[zeristor]

According to Wikipedia, most recently shot down aircraft have been helicopters falling to small arms, or course Wikipedia is dependent on what people write, but as far as I can tell there aren't that many jets being shot down by IR missiles.

Unless that is your point of course

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_shootdowns#Ir...

[lazyguy]

USA hasn't really fought people capable of shooting down jets in a while. So the latest is generally the early 1990's with the combat in Iraq.

The only stealth plane shot down that I am aware of was a F-117 shot down by short range SAM in the Kosovo war in 1999. It was a older 1960's missile design. Probably due to a large part of combination of dumb luck on the side of the SAM operator and the Airforce being lazy and having the jet fly predictable routine routes.

[ceejayoz]

Definitely some dumb luck - they managed to catch it with the bomb bay doors open, which increased its radar signature dramatically.

[liability]

I wouldn't call that 'luck' per se on account of the Americans apparently flying like that habitually, as well as sticking to predictable flight plans. It's not like the Serbs fired into the blue on a whim and were shocked when they hit something.

[NikolaeVarius]

Yeah, highlights issue of being so damn good, you get complacent

[imtringued]

That's the lazy part.

[wbl]

It was not dumb luck. He placed his site where he knew the doors were more likely to be open and hence increase the signature, and waited for that moment to switch on the radar and fire the shot.

[walrus01]

Most recent combat environments (Iraq war post-invasion, and Afghanistan) were not contested air space. The US has always had air superiority over those regions and the ability to fly AWACS planes, Predators, Reapers, Global Hawks and a whole bunch of other stuff around with very little risk of getting shot down.

Aircraft operating low to the ground and on approach to small airfields, and helicopters, are of course vulnerable to short range rifle fire and MANPADs. There have been losses to that in Afghanistan.

Modern NATO-equipped militaries haven't really encountered a semi modern air defense system since the brief bombing campaign against Serbia, in which they did manage to lose a F117 to a SAM.

[nostrademons]

Interesting how many of the fixed-wing shootdowns since the Gulf War were shot down by equipment made by the same geopolitical block (either NATO-on-NATO or Soviet-on-Soviet), either in the sense of literal friendly-fire accidents, or two regional combatants both being supplied by the same superpower. Turkish F-16 shot down by Greek Mirage 2000. British Tornado shot down by U.S. Patriot. A-10 shot down by Iraqi Roland. Georgian Hermes-450 shot down by Russian Mig-29. Russian Tu-22 shot down by Georgian Buk-M1. Ukrainian Su-27 shot down by Russian Su-27. Ukrainian Mig-29 shot down by Buk. That's practically all of the combat jets on the list.

[ceejayoz]

That may just be a factor of modern warfare being largely one side with near-absolute air superiority in an area pounding on largely defenseless ground troops.

The first Gulf War saw nearly half of coalition casualties being from friendly fire.