Sounds like a KC-135 collided with a receiver aircraft today and went down in Iraq. Here’s the official statement from CENTCOM:
”TAMPA, Fla. – U.S. Central Command is aware of the loss of a U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft. The incident occurred in friendly airspace during Operation Epic Fury, and rescue efforts are ongoing. Two aircraft were involved in the incident. One of the aircraft went down in western Iraq, and the second landed safely.
This was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire.
More information will be made available as the situation develops. We ask for continued patience to gather additional details and provide clarity for the families of service members.”
I heard 7 a few hours ago. What I find so unsettling about this conflict–aside from the conflict itself–is the near media blackout in comparison to other conflicts. I remember growing up through Iraq 2.0 and Afghanistan and seeing non-stop footage and updates. But now it’s hard to find verifiable info, there’s so much AI slop being passed off as real, and figureheads that are supposed to be keeping us informed are going on strange rants, dodging questions, and sometimes outright lying…
That could be because what I am hearing is that there is ‘no good news’ coming out of this war.
It is basically playing out exactly as the experts predicted. The only positive is that we have confirmed that Iran didn’t have nukes… If they did, they would have used them by now!
I’ve been pretty impressed on the quality of reporting on the subject from WSJ. They don’t seem to be reactionary or an echo chamber, but wait until stories have been properly vetted before releasing.
My sources are definitely not trustworthy… half of them owe me beer
That said, we are getting pretty balanced reporting here and we have already proved that we can have robust but respectful discussion in the talk category.
Japanese news hasn’t really been covering it outside of requests for Japan to get involved, so my sources tend to be Reddit and Twitter. Reddit just links to Reuters, WSJ, et. al. so it’s fairly easy to sift through multiple sources. Then there’s r/combatfootage for unfiltered video. Twitter is a crapshoot that has everything from reliable info and authentic video to alarmism and propaganda. I’d say about 75% of video on Twitter claiming to be missiles hitting Israel is AI generated, but the real footage I’ve seen on r/combatfootage doesn’t seem to be making it to the mainstream news elsewhere.
It’s an information nightmare between the Iran internet blackout and the Arab states jailing people for having missile footage on their phones. There’s certainly heavy censorship unrelated to OPSEC going on. I argue the censorship is hurting things more than helping, as it creates a vacuum for all the AI, alarmism, and propaganda to dominate.
