[MarkMarine]

Military aviators train for this, being alone behind enemy lines (look up SERE school if you’re curious, one of the craziest training courses outside of special forces) and there is a special force just for aviator recovery behind enemy lines, US AirForce Pararescue. Hopefully they’ll get the aviators back quickly, the last thing our country needs is American hostages making this ridiculous war harder to stop.

[pram]

TBH I went through SERE school (aircrew) and I questioned its value, since the training is in eastern Washington/northern Idaho area mountainous woodland environment and all the evasion they showed us relied on that kind of cover and "bushcraft"

And you know, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran are definitely not eastern Washington lol

[eddieh]

Iran isn't just central Tehran. Look up the Zagros Mountains and the Alborz Mountains. Or just look at a picture of the northern Tehran skyline, it is at the foot of the Alborz, a huge mountain range. There's plenty of woodlands and forest too. Some parts of the Hyrcanian forests get over 50 inches of annual rainfall, which isn't Forks, WA, but it is substantial.

[overfeed]

You're reinforcing parents point by highlighting the variety: at most, just 1 of the areas is a close match to the terrain at the training grounds.

[eddieh]

Not really, if you're entering Iranian airspace from the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, or Europe, you're flying over either the Zagros Mountains or the Alborz Mountains. Unless you crash/eject in a city, you're almost certainly going to be in the mountains. Look at a map.

[ericmay]

You'd get additional specific training for deployments and the skills are transferrable. But obviously they can't train everyone in every biome that we have, otherwise you'd spend a whole year just flying around to different areas of the country to train and on a 4-year contract it's just not going to work time-wise.

[ambicapter]

If you're doing SERE school you're probably not on a 4 year contract. Pilots have 10 year contracts.

[budman1]

some enlisted air crew go to SERE. loadmasters, airborne intelligence, and SMA (Special Mission Aviators).

As an added benefit, enlisted air crew have no restrictions on mustache length or on professional wear of the uniform.

[MarkMarine]

Add Huey crew chiefs to this list

[cactusfrog]

Eastern Washington has a lot of hot desert

[pram]

Washington indeed has a giant desert but it's in the middle fwiw, the SERE school is in Spokane

[Manuel_D]

Spokane is in the Eastern arid region of the state.

[pram]

What an absolutely pointless thing to get pedantic about. Put "spokane washington" into Google images and tell me if that looks like a desert to you.

[Manuel_D]

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Yud6EFprZeaVDaeQ6

This is the view outside of Fairchild AFB, which runs the training course in question.

Wikipedia reports that Spokane has a Mediterranean climate, as does Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province where this F-15 is reported to have been shot down.

[hedgehog]

They're also wrong. The geographic center (around Ellensburg or so) is also in what is known as Eastern WA (east of the Cascades).

[cbron]

Spokane is not desert. Even surrounding territory is more plains. Some desert military training happens at Yakima much further west.

[s0rce]

Eastern WA is mostly open sagebrush (or farms) they were just in the wrong part of it.

Source: lived there.

[boogieknite]

far from pc but i grew up hunting along the snake and the old guys always called those hills "Bin Ladens" bc it looked like the pictures of where news reported he was hiding

[burnt-resistor]

Sounds like typical one-sized-fits-all, checkbox military nonsense. Perhaps there are better and/or climate-specific SERE courses in one or more services? Because if it's ineffective, it's a waste of time and money more so than usual and puts expensive-to-replace personnel at risk.

Seems like it's all about vacating the area and busting out the CSEL (or NGSR when materialized) personal SAR comms is the best way out, or it may well turn into a weeks(s) long, nonstop spy-shit ordeal getting out. Perhaps some forethought and packing with knowledge and specific local-appropriate items (and chunk of cash) would help more than MIL-STD Walmart camping aisle prepper bullshit.

[rchaud]

> American hostages

Military personnel captured as prisoners of war are not hostages. Unlike embassy personnel held hostage during the 1979 revolution, it's unclear if military POWs have any value to leverage against the US, considering how its leader feels about about "people who get captured" and "they knew what they signed up for". We're only hearing about this so the administration can get ahead of the narrative instead of Iran. Otherwise, it's doing everything it can to hide information about the cost of war in terms of monetary cost and casualties.

