U.S. Stealth Fighters Flew to Commandos’ Rescue in Syria
Regime warplanes bombing Kurds and nearby U.S. troops turned around when Raptors arrived
by ROBERT BECKHUSEN
When Syrian warplanes bombed Kurdish fighters around the city of Hasaka on Thursday, their bombs came so close that U.S. commandos feared for their lives. The special operations troops were there assisting the Syrian-Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG.
So the United States scrambled F-22 Raptors — which came within a mile of the Syrian planes.
These stealthy jets are the best air-to-air interceptors in the world and pose an intimidating show of force. Washington has regularly deployed the fighters to provide air cover for U.S. forces in Syria.
No one fired a shot and the Syrian planes flew home, but the close encounter as
reported by Reuters is one of the riskiest near-clashes between U.S. and Syrian forces in the war.
The U.S. jets first arrived in Hasaka as two Syrian Su-24s were leaving after a bombing mission on Aug. 18. The Americans on the ground, among hundreds of crack troops working alongside Kurdish forces in northern Syria, were
close enough to feel the detonating bombs.
Reuters reported that the Su-24s were already heading home by the time the U.S. planes arrived.
Then on Aug. 19, two Syrian jets — it’s not clear if they were the same ones as before — arrived and encountered the F-22s. Coming within one mile, well within range of the Raptors’ missiles, the Syrian jets turned around and “left without incident,” Reuters reported citing Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis.
The Su-24s are older, Soviet-era ground attack planes and would have been no match for the stealth Raptors, which are primarily designed to kill other aircraft. The attacks on the Syrian-Kurdish forces “is very unusual, we have not seen the regime take this kind of action against YPG before,” Davis told Reuters.
Throughout, the Pentagon was desperately communicating with the Russian military trying to sort out whose jets were bombing Hasaka. The Russians responded that they were not theirs, so the Americans told them to order the Syrians to knock it off — or be shot down.
F-22 Raptors. U.S. Air Force photos
Hasaka contains a regime enclave surrounded on all sides by Kurdish forces, and it rests deep within the autonomous Kurdish region of Rojava. Both Kurdish and regime troops have navigated an uneasy relationship for years, and fought on the
same side to expel the Islamic State from the area last year.
But as the two sides began fighting this week, the Syrian government accused the Kurdish forces of trying to take over, and “stealing cotton, oil, kidnapping civilians, and spread chaos,” a statement from the Syrian Arab Army read.
The Kurdish YPG accused the “totalitarian regime in Hasaka” of conspiring with the Turkish government to undermine the Kurds’ democratic system.
This isn’t the first time Raptors played tag with foreign jets in the Middle East. In early 2013, F-22s intercepted two
Iranian F-4 Phantoms that approached an American drone over the Persian Gulf. The Raptors outright
taunted the Iranians, with one stealth fighter flying underneath an F-4 to eyeball its payload before pulling up on its left wing.
The F-4s flew home.
Raptors were also present for the
opening air strikes on the Islamic State’s strongholds in Syria in September 2014. The stealthy, radar-evading warplanes joined waves of U.S. and allied bombers on the first night — and the F-22s carried out their first combat mission
ever near Tishrin Dam by dropping 1,000-pound guided bombs on the terror group’s positions.
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But mainly, the stealth fighters have provided cover for their less-than-stealthy counterparts. In January 2015, F-22s
escorted Jordanian planes on revenge strikes after a Jordanian pilot was shot down and executed by the Islamic State on camera.
As destabilizing as a clash between America and Syria in the skies would be, a dogfight between U.S. and
Russian aircraft would be even worse. We’ve come terrifyingly close to witnessing it.
In June, U.S. F/A-18 fighters
intercepted two Russian Su-34s — an advanced multi-role warplane — after the Russian planes bombed a training camp for U.S.-backed rebels. And there was the Turkish F-16 which shot down a Russian Su-24, the same type of aircraft warned away by the F-22s this week, which ruptured relations between Ankara and Moscow.