Why not more than two?
U.S. Tells Allies Iran Has Sent Ballistic Missiles to Russia - Wall Street Journal, 6 September 2024
European officials say Europe and U.S. are working on a sanctions response to Iran’s move
time for your 23rd round of sanctions everyone!
The shipment involves a couple of hundred short-range ballistic missiles, according to Western officials. Iran has a variety of such weapons, with a range stretching up to around 500 miles.
As for why Iran has all these short range missiles and Russia and the US don't, it has to do with nuclear restrictions during the cold war. So research on short range ballistic missiles did not take place. Iran was obviously not part of those treaties and restrictions.
A graphic with the range of the Iranian SRBMs over Ukraine when launched from Russian territory.
US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin stated that greenlighting deep strikes in Russia with US weapons will not be decisive, and that the US will instead focus on helping Ukraine defend its territory.
Source: U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Discusses Weapon Use in Ukraine Conflict
Seems like Russia has a redline that the US and NATO finally won't cross. Might have to do with the fact that Russia threatened to arm Ansar Allah/The Houthis with advanced weaponry in a potential response. Export controls on advanced weaponry that have existed since the cold war are there for a reason. The US choosing to break those agreements woud have opened the doors to a new reality that they are unprepared to deal with at the moment, as there would be no reason for Russia to follow such controls if the US does not. A diplomatic win for Russia.
I heard the only anti-air happening in Ukraine right now was in Kiev and Kursk.
With the widespread Russian missile attacks that have been hitting as far west as Lviv, I'd doubt that. The F-16 was reportedly downed during one of these attacks. The F-16s are suspected to be based out of Ivano-Frankivsk, based on geolocation of Ukrainian propaganda videos. RIA Novosti also reported that Russia hit a hangar there where they suspected the F-16s were stored.
I actually read an interesting theory on that. Zelensky has a propagandist that he uses to set the official narrative in Ukraine. This propagandist made up the story about the F-16 being shot down in a friendly fire incident by a patriot missile. The head of the air force called out this fake story. Thus, he had to be fired by Zelensky.
Yes that's the record SAM kill. But 200km is not enough range to strike fighters in Western Ukraine, where the F-16s were suspected to be operating at. You'd need 600+km of range to do that.
Of course, my comment is more on the tone of the article and the fact that the F-16s were suspected to be operating far away from the frontlines, so a direct shoot down sounds unlikely to me.
The main problem is how far away from the frontlines the F-16s were suspected to be operating from. This makes a SAM kill basically impossible, Russia would've had to sneak a full air defence system hundreds of kilometres into Ukraine beyond the frontline to achieve such. That means that the only possibility would be an air to air kill, and while Russia has long range air to air R-37 missiles with a maximum range of over 320km/200 miles in testing, this would still require Russian fighter jets to fly deep into Ukraine's territory without being detected or shot down to achieve such a kill. Realistically the only jet that could do that is the Su-57 with its stealth capabilities, however Russia only has a handful of these planes and uses them in very limited roles. A risky mission well into enemy territory to bag a kill on an F-16 sounds unlikely to me, especially since if such happened I'd expect it to be all over Russian media.
From the tone of the article, it sounds like it was from shrapnel or avoiding action as a result of a Russian cruise missile being shot down in close proximity, rather than Russia directly shooting down the F-16. This has happened before to Ukrainian pilots.
I think I found it after wading through a lot of nonsense on Reddit or Twitter/X. Looking for good information on those platforms is challenging at times because you have to wade through a ton of western propaganda