U.S. CONFIRMS Iran's Air Defense TARGETED This F-35 Over the Hormuz with an Iranian Anti-Aircraft Missile
THIS IS BIG. Iran's Air Defenses play games with U.S. Jets now... Explains why they WON'T Enter the Airspace
U.S Official to Axios:
One incident that raised concern in recent days was the launch of an Iranian anti-aircraft missile toward a U.S. F-35 fighter jet that was providing cover to ships in the strait, a U.S. official said.
While the missile didn't come close enough to be a threat, it was a signal that Iran is trying to reconstitute its military capacity, according to the U.S. official.
The real game changer of SAM system is Majid-08. That system having IR/EO tracker It is completely passive. Also the missile seeker It is IR. And the IR plume of the F35 It is large when the pilot detect with their EOTS the engine of the missile incoming.
But the bottleneck It is that the system only has 8 km of range. Azarakash could reach 10 km and if Irán deploy It in large number It Will be a matter of time to shoot down one of those chubby fighters.
The top speed of the F35 is less than a half of an F15. Their acceleration It is much less and therefore for a IR missile the chances are higher than with a F15 or Typhoon that have a much higher top speed.
The 3-Khordad or other systems have a big problem with the F35. They are equipped with a Band X radar illuminator and that fighters It is specifically designed to be stealth to this band.
In any case, you can modulate the radar's power and fine-tune the search area—perhaps even detecting an F-35 at a range of a few tens of kilometers.
Yet, even then, the US F-35—which urgently acquired MBDA BriteCloud decoys in December 2025 (right in the middle of the war)—employs small emitters that trail a couple of hundred meters behind the aircraft; these return the exact same radar illumination signal sent by the 3 Khordad, causing the Sayyad missile to home in on the decoy instead of ever reaching the launching aircraft.
The only real way for the 3 Khordad to be effective against the F-35 is to equip the Sayyad missile with an auxiliary IR guidance system, similar to the one found on the US Navy's SM-2 IIIC missiles.
Given that both this US missile and the Sayyad family originate from the SM-1—a system Iran knows inside out—it is only a matter of time before Iran develops an inertial/IR version of the Sayyad and gives those "iron birds" a real scare.
Anyway I agree with you and told Shapurll two days ago that In a form or another, Irán managed to deny the airspace to USAF and US Navy. They avoid entering iranian airspace.