U.S. Military Rescue Operation in Iran

This is newly declassified video of the rescues of two

U.S. Air Force officers who were shot down over Iran.

The two men, who we are calling Alpha and Bravo for security reasons,

ejected from their F-15E fighter jet after they were

struck by an Iranian missile and landed miles apart in a rugged

mountainous region.

They were stranded behind enemy lines with Iranian bounties on their

heads.

Well, of course, the first concern is what's the status of the crew?

Um-

General Dan Cain, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

said the

rescue operation for both officers was one of the biggest and

most complex in U.S. military history.

Alpha, the pilot, was located first.

This declassified footage shows the risky daytime mission to

rescue him. The U.S. sent in 21 aircraft to get him

out. Just how dangerous was the mission to rescue

Alpha?

Well, any time you go, uh, behind enemy lines in daylight,

it's gonna be dicey. We would much rather go at night,

but given the threat to 4-4 Alpha, the decision was

taken to boldly go behind enemy lines in daylight to make sure

that we could get to him before anybody else could.

For nearly two days, Bravo, the weapons systems officer who was in the

backseat, was alone in the Iranian desert, badly wounded,

with almost no water, no food, and no rescue in sight.

Then the U.S., with help from top secret CIA technology,

finally pinpointed him.

In this video, American bombers and drones strike Iran's

Revolutionary Guard forces nearby.

After that, it was time to go back in for Bravo.

We show General Dan Cain the video of Bravo's rescue and asked

him to walk us through the mission.

Well, we're looking at a feed from a

intelligence

surveillance and reconnaissance asset.

That's 4-4 Bravo up there, I'm quite sure.

And we've got two Special Forces folks coming forward,

and it looks like they're bringing him out.

In my understanding, this was about 7,000 feet up?

It's pretty high. Yeah, you can see the high terrain off to the

right, uh, upper

right side of this.

And so the backseater

scaled that mountain?

You'd have to ask him, but I imagine, yeah, probably so.

Pretty extraordinary.

That's what I would do. You wanna get to the high ground.

You wanna isolate the threat below you so that you can

see and observe anybody that's coming to get you-

Mm-hmm

... and make a decision on what you're gonna

do to evade them.

And why in a, in a image like this is this small

helicopter, why is that obscured, that image?

What is its, its-

'Cause I don't want you to know what kind of helicopter that is.

Yeah. That you use.

'Cause we retain, we wanna retain our most bespoke

capabilities so that if the United States ever needs to use

them again,

we can.

You don't want the enemy or anybody else to see what that is.

I do not.

Right.