The hostages here are the so-called "allies" in the Arab world who received no notice of the invasion and were sitting ducks for wide-scale regional retaliation from Iran due to them hosting US bases.

[bigbugbag]

to have POW, you first need to have a W, but to have a W you need to go through appropriate legal channels which trump has specifically avoided to be able to launch this collection of war crimes assaulting foreign countries along israel and causing havoc on a global scale.

[ilovecake1984]

Given the war is illegal I don’t think they are POWs.

[LtWorf]

Yeah I guess they'd legally just be terrorists.

[lokar]

Do they train for a “no quarter“ conflict where injured or surrendered combatants are killed?

[MarkMarine]

No, we actually train to be tortured and held if caught, but everyone knows the risks before you take off. Captured marines or soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’re clear eyed about it.

[croes]

And lied to about the reasons of the war.

Now they even lie about it being a war, while they claim they have already won the war, that isn’t a war.

[MarkMarine]

Every war since Korea, we’re very used to this.

[surgical_fire]

The other wars were woke. This is not a woke war.

I wish I was joking.

[MarkMarine]

I know you're not.

I've found that most of our population has almost no connection to the people that actually fight wars, and therefore have no idea what they think. With the exception of a few criminals, none of us desire to commit war crimes. None of us want to send rounds into civilian infrastructure, seeing regular people struggle to get food, fuel, and water in Iraq did not make me feel powerful and it was obvious it did not advance our goals on the ground.

The jingoistic commentary people hear from politicians and former military podcasters that don't fight anymore is repugnant, and this backsliding in the (at least attempt at) honorable execution of war is not going to bode well for our country. It's probably trite when we're double tapping girl's schools, but I want to think that purposely striking civilian infrastructure, universities, hospitals, water resources... this was all something "we" didn't do.

This is actively devaluing the meaning of being a Marine. Maybe this already happened in Mai Lai, maybe this was further chipped away by Abu Ghraib, maybe letting Eddie Gallagher off... etc etc. But this feels different in a way I've never felt before.

[ray__]

Care to elaborate on this?

[cjbgkagh]

It’s not not woke, it’s wokeness of a different kind. They exclude those who disagree with their brand of orthodoxy, it seems like to me they’re firing anyone who says no to the ground invasion.

[themafia]

Maybe you shouldn't be.

[hunter-gatherer]

As he said. Military members are pretty clear eyed about things.

[bulbar]

... But conducted by the self proclaimed Department of War.

[Lerc]

Interesting, I had interpreted their comment to be asking if they were trained to carry out a no-quarter order.

[KaiserPro]

Unless I missed something, Only Hegseth was promising no quarter (ie war crimes)

[angry_octet]

We should be clear that Hegseth is not an officer in the US military, and this is clearly an illegal order. The fact that he has fired the JAGs who would tell him that is unsurprising, but does not change the facts. Any such killings would expose the individuals to a USMCJ Article 118 charge.

[swyx]

he what? this is on the record?

[gherkinnn]

From 2024:

"In 2024’s The War on Warriors, Hegseth argues at length that US forces should ignore the Geneva conventions and other elements of international law governing the conduct of war."

“'What if we treated the enemy the way they treated us?” he asks. “Would that not be an incentive for the other side to reconsider their barbarism? Hey, Al Qaeda: if you surrender, we might spare your life. If you do not, we will rip your arms off and feed them to hogs.'”

He wrote a book in which he openly advocates for war crimes. Maybe, just maybe, it pays to believe him.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/25/pete-hegseth...

[ExoticPearTree]

Yes, he said it in front of reporters at a Pentagon briefing.

[piperswe]

https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4434...

> Our response? We will keep pressing. We will keep pushing, keep advancing, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.

[KaiserPro]

https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4434...

> Our response? We will keep pressing. We will keep pushing, keep advancing, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.

March 13, 2026

[tootie]

He probably said "no quarter" because it sounds cool and doesn't really know what it means. The most ironic part is how he is an avowed Christian warrior and says "no mercy" when mercy figures pretty prominently in Christianity.

[andrewflnr]

For what it's worth, he probably didn't know what he was saying.

