft, including F-15/18, RJ-135, E-3, KC-135/10/46, FGR-4, and A-330..."
"The bombers’ flight originated at Royal Air Force (RAF) Fairford, England, and flew over the Eastern Mediterranean, Arabian Peninsula and Red Sea before departing the region. The mission included fighter escorts from the Royal Air Force and the Air Forces of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia...."
"...“Communication is critical,” said Wong, who also serves as the Deputy Director of Combat Operations, Combined Air Operations Center. “By enhancing lines of communication, we are able to establish a clear and direct line in real time amongst the Air Operations Centers of all nations participating..."
> A key element of the exercise was the sharpening of combined fighter capabilities between the U.S. and Kuwait Air Forces
Well, the Kuwaitis seem pretty sharp? Three shootdowns is a lot in the modern era. The F-22 program only has two air to air kills in its whole history.
> Well, the Kuwaitis seem pretty sharp?
Do they? If they shot down 3 friendly aircraft that would be a catastrophically stupid mistake which would imply they are, in fact, not that sharp (or at least this specific unit and chain of command).
> The F-22 program only has two air to air kills in its whole history
A very poor comparison point given that the F-22 has had limited opportunities for engagement. And just a poor comparison overall.
It is very easy to shoot down friendly aircraft because they don't usually shoot back. They fly in nice straight lines because they don't expect to be shot down at any moment by their allies. They don't employ ECM against you. They don't terrain mask. But, maybe you are joking?
None of the other air forces involved shot down three F-15s, so I don't think it's that easy.
If I'm skimming this page [1] well enough (find: "shot down"), there's only 6 F-15s that have been shot down, and only 4 or them were air-to-air. If it's so easy, should be more than one other incident, and that guy only got one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_F-15_losses
Given Kuwaiti air force pilots would have dealt with Saudi/US/Iraqi F-15 operators, that seems highly unlikely.
Kuwaiti air force F/A-18 pilots receive most of their training in the USA so most likely they would have seen some F-15 model in flight. That doesn't rule out a case of target misidentification but it's very odd and suspicious.
My bet is ground control tasked him, and he saw them from the rear and at great distance, and thought they were F-14s.
That would be a pretty huge GCI failure
I do not know how F-18 controls work but from what I understand lots of jet controls include the equivalent of a "safety" that can be used to prevent the weapon from being launched. Maybe the pilot thought he had it engaged?
The secondary thing here I've realized is that the missiles in question must not have been using active homing. If they were then the pilots of the US aircraft would have taken evasive action as soon as their radar warning receiver lit up.
That could explain one accidental shootdown. It cannot conceivably explain three.
How easy is it in an F-15E to modify a friend to a foe in the targeting systems?
The IFF system will trigger warning symbology on various cockpit displays but it won't prevent the pilot from employing weapons. At this point we don't know for certain whether IFF was enabled and working correctly on any of the aircraft involved.
> I've realized is that the missiles in question must not have been using active homing.
This is covered in the article so it's weird to present it as an original thought.
> I've realized is that the missiles in question must not have been using active homing
Sorry, but it's totally funny that your nick is literally "Sidewinder".
How much time elapsed between each aircraft being hit?
Probably testing grok-based targeting system.
@grok is this true? /s
Grok stuck in DOGE mode.
DOGEfighting
Two more kills and that pilot will be an ace!
an ace from friendly fire is still an ace
stares at wingman angrily
> Another fighter pilot’s analysis, seen in video below, questions whether the Kuwaiti pilot might even have gone rogue against an ally. That actually seems possible based on the evidence, but it is hard to believe.
I get the concern, but i would remmeber to attribute it to incompetance rather than malice. And from my understanding, there is no shorten of incompetance among gulf arab militaries
I know American pilots think that Kuwait is on their side, but is their any evidence that Kuwaiti pilots think they're on America's side?
Operation Desert Storm was when the US liberated Kuwait. The US played nice with Kuwait since then.
not recently
> In January 2026, the United States government suspended immigrant visas for citizens of Kuwait and 74 other countries due to the high dependency of Kuwaiti immigrants on American welfare benefits.[219] Kuwait is the only GCC country on the visa suspension list.[219]
They have handed over their sovereignty to US forces to help kill their Muslim brethren. You want them to prove some more loyalty tests?
