Don’t Sleep on the Tiger II
By 
This fella just became a legend.
One of the most unusual elements in the report immediately caught our eye: the claim that an Iranian Northrop F-5 fighter carried out a strike on Camp Buehring in Kuwait. If confirmed, this would represent the first time in many years an enemy fighter aircraft directly attacked a U.S. installation protected by layered air defenses.
Originally developed in the 1960s, the F-5 remains in service with Iran in locally upgraded forms, including derivatives such as the HESA Saeqeh. These aircraft are generally not considered survivable in a modern, high-threat air defense environment, although their small size still poses a problem as it complicates their targeting by air defenses.
It is unclear how an Iranian fighter aircraft could be able to successfully reach its target without being detected and stopped. The strike likely occurred under highly specific conditions, possibly exploiting the saturation of air defenses by missile and drone attacks in the initial days of the war.
The reported F-5 strike, however, can’t be immediately dismissed, as it could have occurred alongside other similar incidents in the same timeframe. Among these, the case of the two Iranian Sukhoi Su-24s shot down by Qatar “two minutes” away from Al Udeid Air Base and Ras Laffan, as well as a friendly fire incident involving U.S. F-15E Strike Eagles shot down in Kuwait.
More detail at NBC, albeit paywalled. FWIW Persian Incursion doesn’t even have a set of rules for bombing with the Iranian Air Force. The idea that the Iranians actually carried out a successful penetration attack makes the F-15 shootdown incident a little bit more intelligible.
Photo Credit: By Khashayar Talebzadeh – http://www.airliners.net/photo/Iran—Air/Northrop-F-5E-Tiger/1922995/L/, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16533628