Considered that this is the first jet shot down in the entire war? "High mobility SAMs" alone completely fails to explain it.
replyThey had high mobility SAMs for the entire war, with nothing to show for it. Something else must have happened there.
Not the first jet hit, and definitely not the first aircraft downed. The F-35 incident was widely suspected to be a Qaem 118 missile, which fits the bill for road mobile multispectral SAM perfectly. More than a dozen drones were downed too, and even the rescue helicopters are evading air defenses according to CENTCOM.
reply> They had high mobility SAMs for the entire war, with nothing to show for it.
This is certainly something to show for it. Iran's air defenses are not like Israel's or Qatar's, they don't have the money or security to build expensive anti-ballistic layers for air defense. These smaller, road-mobile systems are intended to exploit an overextending enemy, and for that purpose they're apparently working quite well.