(slop has been around longer than LLMs)

[alkonaut]

It’s the one constant about this administration: you’re always wondering ”is this incompetence by not knowing what they’re saying or incompetence where they know what they’re saying”

[voganmother42]

What is this worth?

[andrewflnr]

Dark comedy mostly.

[rbanffy]

Hegseth is not in charge of the Iranian military.

[estearum]

Right but the reason we have rules against people declaring no quarter is to prevent a race to the bottom. It is absolutely reasonable to respond to a no quarter declaration in kind, which is... again... the entire reason we have prohibitions on it.

[lokar]

But he did publicly declare his intention to commit war crimes.

[estearum]

Actually even just declaring no quarter is itself a war crime.

[KaiserPro]

Hes also liable for the death sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 2441 — War Crimes Act (1996) & 10 U.S.C. § 950t — Military Commissions Act (more relevent)

[lokar]

They won't face any US law. AIUI, they have been getting letters from the DOJ office of legal counsel that say it's legal. This effectively immunizes them (the DOJ can't turn around and charge you with a crime, if they advised you beforehand it was not a crime).

The best shot would be to turn them over to the ICC

[asdff]

We've already committed several war crimes.

[two_handfuls]

In case anyone else doubted this, I will save you the time to look it up. Yup, it's sadly true.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/hegseth-no-quarter-interna...

[lokar]

Yep. And war crime seems to have lost all meaning in the US.

But, even if you dismiss the idea of international standards, this is clearly very bad for US soldiers (and sailors, airmen, etc). I wonder if they see that.

[jMyles]

> But, even if you dismiss the idea of international standards, this is clearly very bad for US soldiers (and sailors, airmen, etc). I wonder if they see that.

Even if you dismiss the idea of international standards, a no-quarter declaration is against _US law_, specifically subject to the penalty of death with no other lawful penalty defined: https://www.govregs.com/uscode/title18_partI_chapter118_sect....

[anigbrowl]

American hostages

Poor choice of words. Hostage taking is illegal, but any captured US aviators would be prisoners of war, whose detention is entirely legal as long as they're treated humanely.

[ilovecake1984]

It’s an illegal war. They are not pows.

[tokai]

Prisoner of war, not hostage.

edit: I'm baffled by the amount of downvotes pointing out the objectively correct terminology can get. Its not a matter of opinion, military personnel captured by the enemy are pow no matter their treatment. A hostage, by definition, has been abducted.

[ks2048]

Not a Prisoner of War - a Prisoner of a limited military excursion.

[RobotToaster]

Prisoner of a three day military operation.

[butlike]

It's more of a 'romp' than an 'excursion,' if you will.

[andrewflnr]

I don't know what definition of "hostage" you're using, but practically speaking, a hostage is what you make of them.

[jimnotgym]

I guess the down goes is because war has not been declared? Therefore they captured a what, war criminal, foreign terrorist?

[postsantum]

> He was kidnapped from his warplane

[spwa4]

That is assuming Iran holds itself to the Geneva conventions, which ... seems like an extremely risky bet to make.

[n2j3]

We are expecting Iran to honour an International Convention when US and Israel have squarely shat on every convention's face, so to speak.

[bz_bz_bz]

The person you’re replying to is very explicitly not expecting them to honor the International Convention…

[n2j3]

The funny thing is that I am, even if that puts me in the naive minority in this thread.

[cestith]

As a matter of fact, if Iran comes out of the war having not committed war crimes they’ll have a huge worldwide moral and public image victory over the United States and Israel.

[hackable_sand]

It's not naive to have adult expectations for adults

[nemomarx]

Prisoner exchanges are a pretty strong motivator for any group, even hardline ones. If the Taliban was up for exchanges I think the IRGC is pretty likely to want to keep prisoners for that too.

[mothballed]

I would note ISIS put out some high res, professionally edited video of burning a (Jordanian?) pilot to death while inside a cage. Quite savage, but the propaganda effect is more profound than about anything else I've seen.