The state religion in Kuwait is Sunni Islam. It's much more nuanced than "Muslim brethren", except perhaps less so when Israel is directly involved, as it is today.
It's also important to note that these are not democracies. The state frequently does things that people aren't entirely happy with, it's only when the people (or religious leaders!) become sufficiently unhappy that it becomes a problem.
Do not mistake leadership and regular people. Afghanistan president Ghani handed over sovereignty to US too but Afghans disagreed. I am confident that there is significant minority in Kuwait wishing for Iran victory. As a datapoint, there were videos from Bahrain with people cheering for Iranian rockets hitting American bases.
Bahrain has a significant Shia population that feels oppressed and identifies with Iran.
That's not similar to Kuwait, a country that has a recent history of being taken over by its largest neighbor and saved by the US
Lol most Kuwaitis including the royal family are Sunni and believe Iranian Shia's to be heretics. So no love lost there at all.
Imagine thinking that you're brothers with someone based solely on what religion you both supposedly believe.
Imagine walking into a random neighborhood, finding a stranger and one "Salam" later, you are like brothers; willing to die for them.
Oh yeah, it's a superpower in-practice actually. Alhamdulilah!
Quran 49:10
In a sense it's a rather positive way of thinking, no? Surely having a shared set of beliefs is a pretty good starting point.
I'm certainly not religious, but it feels rather cynical to make fun of this.
correct.
From the article (this is what i believe too);
Another fighter pilot’s analysis, seen in video below, questions whether the Kuwaiti pilot might even have gone rogue against an ally. That actually seems possible based on the evidence, but it is hard to believe.
The fact that _three_ were shot down using air-to-air missiles is the clincher.
To the Kuwaiti pilot - You are still dangerous, but you can be my wingman any time.
Article explains how quick and easy it is to fire the missiles, with no information to identify friend from foe.
Then it jumps to incredulity that it could happen 3 times.
I don't know why it's so hard to imagine someone pulling a trigger 3 times.
The first could have been a mistake. It happening three times is crazy because ground control should have been in the pilots ear the entire time trying to de-conflict.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Kuwaiti Air Force switches to ground controlled intercept only after this.
Given the absolutely deafening silence I would not be surprised if GC told him there were absolutely positively no friendlies in the area at that vector and altitude. Historically, silence always indicates there's something to cover up.
There is also old timer thinking where back in the 50s/60s AIM-9L days it takes a good fraction of a minute for the compressed gas tank to cool the sensor and back in the day they used a rotating 1-D sensor that also took a fraction of a minute to lock on. Very popular hollywood-esque drama "I can't get a lock I can't get a lock" drama.
Unrealistically video game type experience was back as far as the 80s you could spam sidewinders as fast as you can click. LOL they didn't work like that IRL until at least the late 90s.
Note they haven't make missiles like that in 30 years, the 9X and everything newer uses an electric powered cooler that can chill before engagement and stays chilled the entire flight if they want. Its not unclassified but assumed that the missile will not go green on preflight if the electric cooler isn't working on the ground, even the DCS world guys don't know. And they haven't used rotating 1-d sensors since like the 80s, the modern 2-d sensors look like civilian thermal cameras and can "lock on" as fast as a computer algorithm can find the closest object to the center of the sensor that is red-hot, which is probably a couple milliseconds, and apparently based on public test videos the sensor slew rate is at least as fast as human hands pointing a camera. Does anyone make CCD arrays that can go "much faster" refresh than 60 hz for video? I don't think that tech has leaked out except for exotic high speed cameras, and I don't know of any exotic high speed IR cameras, which would be pretty interesting if they existed for engineering purposes. So I bet a AIM-9X takes less than a second to lock on. Which seems to match tons of public unclassified info that modern sidewinders are point and shoot fast as a civilian smartphone or real camera.
So if you're an old timer using 1970s equipment it would take at least 10 to 45 seconds per missile launch which makes for a WTF scenario when 3 friendlies got shot down in a row.
So if you are post Y2K era like we are today, you click lock on lock on boresight mode, click the re lock button on and shoot on each target, the entire engagement took probably about 3 seconds depending on adrenaline level?
