Newly released video shows shoot down of Syrian SU-22 by US F-18's

Syrian SU-22 before being shot down. Via The Aviationist. 

The Pentagon has released video of this summers shootdown of a Syrian SU-22 by a US F-18 hornet. The video shows the jet being hit by an AIM 120 AMRAAM and being destroyed. 

My Comment:

A very extensive commentary on this incident can be found here via The Drive. It's a very good round up of why this incident played out the way it did and how we ended up destroying that SU-22. It was the first air to air kill for the United States since the first Iraq War and a critical part of the history of the Syrian Civil War. 

Not much else to say on this one other than the fact that this incident was quickly forgotten. At the time people were worried that this incident would spawn a greater conflict between the United States and Syria with it perhaps spiraling to a larger conflict with Russia. That obviously didn't happen because cooler heads prevailed and we quickly set up more "deconfliction" lines to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. I sincerely hope that this incident was a "one off" thing and we won't have to shoot anything else down in Syria. 

Given the circumstances of the shootdown, I don't fault the actions of the F-18 pilots. They had little choice but to shoot down this SU-22. It was refusing the back down even after being repeatedly warned. Still, I wish we could have avoided this particular incident...