[spwa4]

Yes, after that video it was clear that Daesh and everyone in their little caliphate would be hunted down. And it was, they were. They were attacked everywhere they tried to return to. From minor girls returning to the Netherlands to 45 year old men (trying to) return to South Africa, all were persecuted, and that one video had a lot to do with that happening. After that video, even muslim nations started hunting these people.

[potatototoo99]

And yet, they are still around, made famous and split into separate groups, still actively fighting on multiple fronts all over Africa. And if the Iranian government falls for sure they will be coming back with a vengeance in the area.

[craftkiller]

Does the US have any prisoners to exchange? Wouldn't we need boots-on-the-ground to capture enemy combatants?

[nemomarx]

Israel probably has some prisoners that Iran might want released, is my thinking?

[tenthirtyam]

They're going back to the stone age, remember? The Geneva convention wasn't around then AFAICR.

[thinkingtoilet]

The US doesn't hold itself to the conventions, why should the country it started a war of aggression with?

[rbanffy]

If you throw away your principles because you are fighting an unprincipled enemy, you are no better than them.

[kelnos]

That's a lovely thing to say, but if your existence is being threatened by an aggressor, I wouldn't blame you for throwing out the rulebook.

In my view, if someone invades your territory and starts attacking you, you have no obligation to follow any sort of "principles" or "rules" when it comes to how you fight back. Anything you need to do to the attackers in order to defend yourself and your people is, by definition, morally defensible.

(Do note that I said "need". Doing arbitrary messed-up things that don't actually further the goal of driving back the attackers is not ok.)

[decimalenough]

FWIW, during the Iran-Iraq war (where Iraq invaded Iran), Iran used a bunch of pretty questionable tactics like suicide squads of child soldiers.

[saimiam]

It’s such a shock to the system to realise that “unprincipled enemy” referenced here is the US.

[rbanffy]

And it seems interesting a lot of people seem to be completely oblivious to it.

[thinkingtoilet]

There is no if. We've already done that. So yes, we are no better than them. So answer the question. Why would Iran follow conventions it's enemy that started a war of aggression is not following?

[ofrzeta]

Becaus two wrongs don't make right. If they are smart they will stick to the convention.

[nerfbatplz]

They tried restraint and proportionality for decades and where did that get them? 47 years of non-stop aggression, espionage, sanctions and the mass deaths of Iranian civilians.

[epolanski]

America has never played by the rules.

US exceptionalism is a prominent feature of every republican and democratic president since decades.

It's sad, because if US did, and led by example, it could've pulled serious weight internationally on plenty of matters.

Instead it can only do so by economic or military leverage, which, at the end of the day is not enough of a leverage to avoid confrontation.

[nprz]

What has Iran done to show it would not uphold Geneva conventions?

[hajile]

When they struck desalination plants in Bahrain would be an easy example. You can say that they are retaliatory strikes, but they are certainly against the Geneva Conventions.

Iran's use of cluster munitions to attack swaths of Israeli cities is also against the Geneva Convention (though I'd again point out that we started hitting civilian targets in Iran first).

Both sides have violated the conventions, but the US and Israel have violated them to a much greater degree (especially Israel and all their attacks on Lebanese civilians not to mention razing Gaza).

[Tadpole9181]

Especially after the double-tap on civilians and first responders the US just did on that bridge. Or the threat for no quarters from the secretary of defense. Or the threats to destroy critical civilian infrastructure for water or power.

[empyrrhicist]

Or Hegseth running his mouth about exactly this issue...

[anigbrowl]

I have a LOT more trust in Iran following the Geneva conventions than I do the US.

[surgical_fire]

Maybe Iran is more civilized than the Barbarians attacking them.

We have to wait and see if Iran is fighting a woke war.

[rbanffy]

Hegseth explicitly ordered to give the enemy “no quarter”.

[tjpnz]

Why wouldn't they?

[spwa4]

First: count the responses to my thread of people suggesting Iran cannot/should not be held to the Geneva convention: 4,5 (I'm counting the Hegseth comment as 0.5)

The point is there are a great deal of people, even in the US, who advocate that it is unreasonable to hold people fighting the west in general and US in particular to the Geneva conventions. I don't know where this idea comes from, because morally it is of course indefensible, but there you go.

I would expect the number to be bigger in Iran. I would expect the number among IRGC extremists to be even higher than in Iran in general.