There's plenty of public unclassified test video out there and the difference between 90s and 10s IR guided missiles "UI" is pretty dramatic. From near WWI submarine torpedo level of drama and delay to just point and click about that fast. It was a pretty big change tactically.
Maybe someone had a juicy bet on a prediction market.
DCS World to the rescue?
There's open source intel on google that Iran has SU-27s. Under combat conditions you have an instant to tell them apart. Clearly, its possible to misidentify them at least one time historically as the F-15s did get shot down.
I can assure you from having flown around a lot, if you are wildly outnumbered 3 SU-27 (err, F15) to your 1 F-18 you do not attempt a radar lock you do an IR only attack. The article mentions getting a radar lock first but that is unnecessary for IR guided weapons and in a 3-1 situation will just get you shot down.
Waiting for confirmation from the ground means 1 of the 3 will surely notice and you will be shot down.
Ironically if it were a flight of 4 F-18 they'd probably not have been as skittish at radar locking a mere 3 aircraft and the IFF (assuming its probably configured and working etc) would have informed them they're friendlies. IFF can only tell you if everything on both sides is working perfectly and powered up, if you don't get a friendly response all you know is it didn't work. Not unlike a network ping command. If ping works you know they're up and accepting pings from you, if ping doesn't work, you don't really know anything for sure.
Possibly the primary fault was the Kuwaiti lack of situational awareness. Somehow he's in shoot down range of three other A/C and he's got maybe 3 to 5 seconds to shoot them down or be shot down himself.
Somehow there is no discussion on what both A/C were doing. Usually a landing on an airfield would not look like a bombing run but possibly the F15s were doing something "weird" for which they could be blamed. The total censorship of what they were doing points to them being up to something dumb "lets buzz the airfield during active combat would could possibly go wrong" and they get shot down for looking like an attack run. Or a mix up where there's a published ahead of time safe altitude window around 15K but these guys for who knows why were 1000 feet off the ground doing who knows what. Maybe they had a good tactical reason to do it but its damning that nothing is being reported as an excuse.
Clearly any passive IR detector thats theorized to exist for years either doesn't exist or doesn't work very well. In theory, a smart enough IR camera should be able to notice something very warm indeed is getting rapidly brighter as it approaches you. In practice, these don't exist, or don't work. "Oh yeah they didn't have those when I was in, but they totally have them now" for the last 30 years. Apparently, not yet in 2026.
I find it unfortunate that people who do this for a living can't legally comment, people who do this for a hobby are not asked or actively ignored despite extensive practical experience, and people who mostly have a grift of looking authoritative for legacy media get automatic blind belief despite sometimes spouting total nonsense. This is the typical journalistic response in ALL disaster situations not just military aviation.
>I can assure you from having flown around a lot, if you are wildly outnumbered 3 SU-27 (err, F15) to your 1 F-18 you do not attempt a radar lock you do an IR only attack. The article mentions getting a radar lock first but that is unnecessary for IR guided weapons and in a 3-1 situation will just get you shot down.
Slaving heatseekers to radar is the standard way of employing them. I reckon by "having flown around" you're referring to DCS, which is absolutely unrealistic when it comes to engagements.
>Clearly any passive IR detector thats theorized to exist for years either doesn't exist or doesn't work very well. In theory, a smart enough IR camera should be able to notice something very warm indeed is getting rapidly brighter as it approaches you. In practice, these don't exist, or don't work. "Oh yeah they didn't have those when I was in, but they totally have them now" for the last 30 years. Apparently, not yet in 2026.
MAWS exist and they're employed on a lot of aircraft. I don't believe Strike Eagles have them though. An F-35 would get a missile warning for a heatseeker, it's not science fiction technology for quite a while now.
>I find it unfortunate that people who do this for a living can't legally comment, people who do this for a hobby are not asked or actively ignored despite extensive practical experience, and people who mostly have a grift of looking authoritative for legacy media get automatic blind belief despite sometimes spouting total nonsense.
You don't get practical experience by playing flight simulators, it's not comparable to how planes are employed as weapons systems.
