“They got very lucky,” Trump says of downed Apache helicopter’s crew
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President Donald Trump on Wednesday said two U.S. Army aviators “got very lucky” after an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter was downed by Iran over the Strait of Hormuz, emphasizing that American retaliation for the incident is not over. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, the president declared, “We hit them hard yesterday and we’re going to hit them hard again today.”Trump initially claimed in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that Iran had shot down the aircraft, before revising his account a day later to say it was struck by an Iranian ordnance that failed to detonate on impact.“That bomb was lodged in the helicopter, it didn’t explode. It was on fire but it didn’t explode,” Trump explained. “Those two guys, they knew how to fly, but they got very lucky.” He then quipped: “You won’t believe the rescue, how cool it was.”The crew members were retrieved by a remotely piloted Navy surface drone, in what Trump and military officials described as the first U.S. operation of its kind.Still, the episode demonstrated one asymmetrical element of the conflict. U.S. officials said a low-cost Iranian Shahed-136 drone — estimated to cost roughly $20,000 — engaged the American attack helicopter valued at between $35 million and $40 million. Describing the subsequent rescue, Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for Central Command, told Military Times that the unmanned surface vessel retrieved the downed aviators and ferried them to a rendezvous point at sea, where they were then hoisted aboard a helicopter for extraction. “The surface drone that assisted in [Monday’s] rescue of the Apache crew off the coast of Oman was a U.S. Navy Corsair unmanned surface vessel operated by U.S. 5th Fleet’s Task Force 59,” he said. “The task force began fielding these drones in theater in late March.”The 24-foot Corsair — built by Texas-based Saronic Technologies — can carry payloads of up to 1,000 pounds over a 1,000-nautical-mile range and reach speeds of up to 35 knots, according to the company’s