Second: war crimes have 2 interpretations. First as violations of the Rome treaty which require that the state where the warcrimes happen has signed the Rome treaty. Iran hasn't.

The second interpretation of warcrimes is that they are violations of the Geneva conventions, and the reaction would be that the UN security council intervenes. Well, the UNSC has preemptively declared they will not hold Iran to account for warcrimes (to be exact: France, Russia and China have declared they will veto). So at minimum you can say that Iranian warcrimes will not have any "official" consequences.

The world and the UN have decided that warcrimes "don't count". As in there will not be any consequences unless the government of the country where they happened implements those consequences.

Third: Iran has already kidnapped a US civilian (a reporter, Shelly Kittleson) and are holding her hostage. This is already a violation of the Geneva convention. They have also kidnapped hundreds of foreign nationals of other nations and are also holding them for ransom, which is also a violation of human rights, ie. a warcrime.

So those are my three reasons Iran won't hold itself to human rights standards.

[watwut]

France vetoed proposal about opening the straight by force. France and Europe in general dont want to dragged into this war.

Also, I dont see UN punishing Israel or American war crimes either ... so it makes sense to not apply "whatever goes" standard to aggressors and different one to the defender.

[hvb2]

> Iran has already kidnapped a US civilian (a reporter, Shelly Kittleson) and are holding her hostage.

Expect there to be a lot of operatives of the US in Iran. Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it wouldn't be the first time a CIA or something operative is caught and this is the cover.

In war the first victim is always the truth

[sokitsip]

Iranians have dignity. Something American top brass doesn’t even know the meaning of.

[spwa4]

You mean the army shooting 40.000 protestors just 2 months ago including 1000+ children, then executed a child that won an international wrestling competition, now accusing everyone else of warcrimes?

I think I'll need some reeducation on this concept of "dignity" you speak. Could you explain further?

[RobotToaster]

Reprisals are legally permitted to a limited extent if you're a victim of war crimes, as Iran is.

[NickC25]

...but we aren't at war, according to the President and his secretary of Defense (war).

what a fucking mess.

[MarkMarine]

It’s a “well, actually” and counter to the HN guidelines

[bobchadwick]

There's a significant difference between a hostage and a prisoner of war, and in this context that distinction seems highly relevant.

[tokai]

Only for someone breaking the guideline of "Assume good faith".

[MarkMarine]

I didn’t downvote you, but a terse “well actually it’s prisoner of war” doesn’t really add to the conversation. Imagine doing that in person, you’d annoy everyone around you. If you explained why it’s distinct and what that might mean for downed crew I think it wouldn’t have been down voted

[cromka]

No, they wouldn't annoy everyone around them, that's just your subjective projection. I, for one, found it an important distinction that highlights how easy it is to skew a narrative towards a more sympathetic one. It saw it as having similar value to those Instagram posts juxtaposing headlines reporting on "dead Palestinians" vs "killed Israeli victims".

[bambax]

> making this ridiculous war harder to stop

If the US military would like this war to stop they could not fight it, that would be pretty easy I think. Probably not without consequences, but that would show actual courage. Whereas dropping bombs on civilian from afar shows zero.

[asdff]

If they landed anywhere near a town they are probably captured. The kuwait video from the f15 that was hit with friendly fire was crazy. Like 6 suvs worth of locals immediately surrounded this guy and they were threatening to beat him with a galvanized pipe.

[nielsbot]

Relevant: This is a very interesting read:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5150259-u-s-air-force-su...

[tootie]

Seems like a good time to dust off Trump's policy on POWs

“He’s not a war hero ... I like people who weren’t captured.”

[voganmother42]

US FEMA has been working on hand of god teleportation for this exact situation. We need to search the waffle houses first thing

[steve-atx-7600]

Wouldn’t it be wiser and more considerate to your fellow soldiers to pull your side arm and go out like a man. Unless you’re able to nose dive into the ground to minimize the chances of useful parts/intel being recovered by the enemy?

[trvz]

Lookong forward to you going out like a man when retiring so you’re not a burden on society.

[steve-atx-7600]

I’d be the last to burden anyone else.