Defensive warning: AN/AAR-57
Countermeasure AN/ALE-47
I don't think they had radar lock, I think they were firing IR missiles. They wouldn't have had much time to respond, and IR missiles are normally much smaller than beyond visual range radar missiles, which would explain how all 6 pilots survived.
Rumor is there was a problem with the IFF identification system sync. If that's true, the Kuwaiti pilot just saw 3 jets coming into their airspace with no IFF working, under a very compressed timeframe with lots of inbound UAS and potentially aircraft.
"AN/AAR-57" Yes the small yellow subwoofer looking things that people speculate endlessly about. Supposedly BAE systems marketing released a picture of the whole system LOL, who needs spies if you have a marketing dept, also supposedly just about everything about this is classified. They supposedly come in four packs and there are "many" public pictures of them one under each cockpit rail on the F15 and the other two are unknown location? Or maybe the mythology online that they come in four packs is false and they actually come in two packs which seems more likely. Plausibly they install 4-packs on helicopters not fixed wing.
I could see some logic in not putting cams pointing forward because theoretically the pilot is looking where they're going and not putting one facing back because flight time to impact is so low they can't evade anyway, but a side attack is survivable if detected early enough... Also facing back they're going to be "seeing" their own exhaust most of the time.
The total non-reaction by the pilots in the public videos would indicate that if those planes even had -57s they were not working or not working well enough to matter or not working fast enough to matter.
I would agree some monster sized BVR missile will be easier to detect. In practice does it matter if the missile detector works at short range if the attacker would likely be in guns mode at short enough range anyway?
My theory is Iran is jamming the link16 iff.
Saw some unsubstantiated claims that the planes shot down didn't even have it on
That is the basis for my theory. Not being on
And
Being on but jammed look the same from the perspective of the one shooting them down.
Also, I wonder how resilient it is to the gps spoofing that been going on. If they managed to trick it into identifying itself as a few hundred miles from where it actually was, then very hard to know where it actually is.
All of which is well within Irans technical capabilities.
Highly unlikely. Highly.
Why? Specs for link16 jamming have been circulating since before the invasion of ukraine, there is a whole DoD technical report dedicated to trying to update it knocking around somewhere.
Iran claim to have used it to bring down US drones in the past.(1)
1. https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1215/Exclus...
That link is about GPS spoofing, not Link 16 jamming, those are two different radio systems and two different attacks.
What are the chances Russian jets were involved and it needed to be hidden?
> This is the latest video to have emerged from the extraordinary incident earlier this week in which a Kuwaiti Air Force F/A-18 Hornet was responsible for shooting down three U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles.
Why is the US using such dated planes?
They're not really the same planes, they've been continually upgraded over time. For another example, The B-52 strategic bomber is being used right now and but it was also operational during the Korean war. However, the B-52s flying today are very different than the ones flying back then. Another way to think about it is a computer with an old case but upgraded mb, cpu, and ram.
F-15E Strike Eagles have advanced avionics and can and continue to use advanced missiles. They can serve in multiple roles including target identification, aerial combat, and of course air-to-air interception and ground attack roles.
Same thing with the F-18.
Eventually of course all of these weapons platforms will be phased out, but for the time being they are still extremely useful, and even more so after the more advanced aircraft and other attack vectors have taken out or limited air defense capabilities or the ability for enemy aircraft to intercept these aircraft. Not that they can't handle their own, anyway.
Much of the F-15E fleet is still in relatively good condition. Most other airframes are even older on average. Over the past couple decades most funding went to more urgent GWOT priorities and almost everything else was under capitalized to the point where older aircraft are literally cracking and falling apart.
The F-15 family is kind of best-in-class still. It is an agile jet with a lot of weapons. As for the E variant, we tend to just run them until the airframe ages out.
These aircraft are maintained pretty well. They have explicit refresh cycles where they're taken to depots and pretty much torn apart and then rebuilt. The electronics also get refreshed over time with newer components (not just newer versions of old components or refurbished components, but new electronics and computer systems). It's not like they're still frozen in time at whatever version was initially put out 50 years ago.
Because they still work.
The F-15E has received several service upgrades in its lifetime and has served as the base platform for most F-15 variants sold to other nations over the last decade or so. It's far from dated. They make new ones in St. Louis.